It’s never too late to fall in love

Lilac Mills

Oct 4

4 min read

One of the questions I’m asked quite often is why so many of my romances feature characters who are a little older. Not ancient, you understand, just people who've lived a bit, gathered a few wrinkles (and hopefully a little wisdom), and discovered that life rarely follows the neat little plan they imagined when they were young. I know mine didn't...

Anyway, the reason that I enjoy writing later-in-life romances is because love doesn't have an age limit. Who says twenty-somethings should get all the fun? Or even thirty- or forty-somethings? Heck, one of my Liz Davies stories (The Ticklemore Christmas Toy Shop) features an octogenarian - and Hattie Jenkins is one of the liveliest people I know.

Smiling elderly couple outdoors, woman riding on man's back and pointing ahead, with autumn trees blurred behind them.

Romance novels have traditionally focused on first loves, first kisses and first steps into adulthood, and I adore those stories - of course I do! There’s something wonderful about experiencing everything for the first time. But there’s a different kind of wonder when older people fall in love.

Many of my characters have already travelled a fair way through life. Some are widowed, some are divorced, and many have spent years putting family, careers or caring responsibilities before themselves. They’ve made mistakes, lost confidence, had their hearts broken or simply reached a point where they wonder if life has any more surprises in store.

I love proving that it does.

Perhaps it's because of my own upbringing. I grew up with my grandparents living in the same house as me and my parents, and they were a huge part of my life. I never really thought of older people as ‘old’ – they were simply people with fascinating stories, wonderful senses of humour, and lives that carried on long after retirement. They laughed, argued, teased one another and loved deeply, and I suppose that's stayed with me.

Also I believe that life experience brings something special to a romance.

When you're twenty, you often fall in love with possibility. When you're sixty, you fall in love knowing exactly what life can throw at you. That doesn't make the romance any less exciting; in fact, it often makes it richer.

My older characters tend to appreciate the little things, like a cup of tea shared in a cosy kitchen (with cake, obviously!), a walk through the village, or someone picking them some wild blackberries because they know how much that person loves blackberry and apple crumble. They love holding hands, and they appreciate companionship – and those moments can be every bit as romantic as grand declarations.

They also bring some emotional baggage with them, and I mean that in the nicest possible way! Years of hopes, disappointments, family dynamics and unexpected twists of fate create wonderfully layered characters - and I hope I do them justice in my books. Watching these characters slowly lower the walls they've built around themselves is one of my favourite parts of writing.

Of course, not all my books feature older protagonists. I write plenty of stories about younger characters finding love too. But I think it's important that readers of every age can see themselves reflected in the pages.

Smiling elderly couple rides in a red convertible on a sunny vineyard road, the woman raising both arms in joy. — The Summer of Going Topless isn't what you think it might be about!

After all, we don't stop dreaming because we reach a certain birthday. We don't stop hoping, we don't stop laughing, and we certainly don't stop falling in love. Some of my favourite fictional couples have met when they least expected it, at a stage in life when they believed romance belonged to the younger generation. Seeing them discover that happiness can still be waiting just around the corner fills me with enormous joy, and judging by the lovely emails I receive, many readers feel exactly the same.

So if you ever spot another fifty-something widow, a sixty-year-old gardener, a retired teacher or newly single grandfather wandering into one of my fictional villages, don't be surprised - because no one is counting the wrinkles in my books! And this is why I’ve written thirteen books to date under three pen names (see below) that feature older protagonists.

My most recent later-in-life romance story is Christmas at Honeycombe Bay, published by Penguin in the US and Canada, and Head of Zeus in the UK and the rest of the world.