BOOK SUMMARY

Cat St. Clair is ready for her messy love triangle era now that she’s in an open relationship. But she didn’t foresee a forbidden love triangle with the only two people who are off-limits: her boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend. Being a twenty-something writer who lives for plot, she falls for them anyway, with deliciously disastrous consequences, in this electric literary debut for fans of Xochitl Gonzalez, Coco Mellors, Lily King, and Raven Leilani.

It’s the fall of 2024, and twenty-four-year-old Cat isn’t asking for too much: all she wants is three boyfriends, to write her little novels, and to survive another chaotic presidential election. She’s in an open relationship with her college sweetheart Jay, but nonmonogamy isn’t just a hot trend she’s trying. It’s her sliver of freedom in a world eager to wrestle it from her for being a Black woman going after what she wants with reckless abandon.

While political tensions roil the campus where Cat is slowly earning her creative writing degree, she finds herself drawn to Jay’s best friend, Tristan, who’s smart, super hot, and…in a monogamous relationship. And then she meets Tristan’s girlfriend, Nia, a captivating art student with her own gravitational pull.

Friends and family urge her to just be happy with Jay, but Cat is determined to have it all—or blow up her life trying. As she falls for all the wrong people, racking up lies, betrayals, and terrible drafts of her novel, she tries to write her way to a happy ending. But in art, politics, and love, true liberation may take more than rewriting the old scripts. It may mean inventing something entirely new.

THE INTERVIEW

Hi Haili and welcome to the blog 👋

Hi I’m Haili! I’m a December Sagittarius and a producer for the NPR program 1A. I write literary fiction about love, desire, and the decisions that feel impossible to make starring plucky, loud-mouth female protagonists of color. My debut novel is THEY ALL FALL IN LOVE AT THE END. It has a hot-pink cover that I love more than most things in this world. I’ve written a New York Times Modern Love essay about breaking up with my boyfriend and a piece in The New Republic about Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer.

ME AND MY OWN MESS! I was searching for a story that would explain myself and my desires to me (why did I want three boyfriends? etc) and realized I was going to have to write it. Of course, the narrative ended up going off the rails, taking on a life of its own, becoming less and less about me and much more about the questions I was asking, the confusion I was experiencing.

ZENDAYA OR NO ONE (though I also lovveee Myha’la from INDUSTRY, she’d be amazing as Cat, too). Damson Idris for Tristan and Adain Bradley and maybe Coco Jones for Nia.

“They All Fall In Love At The End” is based mainly in Washington DC.  What was it about Washington DC that ignited your imagination and got the creative juices flowing?

I understood we, as a city, a nation, were living in a remarkable and historical moment and in many ways D.C was the epicenter of that moment in the beginning. I wanted to capture the utter chaos and uncertainty many people felt during the first few months of the second Trump administration and what that chaos meant for a that does not have full autonomy or political representation.

Of course I’m a bookworm!! Though I’ve had a lot of trouble reading this year. My favorite genre is one that doesn’t entirely exist, which is literary romance (Like Sally Rooney). I also love certain mysteries and speculative stories with a horror bent. It’s not a book, but I’m OBSESSED with Widow’s Bay right now.

Personal now – what outfits and shoes would you normally be found wearing?

It totally depends on what I’m doing — I’ll tell you what I’m wearing to a party this weekend: a cropped green top that flares at the wrist (very Ren Faire), a twine chocker and skinny sequin purple scarf I got from this thrift market and capri pants. I’m going for a 90s indie look since I just got a short haircut.

Boots or Shoes? ( & Why?)