LIVING THE DREAM

Winchester novelist Beth O’Leary faced a battle with imposter syndrome as she penned the follow-up to her debut bestseller

- Rebecca Fletcher

Becoming a best-selling author has to be at the top of any writer’s wish list.

For novelist and Winchester girl Beth O’Leary, it was certainly the dream she aspired to when she began writing the novel that was to become her debut on her daily commute to London to a job in children’s publishing. She never imagined that The Flatshare, would become such an overnight success, ending up a Sunday Times Top Five bestseller, being sold into 32 languages, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and being awarded the coveted title WH Smith’s Fiction Book of the Year in 2019 – and all of this enviable achievement at the age of 26. There’s even a television deal in pre-production. Although the last year has seemed somewhat of a whirlwind of luck, Beth has been working towards this dream since she was a teenager.

“In some ways, it does feel like it came out of the blue but I did write four completed novels before The Flatshare and I tried to get all of them published,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get an agent since I was 17 – that’s when I sent my first submission out.’

A heart-warming romantic comedy, The Flatshare tells the stories of quirky book editor Tiffy Moore who is looking for somewhere cheap to live and fast, and introvert Leon Twomey, a nurse working night shifts in desperate need of cash. The solution? To share Leon’s one-bedroom flat – Leon occupying it during the day and Tiffy coming home to an empty flat after work. They even share the flat’s double bed, despite the fact that they have never met.