Love By The Book! Kiwi Writer's Riveting Romances

Readers are falling for her unique voice

- Amy Nelmes Bissett

By her own admission, Catherine Bennetto has packed it in. There’s been big TV directing gigs on Shortland Street and Coronation Street. She’s lived in many countries around the world. And most notably, she fell in love so quickly, she found herself married after 10 months.

So when it comes to writing books about love, Catherine, 40, has plenty of material to work with. But she’s the first to admit there’s something distinctly missing from her two hugely successful novels and that’s New Zealand, despite writing them from her home in picturesque Queens town.

“I suppose I was never going to write about a Kiwi girl zipping around Auckland,” she laughs. “Trust me, I love New Zealand, but that’s not terribly interesting to me. My heart has always been in London and that’s where both of my books are based. ”

Writing has been a passion for Catherine since the very start. She tells Woman’s Day during our photo shoot that she recently found pages upon pages of make-believe stories she wrote as a child.

“I’ve always wanted to write,” recalls Catherine. “But I suppose it was about finding the right time in my life. I didn’t think I’d found my voice in my 20s to really have that authority. But I just had to be patient.”

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