Nora Stephens

Nora Stephens is the high-powered literary agent protagonist of Emily Henry's novel Book Lovers — a woman whose ruthless professional reputation as the shark who kills romantic getaway stories has made her the villain of a hundred beach-read plotlines, and who finds herself in the small town of Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for a month of forced relaxation with her sister, only to keep running into the equally book-obsessed editor Charlie Lastra. Henry writes Nora as a deliberate inversion of the genre's conventional heroines.

Henry's structural conceit — Nora is the type of character who usually goes home to the city while the heroine stays in the small town — is executed with genuine wit and genuine affection for both the trope she is subverting and the reader who will recognize what she's doing. Nora's love of her career, her love of her sister, and her specific fears about staying form the novel's emotional architecture.

The publishing setting gives Book Lovers a specificity that readers who work in or around books find particularly appealing — Henry's knowledge of the industry gives Nora and Charlie's relationship a professional context that feels authentic.

Begin with Book Lovers (2022).