Welcome to The Scroll, where we check in with your favorite writers, asking them to exclusively reveal and annotate the best moments from their brand-new books. We also get them to dish on their writing process and divulge a few plot secrets along the way.
For this round, we chatted with Lauren Blakely, a romance writing phenom who not only has a #1 New York Times Bestseller under her belt but is also releasing her next book under our own Cosmo Reads imprint. Publishing on March 3, 2026, It Seemed Like a Good Idea follows Banks, a bodyguard who will do anything but break the rules. However, when his new assignment includes protecting Ripley, the woman he stood up after a steamy hotel hookup, lines quickly blur between work and play. Can he protect her just as much as she’s trying to protect her heart? Only time—and this delightfully novel—will tell.
Here, Blakely shares another exclusive excerpt and talks about power dynamics, breaking trope stereotypes, and why reading the male main character’s POV can be a good thing.
Fans who order from Third Place Books (signed/personalized), Novel Grounds (signed bookplate), The Well Red Damsel (signed bookplate), In Bloom Bookery (signed bookplate), or Flutter Bookstore (signed bookplate) will receive a character art print and a two-sided town map. Blakely will also be going on tour and stopping by The Bookish Shop in Glibert, AZ (March 3), Books Are Awesome in Parker, CO (March 4), Good Girl Books in Knoxville, TN (March 5), and The Last Chapter Book Shop in Chicago, IL (March 6).
You’ve written so many books, so I’m curious what the spark was for this one?
It was the bodyguard. I love a bodyguard romance and the whole protective nature of the hero. I love that it’s instantly forbidden and dangerous and risky. But I really did not want to write a celebrity, a rock star, a politician, a senator’s daughter, or a woman who’s a billionaire. It took a while, a lot of sessions with my brainstorm partner, and then I came upon this idea of identical twins.
The small town is part of the twist on the bodyguard idea. You expect the bodyguard and the heroine to be jet-setting, flying over the ocean. They’re in Paris, they’re in New York, they’re on the red carpet. I’m like, No, she’s a farmer and he needs to protect her in her quirky, cute hometown, at the nail salon, at the yoga studio.
It’s also usually the women who moves to the small town to find love, not the other way around.
That was really key for their sparky, fiery relationship that is enemies to lovers-ish. How can she try—in her clever, creative way—to lose him, using the advantage of knowing the town. But he’s good at his job, so she has to come up with all these ways to get rid of him. He’s like, Nope, I’m right there by your side. I’m going to get my toenails done, if that’s what it takes.
Dual POV is still kind of controversial, but what is it about it that you enjoy from a writing perspective?
I do love a good single POV romance like Ali Hazelwood’s Problematic Summer Romance or Emily Henry or Ashley Poston. But I have really grown up primarily doing dual POV and I think there’s an audience for both. My readers enjoy getting to see both sides. It’s a little bit like a puzzle, because you don’t have the ability to obfuscate things by not knowing the hero’s point of view. You have to maintain the tension while sharing both of their sets of feelings. You’re getting different reveals from each person at different times, while rooting for both of them—while also being irritated with both of them for not seeing what’s in front of them. I think that’s part of the joy of reading.
We see it in the annotations below, but Ripley is the more submissive one in the relationship, while Banks is more dominant. What was it like exploring that side of their relationship?
For Ripley, it’s really what she needs. She spends so much of her days helping everybody, managing all the people on the farm, helping the employees. They’re a little bit younger than her and she’s guiding them through whatever the scenario is that they’re dealing with. A lot of women in high power jobs will often say that they don’t want to make every decision in the relationship. But even though that is their dynamic, Ripley is still very much Ripley. She’s sarcastic and sassy and she’s like, Get moving. Move faster, come on. But I feel that even though she’s definitely more submissive there, the way that they’re creative in the bedroom with ribbons and flowers and all of that kind of speaks to a shared, approachable kink.
I’m not writing a BDSM romance, but I think exploring a playfulness is definitely something I enjoy doing for my characters. Taking them in the bedroom and adding a little twist. Sex and dessert. A little extra spice to it, while still feeling like something that you can do in the comfort of your own home.
This is book one in the Darling Springs series—anything you want to let fans know before they dive in?
Pay attention to Chloe and Sawyer, because they’re definitely coming back!
Excerpted from It Seemed Like a Good Idea, by Lauren Blakely, to be published on March 3, 2026, by Cosmo Reads, an imprint of Sourcebooks. Copyright © 2026 by Lauren Blakely.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea, by Lauren Blakely will be released on March 3, 2026 from Cosmo Reads. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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