This Love
Emotional, feel-good fiction about queer friendship and chosen family 2024, Dialogue BooksMy first novel tells the story of a ten year friendship between Mae and Ari. It's a vivid and epic tale of finding your soulmates, building a family, and the limitless, ever-changing forms love can take.
Mae and Ari are not your average power couple.
When they meet outside a Leeds gay club in their final year of university, their connection is magnetic. Whilst Mae, stubborn and no stranger to breaking hearts, needs Ari’s bright light to guide her out of her self-centred ways; Ari, vibrant, charming and reeling in the aftermath of a scandal in New York, clings to Mae as his grounding anchor.
As the years sweep by, the two traverse the tumult of life: hotshot jobs and toxic partners, the fallout of long-hidden secrets and the heavy weight of grief.
If they can hold onto one another in the face of the relentless past and the inevitable future, they might discover how to build something beautiful out of their expansive, boundary-breaking love.
Spanning ten years of an extraordinary friendship, This Love is an epic tale of finding your soulmate and creating a family out of expansive, boundary-breaking love.
THIS LOVE will be published by Harper Perennial in the US in 2025
Film and TV Rights have been optioned by Headline.
Launch party
Fabulous people gathered to celebrate This Love in London. How To Fail's Elizabeth Day and David Nichols author of One Day joined musicians, journalists, artists, newspaper and magazine editors, scene queens and my own blended and extended family to party the night away. It was, by all accounts, pretty wild for a book launch. Mae and Ari would expect nothing less!
Media coverage
'This Love' has garnered widespread acclaim in the national media. It was featured by pop icon Dua Lipa as one of her book's of the month and Taylor Jenkins Reid posted it on Instagram with the caption "cannot wait to read this". Here are just a few quotes from some of the other reviews.
In the media
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March, 2024 , Diva Magazine
'This Love' reviewed in Diva Magazine
"Moving, engrossing and queer as hell, Lotte Jeffs' debut novel is agorgeous love letter to the extraordinary power of queer friendship and forging your own kind of family."
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March, 2024 , Prima
Nina Pottell's 'Books of the Month'
"I read this incredible book about friendship, identity and belonging really slowly because I wanted to savour the story. [...] Beautiful and full of emotion, it will stay with me for a long time."
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February, 2024 , Harpers Bazaar
'Seven debut novels by women for 2024'
"[A] touching, surprising and gloriously enjoyable debut, which charts the challenges and joys of unconventional families, of fluidity and friendship, and of love in every possible incarnation."
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February, 2024 , Women's Weekly
Zoe West's 'Great Reads'
"[T]his is a moving portrayal of platonic love and chosen family. It’s a reminder that a soulmate doesn’t need to be a romantic connection, and that love takes many equally crucial forms."
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February, 2024 , Evening Standard
'Best books to spark queer joy in 2024'
"Anchored by complicated real-world challenges, this novel explores the weight of secrets, toxic partnerings, grief and desire all whilst celebrating the greatest love in so many lives, friendship."
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January, 2024 , Cosmopolitan
'Best books to read in February'
My novel 'This Love' was featured in Cosmopolitan's shortlist of 'best books to read in February 2024'.
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January, 2024 , Diva Magazine
Interview in Diva Magazine
Read article Download article (PDF)Author, journalist and podcaster Lotte Jeffs opens up about her new novel, This Love, the joy of queer friendship and her journey to creating a family
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January, 2024 , Daily Mail
'This Love' reviewed in The Daily Mail
"This Love has been dubbed One Day for Gen-Z and, as Mae and Ari’s friendship unfolds across a ten-year period, it charts its twists and turns with appeal- ingly breezy, emotionally attuned prose"