A meet-cute followed by real life: 'Party of Two' is about love in the real world

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Romance writer Jasmine Guillory writes beautiful love stories – but that doesn't mean they aren't based in reality. Her novel Party of Two, from the summer of 2020, is about a Black woman and a white man who have a meet-cute and start a casual long-distance relationship. But race does have an impact on their connection because of the different ways the world has received them. Guillory told former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that real-life couples have these conversations, so her characters should too.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Something I love about doing this show,
0:07.3	particularly when we get to listen to older interviews with authors, is that they're a time capsule
0:12.4	of what was going on. Yes, great literature is forever, but these interviews capture a specific
0:18.1	moment. So let's go back to summer 2020, deep in early COVID times,
0:22.4	and during the discussions about race and racism we were having as a country after the
0:26.6	killing of George Floyd. At the time, author Jasmine Guillory had just come out with her book,
0:30.8	Party of Two, a romance about a U.S. Senator and a lawyer. One is black and the other is white.
0:37.0	This wasn't Guillory's first go at
0:38.9	writing a romance evolving an interracial couple. And in this interview, Guillory talks to then
0:43.9	NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro about why the theme is so important to her. That's coming up.
0:51.1	Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all.
1:02.6	On the web at theshmit.org.
1:05.8	This year's Oscar nominations are here, and we are unpacking record-breaking nominations for sinners,
1:11.7	plus nominations for Marty Supreme and one battle after another, and we'll talk about some of the surprises and snubs.
1:19.0	Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:25.6	Olivia Monroe has just moved to Los Angeles to open her own law firm.
1:30.2	Max Powell is a U.S. Senator who spends weeks in D.C. after a meet cute at a hotel bar,
1:36.0	they begin a casual weekend's only long-distance fling, or is it more?
1:41.0	Party of Two is the latest romance novel by Jasmine Guillory, who joins me now. Hello. Hello. How are you?
1:48.2	I am very well. I got to say, this is a romance story with a lot of pretty timely themes. Olivia is black,
1:56.1	Max is White. How does race play out in their relationship? You know, race plays out in their relationship in the different ways they view the world and the different ways the world has impacted them.
2:08.3	Max has a very kind of happy go lucky attitude towards life, which is easy for him because he grew up wealthy.
	...

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