Cocoa Mellers is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author. We also chose her book,

Blue Sisters, for Read with Jenna. Coco grew up in London and moved to New York as a teenager,

where she received her MFA and fiction from

New York University. While living in New York and working as a copywriter, she spent years

writing her debut novel and submitting the manuscript to publishers. That book, Cleopatra

and Frankenstein, took five years and 30 rejections before it was published, proving her dedication and passion to the craft.

The novel would, of course, become a huge hit and a Sunday Times bestseller.

She followed up with her second novel, Blue Sisters, which is a read-with-Genna Book Club pick.

The novel follows three incredibly different sisters who reunite in New York on the anniversary of their four sisters' death.

I sat down with Coco at a Read With Jenna Book Club event to talk about the deep, complicated, and unbreakable bonds of sisterhood and how her own relationship with her sister shaped the book.

Coco opens up about her struggles with grief and addiction, and she also reveals

how motherhood transformed her life, and ultimately the ending of the novel. I'm Jenna Bush-Hager. Welcome to

my podcast, Open Book with Jenna.

Thank you. Hi, everybody.

I am here with the effervescent, incredible Cocoa Mellers.

And I know all of you, I know many of you have read this beautiful book, her second book,

Blue Sisters, which I just was astounded by. I think she is an incredibly fresh new voice.

I mean, newish. Newish, right? Would you let yourself be called new? Yeah, I'll take new. It ages me down.

New voice and publishing. And I am just so thrilled to have heard from so many readers like you all who have fallen in love with these sisters like I did. And in fact, one of my friends is here, Siri, and she said that she didn't want the book to end.

And I think when you had to say goodbye to those Blue Sisters, I know I felt a longing, and I miss them. So now we get to talk about them. So thank you, Coco, for being here tonight.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. You are definitely the honorary fifth Blue Sister. And you have a twin, actually, so you're five and six.

Yeah, Barbara, I'm going to call Barbara right now. That's the type of thing that makes her really jealous.

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