Annabel Monaghan now lives half the year in Greenwich and the other half in Florida, a change of scene sparked by her last child graduating from Rye High School and leaving the nest.
But if someone asks where she’s from, she doesn’t hesitate: “Rye,” the place she lived for 20 years. “Greenwich is 10 minutes away. When I need to get my nails done, I drive to Rye. When I go to the post office, I go back to Rye. I know that post office, and I know which lane to get in. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out that post office. I’m not letting that information go to waste!” she said.
Which is why when she is scheduled to appear at Wainwright House on May 27, at 7 p.m., it will and won’t be a homecoming. In promotion of “It’s a Love Story,” her fourth adult novel, Monaghan will have a conversation with another Rye literary light, Lee Woodruff, whom Monaghan refers to as her fairy godmother.
“When I was starting out, she generously introduced me to people and gave me advice. She’s a class act.”
Woodruff is happy to return the compliment: “Annabel has a wonderful, wry sense of humor and she writes about relatable things that make us all smile and look at the commonality of our own lives.”
Athena Books will be there to sell copies of the book.
Coming out May 27, Monaghan’s latest tale takes its inspiration from Hollywood, which also informed her first novel, “Nora Goes Off Script.”
The main character is Jane Jackson, a former child star trying to shake her humiliating alter ego, “poor Janey Jakes,” the loser TV sitcom character she played as a tween. (If someone was going to have to sit in a plate of nachos, it would be her.) She is a legitimate producer now, but struggling to get Hollywood to take her seriously. Adding to the problem: she just doesn’t know who she is. And, well, as the title hints, there might be some romance involved.
Monaghan actually has no ties to the entertainment business other than growing up in L.A. Her inspiration came from another book, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” a searing memoir by Jenette McCurdy, who was a regular on the popular teen show, “iCarly.”
“The book is so well-written, I read it twice in a row,” Monaghan said. “It got me thinking about all these teen stars: what was it like to grow up and go through puberty on TV?”
Monaghan writes a lot about women becoming “unstuck” and finding their voices and power, a journey with which she, herself, is quite familiar. When raising her three children, she spent lot of time dreaming of spending the day writing.
“It’s a delusion, really, to think that that’s a thing you can do,” said Monaghan, who had quit her job as a “not very good investment banker.” She found her way from delusion to reality when she got her own column in The Rye Record, where, she said, she developed “my grown-up voice and my willingness to be frank about life. I developed a little bit of confidence to do that, and that got me unstuck.”
Monaghan is under contract for two more novels, coming out in 2026 and 2027. She said it can be hard to keep all of her characters straight.
“I’ve just come off a year talking about ‘Summer Romance.’ I’ve spent the last nine months writing my 2026 book. And I’m going to start talking about ‘It’s a Love Story,’” she said. “Sometimes I’ll be in front of an audience, and I’ll get asked a question, and it takes me a second, like what? Who are we talking about? It’s the way you kind of forget your kids’ names, right?”
However, when she is writing, she is very much in that space. “I exhaust myself in a book. By the time I’ve handed it in, I’m so burned out on it that it feels very relaxing to take a step into a totally different world. I’ve heard authors say that they daydream about their characters after they finished writing them. No, I leave them on the side of the road. It’s just too much to keep all that in my head,” she said.
Tickets to Monaghan’s book event are sold out, but the novel is available in local bookstores.
