About the Book:
Harley is in her Heartbreak Era … but what if romance isn’t
finished with her quite yet?
Harley and Freddie have been a couple forever – they’ve applied to the same university and even picked out their future children’s names. So when Freddie breaks up with her on their four-year anniversary, Harley is blindsided. She’s devoted lunchbreaks, holidays – her entire life! – to Freddie. What is she meant to do now?
Harley discovers her college’s heartbreak club, where she meets cute-if-slightly-chaotic fellow dumpee Seth. But as the past and present start to collide, Harley has a big decision on her hands.
Whose Heartbreak Era is this?
Find on Goodreads. Find on Bookshop.org UK (affiliate link).
About the Author:
Sophie Jo is the author of RED FLAGS (Scholastic, 2025) and HEARTBREAK ERA (Feb 2026). After being selected for the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency’s 2020 mentorship scheme, her debut YA novel THE NICEST GIRL was published by UCLan in 2022.
Sophie’s passionate about making sure teenagers know how to recognise the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. She’s worked with domestic violence charity Women’s Aid to spread the word via the Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan and BBC Woman’s Hour.
In her spare time, Sophie likes visiting Disneyland, over-analysing cult 00s TV show The OC, and writing about relationships – of all kinds – for publications including Breathe Magazine and Metro.
Interview:
Pitch your book in 10 words!
Heartbroken girl joins support group – heartbroken boy suggests they fake-date!
(Damn, I found that a lot harder than expected! Can fake-date be one word? Please say yes.)
Why do you think fake dating is such a popular trope?
It combines so much! There’s the set-up, with all the organising and rule-setting, then there are the actual fake dates, which bring the inevitable hijinks. Then (of course) there’s the slow-burn realisation, the subsequent yearning, a little dash of miscommunication along the way before our main characters realise they’re meant to be together … Truly, one of the greats; I will hear no slander.
I guess there’s also a fun sense of escapism with fake dating, because although it’s a trope we’re all familiar with, it’s also something 99% of people simply would not do in real life.
The book is told solely from Harley’s perspective. Did you ever consider having Seth also narrate the book?
I DID, mainly because it was the approach I’d taken for RED FLAGS, my previous YA romcom, and I’d enjoyed it a lot. However, I’d never written a romcom from only one perspective, so I was really interested to see how I’d find that, as well as how readers would respond to it.
While part of me does wish we also saw things from Seth’s perspective, I do think out of the two of them he’s the one who wears his heart on his sleeve. Although Harley knows herself very well, she can be a little guarded as a person, and so I felt that we needed a lot of Harley’s inner world in order to really get to know her on a deeper level.
There is often an expectation that teenagers will grow through change. While Harley does change in some ways through the book, much of her growth comes from acknowledging and loving who she is and coming to terms with not needing to change everything about her. What made you choose this journey for her and did the balance of this ever change across drafting and edits?
I think there’s this age-old battle between safety and growth within almost all of us. Like, do we join that Wednesday-evening club and challenge ourselves, or do we stay home and read books in the warm? Do we want to join that club, or do we just feel like we should want to join that club? If joining the club feels scary, is that a ‘trust your gut and stay away’ scary or a ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ scary? There are so many variables, and I really wanted that to come across.
Harley is very sure of who she is, but she definitely has moments where she doubts herself and feels like she has something to prove. I always wanted her to be able to get past that, and to end the story with a balance: acceptance of the person she is at her core, while also knowing that she’s allowed to try new things if they appeal to her.
One part of the book I really love is when Harley tells Freddie: “I like socialising. I like hanging out with friends – just … not yours.” For a while, I think they’ve both had this shared view that Harley is slightly antisocial, but she realises that actually, that’s not the case at all. Sure, she’s not prepared to make friends just for the sake of it, but when she meets the right people, who feel kind and authentic to her, they mean a lot.
Sixth-former Dahlia sets up the “Recently Dumped Club” at school to help fellow students over heartbreaks. What forms of support do you wish teenagers had access to within school and community centres – or wish they knew they could access?
Teens obviously have access to a lot of information and guidance online in the 2020s, which I think is great, but I’m also conscious that a lot of it comes from untrained strangers on the internet (such as myself!), so naturally there are good and bad sides. I really wish there was much more accessible, face-to-face therapy available for free.
One website I really love (and helped set up a few years back) is Women’s Aid’s ‘Love Respect’. It’s designed with young people in mind and basically acts as a relationship health-check, so teens can take quizzes and read hypothetical examples to suss out whether their relationship is healthy or not. There’s also a great site called The Mix, which offers free counselling and urgent mental health support via text for under-25s who need it.
Did you intentionally code Harley and Seth as Autistic and ADHD, and if so how did that inform how you developed their dating lives and experiences?
I wondered while writing the book if anyone would read the characters that way! It wasn’t a deliberate coding – I don’t identify as neurodivergent so that wouldn’t have been my story to tell – but I’d be very happy to know that any ND readers had felt seen or understood by Harley and Seth.
Harley isn’t me but she’s definitely based on elements of who I was at her age – I was shy, I found comfort in routine, and I craved more authentic relationships. I hadn’t discovered ‘my people’ yet, so most of the time I was pretty lonely. When I’d meet someone I felt safe with (usually a boyfriend) I’d cling to that person for dear life, which often meant that – like Harley – I was missing out on other opportunities (e.g. classmates trying their hardest to become ‘my people’!). Although my life’s changed since then, I’m absolutely still a proud Harley in many ways, and I’ve loved reading reviews and comments from readers who can relate to her.
I’d say Seth is a mishmash of a few people – he’s actually named after Seth Cohen from The O.C. (ironically one of the TV shows I rewatched constantly as a teen, and still do), who has a funny, sarcastic energy. Parts of him also remind me of my husband, whose personality inspired a lot of Seth’s so-called ‘floatiness’. He and I are very different people, like Harley and Seth, but we understand each other’s quirks and ways of operating in a way that really works.
What was your favourite moment or aspect of Harley and Seth’s relationship?
I don’t want to be too spoiler-y here but my faves (for those who know) are the lasagne scene and the argument scene. They’re very different vibes, but I think both of them show how deeply Seth cares for Harley and how ready he is to accept her for the person she is. He doesn’t try to change her – he just meets her where she needs to be met and reminds her (whether through words or actions) that she’s enough as she is.
What do you hope readers take away from Harley and Seth’s relationship experiences and journey?
That your people are out there (I swear!) and they’ll want the very best for you in whatever form that might look like. They’ll accept you as you are, and they’ll also encourage you to take risks and try new things and challenge yourself from time to time, because they’ll be there to support you.
I hope readers find a little place in their hearts for Freddie, too. He’s a really interesting character to me, because he wasn’t ever supposed to be a one-sided villain. He’s just a boy, trying his best, struggling to work out exactly who he is, which is really hard to do at eighteen years old, especially when you’ve been in a four-year relationship. I don’t think his delivery is always the best but also … this is his first break-up! He’s trying! He’s learning! He’s definitely not a bad guy.
Please recommend a UKYA book you think readers will love.
OFFICIALLY LOSING IT*, by Rebecca Anderson – A warm, funny look at seventeen-year-old Rose’s failed attempt to have sex with her boyfriend for the first time and the journey she goes on (both medically and emotionally!) over the following year.
Thank you, Sophie!
*Affiliate link
#UKYASpotlight 
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