Lillie Vale discusses her adult debut The Shaadi Set-Up- which comes out on September 7 - and tells us a fun fact about herself that fed into her novel.

Tell us about your novel.

The Shaadi Set-Up is a slow burn exes-to-lovers second-chance romance between furniture restorer Rita Chitniss and her high school sweetheart, Milan Rao, who also happens to be the boy who broke her heart quite spectacularly six years ago. Things aren’t perfect with her current boyfriend Neil, but they’re good enough for right now.

However, when her mother sets her up with real estate agent Milan, volunteering her interior design skills to help him sell a difficult listing, Rita rashly comes up with a set-up of her own: sign herself and Neil up on MyShaadi, a reputable Indian matchmaking site, to convince everyone just how over Milan she truly is (hint: she’s not). As soon as she gets the validation she needs, she can rub her perfect match in Milan’s face. Instead, MyShaadi matches Rita with the last person she ever expected—her ex!

As the former golden couple Milan and Rita are forced into a professional partnership, Rita is forced to reevaluate what really happened all those years ago to split them up, her mother’s motivations in setting them up, and whether broken things can ever really be fixed. And as one house turns to two, she has to wonder… Maybe MyShaadi got her perfect match right, after all.

There are plenty of tropes to enjoy in The Shaadi Set-Up, but some of my absolute favorites are: second chances, forced proximity, slow burn, and first love. Plus two adorable dogs (a Yorkie–Jack Russel terrier mix and a French bulldog!), a couple playing house, and food as a love language! AND SO MUCH YEARNING.

What inspired your novel?

Oh my gosh, I love telling the conception story of my book! So this is what happened: My mom asked me if I’d ever thought about joining Tinder. My brain took an innocuous question and ran with it!

I made an off-the-cuff comment along the lines of "Imagine if two Desi kids met on Tinder, had sex on the first date, and then made the calamitous discovery that they wanted to continue seeing each other? Imagine explaining to your folks how you met!!! They’d have to come up with some elaborate backstory...OMG what if they joined a matrimonial site like shaadi.com (a real website) to fake their 'first meeting' for their parents' sake?!?!”

Ten seconds later I realized I’d just come up with the plot of a book I was desperate to read. Who were these characters? What mistakes would they make, despite their best intentions? So then, of course, I had to write it!

What are you currently working on?

I have a Young Adult novel called Beauty and the Besharam coming out with Viking Children’s in summer 2022. It’s a friends-to-rivals-to-lovers summer workplace rom-com inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, where a slightly curmudgeonly teen girl known for being besharam (shameless) falls for her rival. For my pet lovers out there, this one has an adorable golden retriever and a teddy bear hamster!

I’m also working on my next Adult novel with Putnam that comes out fall 2022, The Decoy Girlfriend, where an author is caught impersonating her movie star lookalike and is blackmailed into taking her place, including dating the actress’ sexy co-star boyfriend. And if all that juiciness didn’t sell you on this book, it also has a German wirehaired pointer!

What do you hope readers take away from your debut?

If readers take anything away from my book, I’m thrilled with whatever resonated most with them. But for me, what I took away is what’s at the heart of all second-chance romance... The hope that the future can still be different.

How many of us always get love right the first time around? No matter what age you are, there’s an infinite number of ways to mess up a relationship. Sometimes it’s ships in the night, sometimes it’s the right person at the wrong time. Luckily, there are also a number of ways to reconnect again. A second chance means it’s never The End. We get another shot, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get it right this time.

Tell us about yourself.

I can talk about my books all day long, but why is it whenever I’m asked about myself, I blank? Haha! Well, I live in Indiana, which means I’m surrounded by sprawling farmland, spooky autumn corn, beautiful horses, front-yard chickens, and super dense woods, but my heart is always yearning for the seaside, so I gravitate toward fictional beach/lake/river towns set in summer. I’m three out of four so far, lol! I think every season has its own particular magic, so it’s my hope to publish a book in the other three seasons soon!

I’m interested in a lot of things, but I’m not necessarily patient enough to become an expert! I’m not a hugely craftsy person, but I love interior design and played a lot of Sims growing up. For me, half the fun of the computer game was in the architecture and design of making houses for my Sims to live in! My parents also collect antiques, and some of my best childhood memories are accompanying them to antique stores and flea markets.

While I wish I knew more than rudimentary woodworking, it was a no-brainer to give Rita this skill. I love the HGTV show Flea Market Flip, and in the early months of the pandemic I binged season after season. So by the time I wrote The Shaadi Set-Up in summer, I was really inspired by the transformation of upcycling something unloved into a gorgeous new piece, and this really inspired Rita’s job as a furniture restorer and interior designer.

I think you can really get a sense for my perennial faves (Pets! Nature! Food! I love to cook, so all my books are unapologetically foodie!) and what I’m currently enjoying because these things find their way into my books!

Buy The Shaadi Set-Up

About Lillie

Lillie Vale is the author of the young adult novels Small Town Hearts and Beauty and the Besharam (forthcoming from Viking Children’s). She writes about secrets and yearning, complicated and ambitious girls who know what they want, the places we call home and people we find our way back to, and the magic we make. Born in Mumbai, she grew up in Mississippi, Texas, and North Dakota, and now lives in an Indiana college town. The Shaadi Set-Up is her debut adult romantic comedy.

Connect with Lillie on Twitter.