Ideas strike in unlikely places. For local author Ellen O’Clover, it was at a John Mayer concert.
“He performed a cover of Tom Petty’s song ‘Free Fallin’,’ which I’ve heard a million times before,” she recalls. “For some reason, as I was watching this show and him perform it live, that lyric, ‘all the bad boys are standing in the shadows and the good girls are home with broken hearts’ just struck me differently than it ever had before.”
She imagined what it might be like if all of the broken-hearted girls were under one roof, healing together. Then, she started writing The Heartbreak Hotel.
The new novel follows Louisa, a woman in her mid-20s, who lives with her college sweetheart and famous musician, Nate, in a stunning house in Estes Park. That is, until Nate cheats on her and they break up. Determined to remain in her home but unable to afford rent, Louisa makes a deal with her landlord, Henry, to convert the house into a bed-and-breakfast in exchange for free lodging. Louisa turns the cozy space into the Comeback Inn, a place for the broken-hearted to heal together. She and Henry spend more time together now that he’s her boss, and sparks begin to fly.
“I love the idea of a love story that’s based on heartbreak,” O’Clover says. “I think that pain and love are so closely related to each other.”
The author grew up in Ohio and attended Johns Hopkins University for creative writing before moving to Colorado in 2017. She now lives near Boulder and kicked off her book tour across the state at the Boulder Bookstore on September 22 — the day before The Heartbreak Hotel released. She will travel to bookshops and breweries across Colorado through October.
O’Clover previously wrote two young adult novels before venturing into adult romance. Her debut, Seven Percent of Ro Devereux, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and Florida’s Sunshine State Young Readers Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by The Bank Street Center for Children’s Education.
“I think it’s such a privilege to write for young people, and I love writing YA, but I always knew I wanted to branch out into romance,” says O’Clover. “When I’m reading or watching movies or experiencing art of any kind, I feel like I’m always looking to have an emotional reaction. When we’re in a romantic relationship, it requires us to be so vulnerable and to really face who we are, who we want to be to the people in our lives, what kind of people make us feel seen. It’s like this shortcut to all the things I love reading about the most, that kind of emotional intimacy.”
In The Heartbreak Hotel, Louisa is training to be a therapist, so she knows how to comfort and take care of other people. She helps her guests heal, but she needs someone to be there for her, too.
Enter Henry.
“He’s this very reliable, steady person. He’s a big acts of service guy, and Louisa has never really had that before, so he keeps just showing up when she needs him,” says O’Clover. “It’s one of the first times in her life that she experiences romantic love, where she has this really reliable partner who just wants to be there for her and wants to care for her and doesn’t necessarily expect anything in return.”
Henry is also grieving a loss and doesn’t like to share his feelings. However, Louisa becomes someone he can trust and confide in.
“So they push each other. They challenge each other, but they also show up for each other in these ways that are so meaningful to them because of the pain that they’re both dealing with,” says O’Clover.
The Heartbreak Hotel also features quirky side characters who stay at the bed-and-breakfast. There’s Nan, an older woman dealing with the loss of her husband, who becomes a maternal figure to Louisa, and Rashad, a younger man who recently went through a breakup with his boyfriend.
“He’s just funny, like he’s hurting, but one of his coping mechanisms is humor, which I think a lot of us resort to. He was really fun to write because he is also kind of bracingly honest, and he is one of the first characters in the book to be like, ‘But like Louisa, are you okay? Like, I think we can all see that you’re also going through something; you’re not hiding it very well,’” says O’Clover. “So he’s that necessary force that gives her a little kick in the pants to be like, ‘Okay, wait, am I just masking my own pain and focusing on everyone else?’”
The novel is set in Estes Park, where O’Clover’s parents live. When she imagined a comforting setting for a story about healing, it was her first choice.
“A lot of this book is really about, ‘What are the places in our lives that make us feel safe and feel held?’ And they aren’t always places, often they’re people, and the book is about that, too,” she says. “But for me, Estes Park really is one of those places. It always calms my nervous system to be there.”
Louisa and Henry are stuck between the push and pull of beautiful and heartbreaking memories living within physical spaces. O’Clover says Louisa wraps her identity within her house, until she realizes that there is so much more to her than that place.
“Home is so important, but it’s not as important as the home that we make in ourselves and with the people that we love and who love us in return,” concludes O’Clover.