I’m not what I would call a “Music Person” (and my Spotify Wrapped is remarkably consistent year after year), but building a playlist is one of my integral drafting rituals. Here are five of the songs from my CUT TO THE ENDING playlist that, to me, are part of the bedrock of the book.
The Man, Taylor Swift
From the very earliest stages of conceptualizing Delaney’s character, I knew she was going to be an ambitious “black cat” heroine who was very aware of the impossible balancing act that it is being a career-driven woman (especially in an industry like entertainment where support staff are expected to “pay their dues” in thankless jobs with long hours and insufficient pay) who also has a life outside of her job. Songs like “The Man” are a cornerstone of Delaney’s character to me (shoutout to runner-up for this list “The Archer” for the same reason) for the way they reckon with the double standard assigned to women who are seen as “too ambitious” while their male counterparts are not only allowed to want to have it all but celebrated for it.
marjorie, Taylor Swift
When I started writing CUT TO THE ENDING, I didn’t set out to write a book that is, at least in part, about processing grief, but it became an important tie-line between Max and Lee, Delaney’s boss, both of whom are dealing with the ripple effects of losing someone important to them. One of my favorite things about Taylor’s songwriting is how viscerally she writes about the people who are no longer with us and how their fingerprints linger on our lives long after they’ve left us. Though Max’s dad and Lee’s brother never physically appear on the page, they’re very much still present through Max and Lee and the various ways they shaped their still-living relatives’ relationships to Magician’s Gambit as they both find their way back to it over the course of the book.
Long Live, Taylor Swift
(Are we sensing a pattern?)
CUT TO THE ENDING started as a very self-indulgent passion project so I could cram in a bunch of my favorite things, which is how I wound up creating Magician’s Gambit, the graphic novel series turned film franchise that made Lee famous and that Delaney agrees to write the finale to. What it means to have a legacy as an artist and be the creator of a piece of media that sparked such a fandom that now has sky-high expectations is a big theme of CUT TO THE ENDING, so “Long Live” and its themes of almost melancholy pride of looking back on how far you’ve come has always felt like one of the book’s core theses.
Happy Not Knowing, Carly Rae Jepsen
At the beginning of the book, Delaney is very committed to remaining romantically unattached, in part because she’s happier on her own, but also because she believes that she would either need to sacrifice a relationship for her career or vice versa. When she starts to spend more time with Max, it becomes clear fairly quickly that he is going to be a Problem, but she’s still determined to ignore her extremely inconvenient feelings. I like to think of this as her “sticking my head in the sand and pretending I do not see it even though I know there’s something there” song for the way it touches on knowing there could be something there, but choosing to pursue it will only end in heartbreak (or so she thinks!).
Love You for a Long Time, Maggie Rogers
I love the inevitability of a “we were soulmates from the jump” romance as much as the next girl, but I’ve always been especially drawn to characters who have to fight for their happily ever after. There’s something beautifully hard won about two characters who could pick the “easier” way out and walk away from each other instead choosing to dig their heels in and saying, no, this is my person and I’m willing to do whatever I need to, including grapple with my own insecurities, to not just keep them, but earn them. When Max and Delaney first meet and start feeling that spark of maybe, they both have a pre-conceived notion of why they aren’t relationship material, and though there may be some inevitability to their relationship (they are romance novel characters, after all), they’re both still faced with a moment when they have to choose between the safety of falling back on old patterns or making the active choice to pick each other. I’ve always loved this song for the way it puts that agency of actively choosing the person you love over and over again into words.
CUT TO THE ENDING by Maria Millage
A deliciously swoony Hollywood romcom about an aspiring screenwriter who gets the opportunity to write the finale of a megahit fantasy franchise, and the nerdy—but annoyingly hot—assistant she teams up with to teach her the series’ canon, for readers of How to End a Love Story and Book Lovers.
Delaney Webber knows the price of Hollywood success: long hours, a caffeine addiction, and sacrificing any semblance of a personal life. But a year after a misogynistic producer torpedoed her screenwriting career, she’s stuck running errands for her eccentric boss-slash-mentor. When he offers her the chance to finish the fantasy franchise that made him a household name—Magician’s Gambit—she jumps at the opportunity to get her career back on track. There’s just one problem: she’s never seen it.
Not-quite-reformed nerd Max Sullivan is one Slack notification away from a mental breakdown. As the assistant to one of LA’s most powerful (and terrifying) talent managers, he’s Living the Dream—aka barely keeping his anxiety in check while juggling hyper-specific coffee orders and overinflated egos. But it’s worth it for the opportunity to one day make the kind of movies his dad raised him on, movies like Magician’s Gambit.
It’s the perfect match to save both their careers. Max needs his big break; Delaney needs someone to teach her the difference between an orc and a hobbit. But as their Magician’s Gambit lessons turn strictly unprofessional and their electric chemistry becomes impossible to ignore, they must decide if their future is worth fighting for, or if it’s time to roll the credits.
Romance Comedy [ Little Brown and Company, On Sale: November 3, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780316605977 / eISBN: 9780316605991 ]
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About Maria Millage
Maria first started writing in college-ruled notebooks when she was supposed to be paying attention in middle school science class. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, she studied Writing for Film and Television at Emerson College before landing in Los Angeles where she works in the entertainment industry and owns too many jackets she never gets to wear. When she’s not writing or stuck in traffic on the 101, she can usually be found buried in a good book or catering to the whims of her cat.
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