Music made me a writer – the wordplay, the explosion of feelings, the pure artistry of it all. Songs do so much in so little time, and as a creator myself, I’m forever indebted to music that inspires my work, my characters, and how I think about the world.
My new novel, TROPESICK, is a multi-layered love story about the power of storytelling and the magic of forgiveness. Here are five songs that’ll forever remind me of Katie and Tyler’s impossibly complicated second-chance romance.
When You Were Young, The Killers
TROPESICK is a story about two childhood neighbors: sparkly Kate, the girl next door, and broody Tyler, her brother’s best friend. They had a chance to get their love story right the first time, as teenagers, but Tyler’s angst and battle with drug addiction made that impossible. Told through two timelines, TROPESICK shows these life-altering decisions being made in real time, then re-examines them through the lens of present day, when the characters are adults.
To me, this song just feels like Tyler. It’s loud, it’s messy, it’s full of regret, and it so pathetically identifies a single girl as the permanent center of his universe that it hurts.
Name, Goo Goo Dolls
Another sad banger! I used to listen to this song all the time when I was a kid, before I knew anything about anything, and I’d feel so deeply I thought I might shatter into a million pieces. This is a song about two people being completely, irreversibly imprinted on each other. There’s this sense, when I listen to this song, that there’s one single person on this earth who’s always known us, and who’s always going to know us.
That’s Tyler to Katie, and that’s Katie to Tyler. All the heartbreak, the trauma, the years of estrangement – it couldn’t ever stop them from loving each other. They’re soulmates, and at the end of the day, they’re always going to be one another’s home.
Never Let You Go, Third Eye Blind
Another nostalgic one! In TROPESICK, Tyler often talks and thinks about letting Katie go. It comes up in interior monologue, in flashbacks, in pangs of regret, even in a late-night walkie-talkie sex scene. (If you know, you know.) I think this song really matches the heart of the novel itself: the themes are serious, but it’s still a bop!
Konstantine, Something Corporate
Yeah, I know. This song hurts. And while Tyler is too young to have been emo in the early 2000s, I wasn’t. This is a very sad song about a boy who is so mind-blowingly in love with a girl – and who can’t help but break her. Even as he abandons her, he knows he’ll spend the rest of his life replaying the decision, wishing things had been different. Wishing he’d been the sort of man who could love someone all the way.
So, yeah. It’s brutal. And it’s so, so them.
Suburban Legends, Taylor Swift
And finally, this vault track by Taylor Swift that is so incredibly Katie-and-Tyler coded, I used it for my cover reveal! This idea that Katie has always been waiting for Tyler – that she knew, somehow, he’d come back to her and love her the right way . . . it’s so unbelievably earnest and bubbly and romantic.
This song drips with triumph – you can hear it in the way it amplifies and builds, as if Taylor (and Katie!) knew the story had a happy ending the whole time. And my god, that lyric about the kiss that screws her up forever? That’s in the book, too.
TROPESICK by Lauren Okie
In this lush, slow-burning romance, two childhood neighbors, connected by a shared tragedy, unexpectedly reunite to ghostwrite a love story for a reclusive author. Spending the summer at her secluded Hamptons estate, they soon discover that dozens of classic romance tropes, including the ones they’re crafting on page, are mysteriously playing out in real life.
Katie Caruso is a completely normal twenty-five-year-old girl. At least, for the past eight years, she’s tried to be. She likes glitter and sequins and flirting with cute boys at New York City bars. She’s also a ghostwriter for Meredith Bradford, the bestselling romance novelist of all time. But then Tyler McNally walks back into Katie’s life, and that bedazzled facade crumbles at her platform-sneakered feet.
Katie and Tyler haven’t seen or spoken to each other since the overdose death of Katie’s older brother, a standout MLB pitching prospect. Tyler was her brother’s best friend, and Katie—naturally—was the girl next door. But now, Tyler is a sleeve-tattooed, Ivy League–educated aspiring literary fiction novelist, nine years sober . . . and Katie’s writing partner for the summer.
As genre conventions require, Katie and Tyler soon find themselves removed from Manhattan and instead writing their love story in “forced proximity” at Meredith’s isolated Southampton home. As the summer unfolds, the tropes Katie and Tyler have written into their novel begin to play out in their own lives. Call it destiny, fate, or magic itself: it’s clear their love story isn’t finished. This time, though, they’ll work through the pain that tore them apart—and fight for their happy ending.
Heart-wrenching and tender, Tropesick is a love letter to the romance genre. With a wink and a nod, Okie has packed the novel with readers’ favorite tropes:
- Grumpy/Sunshine
- Brother’s best friend
- Girl next door
- Forced proximity
- Forbidden love
- Kissing in the rain
- Groveling hero
- Second-chance romance
- Slow burn
- Only one bed
Romance Comedy | Romance [ Avon, On Sale: June 16, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780063479616 / eISBN: 9780063479609 ]
Buy TROPESICK: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Libro.fm | Audible | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Lauren Okie
Lauren Okie studied English and American Literature at New York University. When she’s not mining old traumas or blocking sex scenes on the backs of grocery lists, Lauren works as a copywriter. Originally from Miami, she lives with her husband and daughter in the Los Angeles area.
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