Laurie Gilmore

Laurie Gilmore is the pen name of American author Melissa McTernan, best known for the Dream Harbor series of cosy small-town contemporary romances. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and children, and came to writing relatively late — she began in 2019, while her children were at school, having previously worked as a stay-at-home mother. That unhurried start to her career gives little indication of how quickly things would accelerate.

Before the Laurie Gilmore name existed, she was writing under her real name, Melissa McTernan. Her debut novel under that name appeared in 2021, and in 2022 she won the Stiletto Award for Contemporary Romance (Short) for her novella Secret Family Recipes for Love and Butter Cookies. It was after signing a contract with HarperCollins for her Wolf Brothers romantasy series that the publisher approached her about writing a separate cosy romance — and the Laurie Gilmore pen name was born.

The first Dream Harbor novel, The Pumpkin Spice Café, was published in 2023. Set in the fictional New England small town of Dream Harbor — a setting consciously inspired by the warmth and eccentricity of the TV series Gilmore Girls' Stars Hollow — the book follows a city woman who inherits her aunt's beloved café and finds her life, and her heart, reshaped by small-town rhythms. The novel won the TikTok Shop Book of the Year award in 2024 and was featured on Good Morning America, announcing Gilmore as a significant new presence in popular romance fiction.

The series grew rapidly from there. The Cinnamon Bun Book Store followed in September 2024, and The Christmas Tree Farm arrived just a month later, in October. That back-to-back release strategy proved remarkably effective: both titles together sold 24,000 print copies within two weeks of The Christmas Tree Farm's launch, with that third book alone moving nearly 15,000 copies in its first week in the UK and debuting on the Sunday Times Bestsellers list. The fourth instalment, The Strawberry Patch Pancake House (2025), sold over 25,000 copies in the UK in its first three weeks — at the time of release, the third-highest single-week sales figure of the year for any non-World Book Day title. The Gingerbread Bakery, the fifth book, went even further, debuting at number one on both the New York Times paperback trade fiction list and the Sunday Times Bestsellers list. The sixth entry, The Daisy Chain Flower Shop, followed in May 2026.

Each book in the Dream Harbor series is self-contained but connected, centring on a different resident or newcomer to town. Gilmore's writing sits at the cosy end of contemporary romance while retaining a thread of genuine heat — she describes herself as aiming for the right balance of sweetness and spice. Recurring tropes across the series include grumpy-sunshine pairings, outsiders finding unexpected belonging, and the particular alchemy of small communities where everyone's business is everyone else's. The tone is warm and often gently funny, with a cast of supporting townsfolk who reappear across multiple books and give Dream Harbor a cumulative sense of place.

The series has been translated into 31 languages and has attracted tens of millions of video views across social media, fuelling its crossover from genre favourite to mainstream bestseller. Critical reception has been mixed: Publishers Weekly praised The Cinnamon Bun Book Store as a "charming break from reality", while reviewers at The Times took a more sceptical view of the formula. Reader enthusiasm, however, has remained consistently high.

Under the Melissa McTernan name, Gilmore also writes romantic fantasy. The Wolf Brothers series — a steam-forward romantasy with fairytale roots, beginning with A Curse of Blood and Wolves, published by One More Chapter (an imprint of HarperCollins) in September 2024 — marks her first full foray into the genre under that name. A sequel, A Curse of Fate and Wolves, is expected to follow. The two pen names allow her to move between the sunlit cosiness of Dream Harbor and darker, more fantastical territory without blurring the tonal expectations of either readership.