Sarah Hogle

Sarah Hogle is a contemporary romance author based in St. Louis, Missouri, whose writing career grew out of a lifelong love of storytelling. She wrote her first book at the age of five, and the creative impulse never left her. Now a mother of three, she balances family life with fiction, and her domestic chaos has a habit of bleeding pleasantly into her work.

Her debut novel, You Deserve Each Other, was published in 2020 and announced Hogle as a distinctive new voice in the genre. The premise alone signals her sensibility: an engaged couple wages a secret prank war against each other, each hoping the other will call off the wedding. It's a lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers setup executed with sharp comic timing and a real emotional core, the kind of book that gets recommended at book clubs precisely because readers recognise something true in it, however absurd the set-up.

Her sophomore novel, Twice Shy (2021), followed as an enemies-to-lovers story that earned praise for its warmth and for the deeply felt emotional arc at its centre. Reviewers noted it as an endearing, enchanting read, and it confirmed that Hogle's debut hadn't been a fluke. The humour was still present, but there was a tenderness to Twice Shy that showed her range.

Just Like Magic (2022) leaned further into the fanciful. A holiday romance with a supernatural twist, it drew comparisons to classic Christmas films while being thoroughly its own bonkers, affectionate thing. The premise involves a wish-granting entity and an elaborate family performance, and Hogle handles the comedy and the sentiment with equal conviction.

With Old Flames and New Fortunes (2024), Hogle launched the Moonville series, a connected sequence of books set in a magical small town in Ohio. The first entry follows a florist navigating a fake-dating scheme in a cosy, witchy setting. It marked a shift towards a more explicitly fantastical backdrop, though the recognisable Hogle hallmarks remain: big feelings, comedy that earns its laughs, and romance that actually believes in itself. The second Moonville book, The Folklore of Forever, followed in April 2025, continuing the series with an enemies-to-lovers ghost-hunting story.

Across her catalogue, Hogle's voice is immediately recognisable. Her characters are self-aware without being detached, and her plots often use playful absurdity as a way into something genuinely moving. She doesn't mistake sentimentality for depth, but she's also not afraid to be sincerely romantic. The pranks and the banter exist in service of the emotional stakes, not as a way to avoid them.

Hogle has spoken in her author biography about her dream of living in a probably-cursed castle in a forest, which tells you roughly everything you need to know about her aesthetic commitments. That combination of warmth and slightly gothic whimsy runs through her fiction. She's a writer who finds the funny and the sweet in the same moment, and her growing readership suggests that combination hits something real.