All this month the Fierce Reads team has been reading Aminah Mae Safi's novel, Tell Me How You Really Feel. We're so grateful that we made that choice. Between the tension-building swoon moments, the movie references, and the Los Angeles setting, we love it all! If you love rom-coms, and enemies to lovers and haven't stopped what you're doing to start reading Tell Me How You Really Feel, here's Aminah Mae Safi with her inspiration and favorite romance trope if you need more convincing.

What was the inspiration behind Tell Me How You Really Feel?

Tell Me How You Really Feel began as my love letter to rom-coms. I wanted to write a classic romantic comedy— the cheesy, over the top kind that hits all of the traditional beats and tropes— with two girls who fall in love. I wanted girls who fall in love with girls to have what everyone else has. That is to say— over the top, bananas stories about love. That was the core of where I started. I'd grown up watching so many teen rom-coms and wondering why the girls didn't end up together. Bend It Like Beckham is one example. Bring It On is another. The entirety of the Paris/Rory relationship on Gilmore Girls is probably the most iconic.

I watched a lot of old romantic comedies while I was writing this book. Old school classics like Say Anything and Pretty in Pink. Movies from my own teen dome like 10 Things I Hate About You. The entire run of Gilmore Girls. It shouldn't surprise you, then, that Tell Me How You Really Feel is as much about a love of movies as it is about a love of love (and love stories). Movies have always been magic to me, and I gave that love of storytelling magic to Rachel when I wrote her.

As for Sana, I gave her my restlessness. My need to be in motion, and, for better or for worse, my need to be in control. I gave Rachel and Sana these loves of mine and then got to watch them fall in love as I wrote. Even as the author, it was a delight to witness this love story unfold. I hope you experience that delight as you read.

What is your favorite romance, trope and is there a book you would recommend to read?

My favorite romance trope of all time, has to be enemies to lovers. I'd like to take the high brow approach and blame Shakespeare and watching Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing at a terribly formative age. Once sewn into that childhood framework of love, I could not be unmade.

But I also loved old movies. And smart, take-charge women who stood up for what they believed and who fought for what was right— those women were always the leads in enemies to lovers romances. Katherine Hepburn. Rosalind Russel. Jane Russel. So, perhaps what I really loved was watching smart women with ambitions not have to blunt themselves in order to find love.

Pride and Prejudice is probably one of the best known and best-loved versions of this. But if you like stories about female friendship— Melina Marchetta's Saving Francesca has a wonderful enemies to lovers b-plotline that really makes the book hum.