Exclusive

Dive Into Christina Lauren’s ‘The Romance Revival’ With This Exclusive Excerpt

Christina Lauren’s latest book was nearly titled The Necromantics. In the end, publishers thought readers would mistake it for a dark romance, so they went with The Romance Revival instead. Though its sci-fi premise does take it into darker territory — a wife brings her husband back to life, and he loses his memories — coauthors Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings made sure that The Romance Revival is just as swoonworthy as the rest of their catalog.

It’s not the first time that the authors, who’ve penned nearly three dozen romance novels together, have set up a love story with fantastical elements. The Romance Revival is similar to 2021’s The Soulmate Equation. “We have these premises that sometimes feel a little bit bigger and more cinematical and stuff, but at the core of it, it’s the romance. It’s that they do love each other, but they have to learn how to love each other the way that they should love each other, and they have to choose each other again,” Hobbs told Swooon ahead of The Romance Revival’s July 14 release date.

Emery has a top-secret job creating resurrection technology. She’s so dedicated to changing the world that her relationship with her landscaper husband, Luca, suffers. Luca is completely in the dark about his wife’s line of work and can’t understand why she’s missing dinners and forgetting anniversaries.

When a tragic accident takes Luca from her, Emery uses her work to bring him back to life. He’s her first human patient. “She shouldn’t have done it, but she does, and he doesn’t remember her or anything about their life,” Billings explained. “So he’s getting his memory back, he’s realizing that she actually wasn’t the best partner, and she’s realizing it at the same time and trying to do right by him the second time around.”

Of course, the book doesn’t immediately jump into Luca’s death and resurrection. Luca and Emery meet at a Las Vegas wedding, leading to a steamy one night stand and a fast fall for both of them. Their wedding arrives only a short while later. “It’s kind of cool that they had this whirlwind thing, but they have to fall in love again and really choose each other, because it would be really easy to just be like, ‘No, I’m done,’ and each recognize the places where they fell short in the beginning and how they got to where they are,” said Hobbs.

Rest assured, The Romance Revival sees them rediscover the things that they’d loved about each other in the beginning. Readers also learn why their marriage got to its lowest point in the first place. “Emery had a rough childhood, and the reason she does the things that she does is because her parents died when she was younger,” Hobbs explained. “She wanted to stop anybody from ever having to go through that again, and so she has to really be honest and vulnerable and own up to all of the mistakes that she made.”

Emery’s not the only one at fault for their declining marriage. Luca realizes he has some things to work on, too. “He likes to keep the peace, and he recognizes that about himself and that he also needs to be able to confront and have those hard talks,” Billings said. “So it’s kind of nice seeing them just grow up. You see them grow up a little bit in this second piece of it, and I think for a romance reader it should be, we hope, really satisfying because they need to become healthy and communicate to have their happily ever after.” Check out an exclusive excerpt of The Romance Revival below.

Exclusive excerpt of The Romance Revival Chapter 9: 

The two women exchange looks, and tears well in the red-rimmed eyes closest to me. She blinks quickly like she doesn’t want me to see.

“My name is Emery. I’ll explain everything in a minute.” Her voice is calming, almost enough to douse the spark of panic taking shape in my chest. “But I need you to answer a few questions first, okay?”

“Were you calling me Luca?”

Another look passes between them.

“You don’t remember your name?” the other woman asks, worried. She’s a little younger than the one named Emery, I think, with hair that’s gold in some light, then more strawberry when she turns the other way. Her eyes are blue, her skin so pale she looks like she might burn just thinking too hard about the sun.

“Of course I know my name, it’s —” The answer is right there on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to grasp anything after Luca. “My name . . .”

“Do you know what day it is?” Emery asks.

Again, the answer is there but it’s like my brain is a sieve, and the word keeps draining out the bottom. “No.”

“Do you remember anything that happened today?” she asks.

I try to think back but can’t find anything. Everything behind me is blankness. My head is a black hole. The spark of panic swells, and the sound of beeping intensifies. Emery leans in and touches my arm. Her skin is as warm as it looks, and the contact calms me.

She takes my hand and squeezes and the sensation turns painful — overwhelming, too much stimulation. It must show on my face, because she immediately releases it. “Sorry. Sorry.” She glances at the other woman, who nods at her. “You were hurt,” Emery tells me. “But you’re okay now. You’re safe here. Just breathe, slow — good. Yes.”

“I’m freaking out,” I whisper.

“A normal reaction considering the circumstances.”

“I’m Luca?”

“Yes. Luca Tómas Martín.”

“And you’re Emery?”

She nods.

“Nice to meet you, I think.”

She laughs, a watery sound, and her eyes fill with tears again.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She presses a hand to her chest. “Me?”

“You’ve been crying.”

“We were worried about you.”

“What’s her name?” I ask, nodding to the other woman.

“That’s Annabella. We call her Annie.”

“And I know you both?”

Emery glances at Annie, who steps forward. “Yes, you know us both,” she says. “You had an accident. You just came back.”

“Came back —?” She nods. “Where was I?”

They exchange another look, and my surroundings penetrate the fog of confusion. I’m in a machine. I’m in a sterile, clinical space. There’s still a sharp, medicinal scent to the air, but there’s something else now, too. Roses and coffee, maybe.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you,” Annie says, and I try to focus on the conversation. How can my head be loud and so quiet at the same time?

I try to sit up. “Overwhelm me? Just tell me everything. I don’t know anything. I can’t remember —”

“Breathe,” Emery reminds me, sending her fingers through my hair. It feels good but unsettling. It’s a familiarity I don’t feel; I’m restless in this body.

Emery presses a button on the machine, and the platform shifts so that I’m sitting up. Blood rushes down my neck into my chest, hot and liquid. I can see the rest of the room now. It isn’t a hospital, but I was right. It feels like one. There’s an IV cart. A counter with medical supplies.

But, also, another counter with machines and flasks and racks of tubes and syringes. Like in a laboratory.

“Are you in pain?” Emery asks, and I pull my attention away from my surroundings and back to her face.

Her eyes are mesmerizing, yes, but I see now that she also has beautiful skin: creamy and unmarred, with a dusting of freckles.

I shift my position, adjusting the blanket over my lap, and suck in a breath. “Aside from feeling like I was hit by a car and my right leg is on fire . . . yeah, I’m not great. What happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Emery asks.

I try to pluck the answer from my head but come up empty, nothing but a black tunnel in my mind.

“Nothing.” I close my eyes, thinking, trying to imagine a house, a car, a pet, a life. “No. Nothing.”

Annie steps forward. “The simple answer is that you feel like you’ve been hit by a car because you were.”

“I was hit by a car?” I’ve never been in an accident before. I’ve never even broken a bone. I don’t know where that certainty comes from; it’s the first thing I’ve felt sure about since I woke up. Is that what I did? Was I sleeping? “Who hit me? Was I in a car, too?”

“We don’t know who the driver was,” Annie says. “They drove off. And no, you weren’t driving. You were crossing the street.”

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“They drove off?” I try to imagine doing that to someone. It doesn’t seem possible. “Did they do it on purpose?”

“It didn’t feel targeted,” Emery says quietly. “It was dark, and you were out for a run. They were speeding down the street and probably didn’t see you. Nobody would want to hurt you. You’re everyone’s favorite person.”

“I definitely like you more than I like Emery right now,” Annie says.

But what Emery said doesn’t make any sense. “The police don’t have a suspect?”

Annie looks sardonically over at Emery, and a beat of silence passes between the two women. “The police weren’t notified,” Annie tells me, still looking at Emery.

“I don’t understand,” I say, growing frustrated. “Why aren’t the police involved in a hit-and-run? Who found me, then? And I swear to God, if you two have one more silent conversation I’m going to pull these monitors off and get the f**k out of here.”

Not that I would have any clue where to go.

“I did,” Emery says finally. “I found you.”

My eyes narrow, suspicion sparking in the back of my brain. “Where?”

“I was waiting for you at home —” She shakes her head, swallowing back more tears. “Not at home, by our home. At the end of our street. I saw the accident and ran over, and you’d lost so much blood.” The tears spill over her cheeks, and I frown, my head spinning.

“Our home?” I ask, my voice trembling. “What do you mean, ‘our home’?”

“My name is Emery Martín.”

“Martín,” I repeat.

“Yeah,” she says, her smile wobbly. “I’m your wife.”

From The Romance Revival. Published by arrangement with Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LCC. Copyright © 2026 by Christina Lauren.