Exclusive Interview
Joss Richard Tells All About Her Sexy Sophomore Romance ‘Let’s Kiss & Tell’
What To Know
- Joss Richard’s second novel, Let’s Kiss and Tell, was released on August 11.
- The book follows sex columnist Lucy Reid and writer Marsh Oakley’s steamy fake-dating romance.
- Richard spoke with Swooon about upping the spice from her first book, drawing inspiration from rom-coms like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and more.
Joss Richard burst onto the romance novel scene with her 2025 second-chance love story, It’s Different This Time. A year later, she’s back with her second novel, Let’s Kiss and Tell.
The author leaves behind Adam and June’s Perry Street brownstone in New York City for a newsroom in Los Angeles. Lucy Reid is a sex columnist (a Carrie Bradshaw for 2026), and Marshall “Marsh” Oakley is a new senior writer in Lucy’s office. When Lucy needs inspiration for her column and Marsh needs a date to a wedding, they start fake-dating. But the act quickly turns very real and very steamy.
“The second book was so much harder. It’s not even funny,” Richard said of Let’s Kiss and Tell. “I got my edit notes the day before I left on tour for my debut, so it was me simultaneously meeting people for the very first time, like meeting readers and them saying how much they love It’s Different This Time, and then I would have to get back to the hotel and then write about this couple that wasn’t from my debut novel. It was really, really hard because I feel like everyone loved June and Adam, and I had to write these characters that aren’t Jude and Adam, so I kind of got in my head of thinking, are people gonna like these new characters?”
Paramount / Everett Collection
From the jump, the author knew she didn’t want to tell the same type of romance. “I wanted my second book to be something different, just something more fun, sexier,” she told Swooon. “I feel like It’s Different This Time was this big, sweeping romance, and Let’s Kiss and Tell is more… It still has the same heart, but it’s more fun. I just thought of all the rom-coms that I love, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is my favorite rom-com. And I thought, okay, why do I love How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? And I love the sort of workplace romance. I love the power imbalance. I love the fake dating. So it’s very much inspired by How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”
Richard did quite a bit of research, interviewing sex columnists and those working in the OnlyFans community. “I just really, really wanted to make sure that I got the tone right, and I wanted to paint everyone in a very honest but positive light,” she said. “I really wanted this story to celebrate women’s autonomy, be sex positive, so I wanted to make sure that I was doing that in the most honest way I could.”
One thing that’s very different about Let’s Kiss and Tell? The amount of spice. Understandably, there are more sex scenes in Let’s Kiss and Tell than in her debut novel.
“[Lucy’s] a sex columnist, so I knew going into it that we were gonna have a lot of sex on the page, just not even just in the bedroom or in the car, but like just talking about sex,” Richard explained. “I second-guessed a lot of it halfway through writing because it was so much spicier. And this is the thing where I have to learn to write for myself and my readers because I was writing it and thinking, oh my gosh, this is so much more spicier than my debut. People aren’t gonna like this, but I was like, okay, I can’t write something for readers necessarily. I have to write for myself and the truest story to me. So yeah, a lot of sex on the page. I had fun doing it.”
Watch the full video above to get more inside scoop about Joss Richard’s Let’s Kiss and Tell. The novel is available in bookstores now.
