GENRE: New Adult Contemporary Romance
SUB-GENRES: Travel, Road Trip, Adventure, Crime
RELEASE: TBD
I find his hand and soon our fingers locked like they’re always meant to be. We’re ready to embrace the Parisian streets once again but more or less, I take it more as embracing the last hours of my freedom.
Two strangers, one fateful night, one unforgettable journey of a lifetime
Twenty-one-year-old budding architect Gianna “Gigi” Woodsen has spent her days working on blueprints and inhaling wood dust in her campus studio in Berlin. Everything seems perfect as she is enrolled in a prestigious, resume-boosting program in Berlin. Gigi, however, longs to become a writer but decides to keep it to herself, leading the random idea stories scribbled in her journal to remain untouched.
One fateful night, a mysterious email leads her to crossing paths with Claude Dupont, a French photographer. When Claude invites Gigi on a spontaneous trip to Paris, she sees it as a chance to escape from her monotonous life and seek an inspiration to write. When she only has four months in Europe before she returns to San Francisco, she knows it’s an offer she can’t refuse.
After missing their connecting train in Cologne, the two finds themselves on unlikely situations that prompt them to pull unthinkable acts, one after another. The journey has been nothing but a thrill ride, except, danger looms at every corner. Claude is also keeping a secret of his own that may have been the reasons behind those acts. But unveiling his true motivation to Gigi may put their bond to the test.
Wonderlust explores the dreams, the passions we hold within ourselves, trust and lies that build relationships, and courage that becomes the ultimate stories of our lives.
“Wonderlust is a quick trip across Europe with rich details that fuse together sunny coastal American cities with classic architecture of old Europe. The book conjures images of romance in bloom that taken for granted hide the fact the characters are on the run for their lives.” –
Laptiast.com. Beta Reader
Some additional info:
This book may be for you if you’re into:
- Stranger-to-enemies-to-lovers
- Whirlwind romance
- European setting
- Grumpy (girl) vs Sunshine (boy)
- Road trips
- Having a quarter life crisis
- Before Sunrise and Roman Holiday
Content Warnings:
Drugs
Sex
AlcoholMention of death
Featured
Read about the story of how I got longlisted here
Bonus Content
Teeth Doctor
A Wonderlust Short Story
Find out what happens to Claude Dupont in between the events in Wonderlust!
Trivia
Here are some fun facts about Wonderlust:
- Inspired from a time in college where I nearly went to Berlin for a graphic design program in 2014. I was accepted in the program but failed to go due to budget (it was sadly not subsidized). The story was conceived as a ‘what-if’ and was further fueled after seeing my pictures and hearing stories from classmates who did go, spending their free time from class in Berlin strolling around the city and roadtripping to neighboring cities and countries–Paris as one of them.
- Planned and plotted the draft on Google Doc with the working title “A European Adventure”
- Brainstormed it with the help of a longtime friend and fellow writer Griselda Puspa
- Worked on the first draft just short of a month after going back for-good to Indonesia from USA.
- San Francisco being Gigi’s hometown was ode to the last city I lived in USA before going back to Indonesia. The novel is a love letter to San Francisco
- The name Gigi was suggested by Griselda
- In the earlier drafts, Claude was named Marc or Matthieu
- Despite being first drafted in 2017, the story took place in 2014, to match with the year of the program I was supposed to take.
- I drafted it during my first time discovering European cinema, where I rigorously went to European film screenings and festivals. As time went by, Wonderlust began to take inspirations from those films, portraying European culture to its rawest and most authentic sense, straying away from the typical, overly-romanticized American gaze.
- In order to capture the setting in the most authentic, ultra-sensory way despite at the time of first drafting, not having been to Europe yet, I resorted to watching countless walking videos on Youtube and immersing in the atmopshere.
- Gigi was modeled after actress Zoey Deutch. Claude was not modeled after anyone.
- Wonderlust successfully convinced my dad to take me on a trip to Europe under the guise of research. I visited the cities and places where Wonderlust took place and took the trains taken by the leads. The research I did for writing the draft did help navigate us around in real life.
- It was supposed to be a pure stranger-to-lovers story through and through, but was then repurposed to add some mystery, action, crime, and espionage as secondary elements to avoid it being too similar to stories/themes of strangers-meeting-and-falling-in-love-in-Europe such as Just One Day or Before Sunrise.
- Inspired by Lady and the Tramp, Pierrot le Fou by Jean Luc Godard, French New Wave films, and The Roman Holiday.
- Longlisted for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2020
Carissa Tandiono 