Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:
📚 Your invitation to the Ideal Life Virtual Book Launch Party + discussion questions
💛 Free RSVP & Zoom link
✍🏼 Autographed Copies + Special Gift: where to get them
💕 Evelyn
📚 You’re Invited: Ideal Life Virtual Book Launch Party!
We are so excited to invite everyone to the Virtual Launch Party for IDEAL LIFE in August!
Usually, our “Reading with Wonder” Book Club is for paid subscribers, but we’re flinging open the doors on August 23rd for everyone, for free.
JOIN US ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 23rd:
If you’ve ever wondered what our Book Club is like
Or you just want to celebrate with Evelyn!
Ideal Life by Evelyn Skye
In New York Times bestselling author Evelyn Skye’s warmhearted and lightly magical novel, an opportunity to turn back time gives a scientist the chance to pursue her ideal life, only to realize it might keep her from truly living. Perfect for fans of Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Virtual Party Date:
Sunday, August 23, 2026
8pm ET / 5pm PT
💬 During the book talk, we’ll chat about:
Ideal Life opens with a watch that can turn back 24 hours, allowing Talia to redo anything, as many times as she wants.
If you could redo something in the past 24 hours, what would it be?
How does a literary device like the rewindable watch shape a story’s plot and deepen the characters?
Where do authors get ideas? Evelyn first thought of Ideal Life when she looked at all her friends and saw how they were stuck in never-ending cycles of self-improvement and life optimization.
But how do you know when an idea is big enough to support an entire book (vs a Substack essay, for example)?
Also: the inspiration behind Sam’s lighthouse that he converts into a bookstore
Traditionally published books usually take 2 years from book deal to publication. That means authors must finish the final draft long before it’s released into the world.
How can authors stay ahead of pop culture—or in the case of Ideal Life, rapidly evolving technology—when they don’t know what will be relevant two years in the future?
If you could have an Ideal Life “Friend” like Queen Elizabeth, what or who would yours be and why?
In Ideal Life, Talia invents an AI-related technology to help people but then faces a dilemma on how to bring it into a world where profits sometimes override other human priorities.
Why did Evelyn choose to write about startups and Silicon Valley?
How can authors ask big questions and investigate different perspectives while also letting readers come to their own conclusions? Does this conflict with market demands for closure in stories?
Character cameos
Evelyn loves to drop in character cameos from her past novels into her latest book as Easter eggs to delight her most loyal readers. Which past character has a cameo in Ideal Life? Why does this work as a gift for fans of a writer’s work?
Audience Q&A
Since this book club meeting is also a virtual launch party, we will have time for questions from you!
💬 During the Mini Creativity Coaching portion, we will talk about:
Optimization is the act of adjusting a system or decision to make it as effective, functional, and efficient as possible. What areas of life do we optimize?
Ironically, over-optimization makes things less functional and efficient. How do we notice this tendency to over-optimize in our lives? How can we increase our awareness and acceptance of good enough in these situations?
How does effective and efficient fit in with the rest of our values?
We think this is going to be a wonderful conversation!
✨ Introverts welcome: Cameras on or off. Your presence is enough.
Handmade Bookmarks + Autographed Copies of Ideal Life
Available for pre-order now at Fireside Books in Redwood City, CA. (Ideal Life releases on August 18th). Bookmarks are limited edition pre-order gifts and only available at Fireside Books until they run out.
Please email your pre-order request to:
orders@firesideRWC.com
I will personalize the book if you like, just include the name I should write in the book (e.g., “To Andrew”)
Fireside Books will ship to you or you can pick up from the store if you’re local!
(note: Fireside Books is a small husband-wife run store, so they’re taking orders by email. They don’t have a website that takes orders—ordering from their Bookshop.org page will not ship an autographed copy or bookmark, since those orders go through Bookshop’s centralized distribution.)
