What is the title of your latest release?
EVERY VERSION OF YOU
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A woman gets a second chance at life and love when she dies at 32 and is given the opportunity to relive a formative time in her life. She goes back intending to win back the “one who got away” only to find herself strangely drawn to the man she always hated.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I’ve lived in LA for the last decade and have come to really love this city, so setting my book here felt natural. I had so much fun exploring the city through my character’s eyes.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Yeah, I could definitely see me and Joey being friends. I’m not sure I could write a heroine I wouldn’t be friends with - you have to spend so much time with them during the editing process! But maybe, that’s a challenge for future me.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Steadfast, driven, and persistent.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned how to edit! I love writing first drafts, I have so much fun with them, but then when they’re done, I want to jump to a new thing. Getting the chance to sit with this manuscript for so long and refine it and see it get better was a great learning experience.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I will make minor changes in the sense that I want the draft to “work” when I’m done. I’m not the biggest planner, so sometimes as I’m writing I’ll decide to change something about a character or the plot, and I go back and revise that so it all tracks. But other than those moments, I try to push through to the end without making big changes.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
If tiramisu is on the menu, I’m ordering it. I don’t care how full I already am.
Describe your writing space/office!
I mostly write in the living room on my couch. I recently bought a new sofa with a chaise, so I’m usually lounging on it. My cats love it, so sometimes there’ll be one cat on my left and one up on the top to my right. It’s a cozy delight.
Who is an author you admire?
Ruby Dixon. Honestly, I would kill to be that prolific. And to create a world that readers are happy to return to again and again like Ice Planet Barbarians! I love when romance is innovative, and you have to pitch it to people like “no, no, hear me out!” A romance about blue alien men on a frozen ice planet isn’t an easy sell…until you read literally two pages of it and are hooked immediately.
Is there a book that changed your life?
I have to go with SHADOWLAND by Meg Cabot because it’s the book that led to me deciding to become a writer. I wasn’t a huge reader until I was twelve when my friend grabbed SHADOWLAND, the first in the Mediator series, off the shelf and told me to read it. I finished the series in one week, then her 1-800-Where-R-You series the next week. I remember going to Meg’s website, and she mentioned Sarah Dessen. So then I read everything by Sarah, and within a few weeks, I had this revelation, “People WROTE these. I want to do that.” And now, the past twenty years of my life have been spent relentlessly trying to do that.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I kind of had a heads up that it might happen because my agent Holly took my book out on submission on a Friday; my editor Carrie followed me on Instagram that Saturday; and then, I got a call from Holly on Monday saying there was interest. It was truly surreal. But the strangest thing is that there was a car on fire on the street behind my apartment when Holly called me to tell me I had a couple editors interested, so I was like omg!! This is a dream come true!! But also!! There’s a car on fire!! I don’t think any of it really felt real until my auction a couple weeks later. When the first offer came in, it all hit me, and I had to sit down to process it.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I only read romance. I’ve been told I should branch out, but whenever I try, I end up DNFing. So it’s all romance, all the time. Any subgenre - historical, contemporary, YA, paranormal, sci-fi, dark. I love them all!
What’s your favorite movie?
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has a special place in my heart. I have the movie poster hanging in my living room.
What is your favorite season?
I love spring. In Los Angeles, spring means jacaranda trees and jasmine bushes, so it’s a great time to go on a long walk. In a city with pretty perfect weather year-round, spring still manages to have a magic to it.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I tend to throw a pool party or bring friends together for an outdoor movie if Cinespia or Street Food Cinema (two outdoor movie programs in LA) has a good movie playing around my birthday. I’m not always the best at making plans, so I love the excuse to gather all my friends together.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I hope it’s okay if I recommend a few! Something really exciting about getting published is that I now get the chance to read so many great books before they release! I recently read LET’S KISS AND TELL by Joss Richard and absolutely loved it. Joss’s characters are wonderfully complex, and it was so fun and sexy but also had so much depth. The perfect follow-up to IT’S DIFFERENT THIS TIME. I also got the chance to read TROPESICK by Lauren Okie early. What Lauren wrote is a real accomplishment. I’ve never read a romance novel like it, but it’s also at its core an ode to romance novels and the people who read and write them. Perfection! In EVERY FUTURE, IT’S US by Katie Naymon is exactly my favorite kind of romance - a sprawling, years-long tale of yearning told in multiple timelines. Katie’s writing is so lush and effervescent! And last, LOST AND FOUND by Tarah DeWitt but also just every single thing that Tarah has ever written. The “Spunes” series truly has my heart.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I feel a bit biased toward Mexican food. It’s definitely the one cuisine I could eat every day for the rest of my life without getting sick of it. But Ethiopian food gets a special shoutout because I hadn’t had it until I moved to LA, and it felt like my life was changed the moment I took my first bite. Plus, it’s vegetarian-friendly!
What do you do when you have free time?
I love to travel when I have time off. There’s nothing like exploring a new city with someone you love. But on the day-to-day, it’s mostly reading romance novels and going to the movies. I try to see a couple movies on the weekends if I can. I love going to the Grove, which is an outdoor shopping center in LA, getting a matcha, walking around the Barnes & Noble, and then catching a movie at the AMC.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m not sure how much I can say! But it will be a romance, and it will be speculative, and there will be yearning.
A Novel
For fans of The Love of My Afterlife and The Seven Year Slip, Reese’s LitUp Fellow Natalie Messier’s debut following a woman who gets a chance to relive her college years—with the opportunity to win back the one that got away—is “full of surprises and sneakily perceptive” (Yulin Kuang, USA TODAY bestselling author of How to End a Love Story).
Joey Vasquez’s life is the definition of good on paper. At thirty-two, she’s a Los Angeles lawyer on the cusp of making partner, but while she’s a professional success, she’s a personal disaster. Her social life mostly consists of nights spent watching TV with her elderly cat. Life isn’t quite what she dreamed when she was younger, but really, whose life is?
But a dinner party with the best friend she’s secretly pined after for years and its aftermath changes everything.
When Joey is given a second chance at life, she finds herself in college again. Armed with memories from her first life, Joey is certain she’s come back to finally convince the one man she ever loved to love her back—so why does she find herself strangely drawn to the man she thought she hated?
Romance Contemporary | Fantasy Magical Realism [ Gallery Books, On Sale: July 7, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781668213643 / eISBN: 9781668213667 ]
Natalie Messier is a Latina romance novelist and screenwriter originally from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. She has worked as a writers' assistant for the series Severance and Chicago Fire, and in 2024 she became a Reese's Book Club LitUp Fellow. She is currently based in Los Angeles, and when she’s not writing, she can be found searching for LA’s best matcha lattes, reading romance novels, and cuddling with her two cats.
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