When Rom-Com Meets Thriller

Olivia Worley has published five books in three years, and she has no plans to slow down. 

Though she came to Northwestern to study theater, Worley has always enjoyed writing. “I was in a couple of [associate professor] Julie Marie Myatt’s playwriting classes, and those classes really reinvigorated my love of writing,” Worley says. 

After graduating, Worley moved to New York City in the summer of 2021 to pursue acting, but many theaters were still shuttered due to the pandemic. So she shifted her focus and began penning novels instead. “I feel like I kept getting pushed by the universe back to the thing that I love the most,” she says. 

Worley writes fiction for both young adult (YA) and adult readers. “When I first started working on my books, I was the age of a YA character, so I was writing about my life in a way,” she says. “As I got older ... I wanted to write about the experience of dating in New York City in your 20s and how horrible that can be.” 

While her novels can all be classified as thrillers, most also have romantic storylines. “They’re mostly about romance gone wrong, which I think is a fun vein for a thriller,” says Worley. She describes her latest book, Man of My Dreams, as a rom-com that spirals into a psychological thriller. The main character, a writer, has a chance encounter with a man who is exactly like the love interest in her current work in progress. 

Worley still draws on her acting chops, particularly when developing Instagram and TikTok videos to promote her books. “I do miss theater sometimes,” says Worley, “but I feel very happy on this other path that I’ve found.”