Rachael Lucas

Rachael Lucas is a British novelist known for her warm contemporary fiction for adults and teenagers. She writes romantic stories, small-town fiction and coming-of-age novels. She is best known for The State of Grace (2018), the top-ten bestseller Sealed with a Kiss (2013), and the Applemore series. Her work also includes We Met in December (2019), published under the name Rosie Curtis.

Rachael Lucas began writing after years of working as a coach and freelance writer. Her first major success came with Sealed with a Kiss (2013), set on a Scottish island. It became a bestseller and introduced many readers to the gentle tone and humour that would shape her later books. Her next milestone was The State of Grace (2018), a novel for teenagers, which was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. It was praised for its honest voice and for its line, “Sometimes I feel like everyone else was handed a copy of the rules for life and mine got lost.”

Her novels have since been translated into many languages, including French, Italian, German, Dutch and Korean. Reviewers have described her writing as warm and hopeful, with a strong sense of place. The Guardian called her work “honest, romantic and hilarious,” while Publishers’ Weekly praised her “gift for capturing complex emotion.”

Across sixteen novels, Lucas has returned often to the small Highland village of Applemore. The Lighthouse Library (2024) is the sixth story set there. A new novel, The Harbour House, will follow in spring 2026. Each book in the Applemore group is a standalone story.

Rachael Lucas lives in a Victorian house by the sea in the northwest of England.

Photo credit: FB @rachaellucaswriter