Spotlight & Giveaway: White Lights by Lauren Kate

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Lauren Kate to HJ!

Hi Lauren and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, White Lights!

I’m delighted to be here!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

White Lights is set in a world where Heaven is running out of angels. It’s an epidemic! The highest ranking angels with the most essential roles are burning their wings to trade in aeveternity for mortality.

In this story, the Angel of Death has recently gone mortal, leaving an enormous hole in the system of life and death. He isn’t the conventional grim reaper–no scythe, no culling souls. His name is Samael—Sam, and he was a filmmaker. He made the movies that mortals experience as their “life flashing before their eyes” when they die. He traveled the world, injecting these movies into dying people’s cerebral cortexes. And now that he’s gone, a massive power grab is underway.

All the angels who once worked under Sam—helping him craft the Life Review films—are competing against each other to take his place. When they realize they need more angels to fill the ranks–and since there is an actual biblical precedent for this in Genesis, they look to humans, and begin training them to ascend.

That’s where my main character comes in. Her name is Desdemona, and she’s also a filmmaker. She has no idea what she’s getting into when she’s accepted into a mysterious film program called Acheron. All she knows is she’s got a very irritating and extremely sexy—almost other worldly sexy–mentor training her. For what…she’ll soon find out.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“The arc of mortal lives is charming. Your origins can be so low, your destinies so high.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• White Lights was born after a close friend told me about her harrowing Near Death Experience .
• I’ve always been fascinated by the line in Genesis (6:1-4) that talks about angels looking down from heaven, finding mortal woman, and thinking they were beautiful. My series Fallen explores the idea that an angel might give up Heaven for this lust. White Lights wonders what would happen if more and more angels left in search of love. What would become of Heaven?
• White Lights is the first book in a spicy romantasy trilogy.
• There’s a sex swing.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Rafe is drawn to Dez’s beauty and demonstrable filmmaking talent, but he wants nothing to do with her at first. He’d rather be doing anything than be tasked with mentoring her. The chemistry is undeniable–and they can’t be together without fighting. But Rafe quickly realizes Dez has something he needs. Even if he’s forbidden from giving her what she wants.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Looking past his warm cobalt eyes, she sees them.
Angel wings, glittering against a dark expanse of clouds.
They’re the most magnificent things she’s ever seen. Massive, golden, limned with light, sweeping out from behind his shoulders to span thirty feet. Feathers twinkle, then fade into their surface. Nothing about them stays the same. They seem to be made of some iridescent, radiating substance from another world.
“Can I touch them,” she whispers.
Rafe closes his eyes as if the questions elicits deep pleasure. He’s never been so glorious, so sexy as he is right now, riding the sky with her.
“When we land,” he murmurs.
“No. Now.”
“I won’t be able to fly if your hands are on my wings.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re sensitive.”

Readers should read this book….

For a sexy shot of angel lore, cosmic consequences, doomed love, and the power of film and art.
 

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

The sequel to White Lights! It’s called Dark Heat, it will publish in summer 2027, and it’s absolutely bananas. In a sexy way. I love it.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 3 finished copies of WHITE LIGHTS by Lauren Kate, US only

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Book Info:

When mysterious Rafe de la Cruz rolls into Desdemona’s life to recruit her to the elite film school Acheron, Dez has no reason to trust him—and no other option. A violent attack has just put her brother in the hospital…and Dez is the only suspect. Guilt-ridden and grieving, she finds herself running from the law to chase her longtime dream of making movies, at a school she’s never heard of. Soon, she’s dropped into Acheron’s cutthroat world of seductive intrigue, power on an otherworldly scale, and deadly competition.

Acheron may seem like the ticket to a future Dez has always wanted, but as she delves deeper into the secret work being done there, she finds herself trapped in an existential conflict on a cosmic scale—with more than her heart on the line.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Lauren Kate is the internationally number one bestselling author of fifteen novels including the Fallen series, now an Emmy-nominated television series. Her forthcoming adult romantasy novel WHITE LIGHTS will publish in June 2026. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has sold over eleven million copies. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
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