The first in a new romantic comedy series from Melanie Taylor, Love Digitally promises to be a popular choice for fans of Paige Toon and Beth O’Leary. Following childhood sweethearts who reunite after twenty years apart, Love Digitally is full of heart, jeopardy and plenty of swoonworthy moments.
Love Digitally is the first in a three book deal to be released with Melanie. Happiness by Numbers will publish in eBook and audio in April 2026, followed by Just Good Housemates in print, eBook and audio in November 2026.
Melanie Taylor is a Yorkshire lass, writing about all the things she loves: outdoor adventures, animals, nature and wild swimming (occasionally in the nuddy). A self-proclaimed romance nerd, all her books feature a good bit of swoon, which she hopes will make readers laugh, cry and blush. When not writing or reading, Melanie can generally be found either “doing something a bit weird”, practising yoga or kickboxing, or in the midst of some ambitious hiking challenge (which -obviously – she will write about afterwards). Melanie writes her books with a lazy Newfoundland dog, a giddy golden retriever, and a mischievous house rabbit, for company. In a previous life, she taught hula hooping and took people up mountains for charity.
Love Digitally
“Morning, Josh.”
“Night, Webbo.”
Erin Webster and Josh Hardy were childhood sweethearts. Now, twenty years later, they’re getting married—despite living on opposite sides of the world. Erin is in Yorkshire, caring for her mum. Josh is in New Zealand, raising his daughter. With time zones, responsibilities, and a painful shared past between them, their love story unfolds entirely online.
In a world of video calls, Bluetooth heartbeats, and long-distance intimacy gadgets, Love Digitally explores whether love can truly transcend oceans, time zones, and dodgy Wi-Fi.
Download your copy: https://amzn.to/46t1LOF
Q&A with Melanie Taylor
What inspired the idea of a romance separated by time zones and continents?
I’d love to be able to tell you a big, cute, romantic story about my inspiration for this, but the truth is that it was actually a deliberate tactic to try and write a ‘hooky’ novel, because I believed that – at that time – this was what the publishers wanted. The first book I’d written (which remains unpublished), had got some really good feedback about the characters and my writing style, but I was told by several industry professionals that it wasn’t ‘hooky’ enough, and that I needed to be able to sum up what my story was about in a couple of sentences. I’d also been told at a writing event that one of the most important elements of a romance book was the conflict – there must be some pretty big obstacles keeping the main love interests apart, because otherwise, there’s no story. So I put the two things together, a hook and a huge obstacle, and came up with: ‘Josh and Erin are getting married. But they haven’t seen each other for twenty years.’ And then I took it a step further and added, ‘And they live on opposite sides of the world.’ Because you can’t get a much bigger obstacle than 18,000km between you, really.
Erin and Josh haven’t seen each other in twenty years; why did you choose such a long gap?
I wanted to write about characters in their early 40s – like me – because I don’t think there are enough books out there featuring characters of this age. We don’t suddenly go invisible when we hit 40 – we’re still interesting, fun, stylish and horny! And we definitely don’t suddenly become wise and have it all figured out. I went for such a long gap because I wanted there to be a really significant passing of time between Erin and Josh having last seen each other, so that whilst they’d essentially be falling in love with the same person, it’d be a totally different version of that person. Making the gap over twenty years also took my characters back to their late teens, which is such an interesting age to write about because everything is exciting, confusing, thrilling and difficult, all at the same time.
How did you approach writing the emotional complexity of long-distance love?
I’ve never been in a long-distance relationship, so it involved a lot of research! I read every online article and every book about it, watched every movie possible, and spoke to anyone I could who I knew had been in one.
The story includes modern tech like video calls and Bluetooth heartbeats – how did you decide which digital elements to include?
Despite the techy theme of the book, I’m a very analogue kinda person, so I relied on lots of googling! Imagine my delight when I discovered that teledildonics – long range remotely controlled vibrators – were actually a thing!
Was it challenging to balance humour and heartbreak in the narrative?
Yes, definitely. When you go out and categorise your book as a ‘comedy’ then the pressure is on you to make people laugh. An early mistake of mine, when I first started to write, was to think that you had to make people laugh all the time. It was a learning curve to realise that if you use the humour sporadically, and just pepper it in there, then it’s much more effective. With regards to writing emotion, I’d been advised by an industry professional to ‘lay the emotion on as thick as you can, and then lay it on some more’, as you can never have too much emotion. Marian Keyes is the absolute master of balancing humour with emotion, so I often find myself re-reading her books!
What was the process like for creating the audiobook version?
I loved creating the audiobook; I was so lucky that my publishers took a punt on me and gave me the opportunity to narrate it myself. For three whole days I sat in the recording studio reading my book out loud – but luckily for me, speaking for eight hours straight is a strength of mine! A long time ago I worked as a news reader on the radio (briefly), so I have done a little bit of voicework before. It wasn’t an easy book to narrate due to there being actual singing and rapping parts, and a couple of very steamy scenes indeed, which were… interesting … to record. I wasn’t cringing at all, honestly!
Did you draw on any personal experiences or stories when writing this book?
As a child, I accumulated new pen pals – proper ones, where we used to write actual letters to each other – every time that I went on holiday (this was way before the days of emails and social media). You couldn’t beat the excitement of a new letter plopping through the letter box!
I once met a German boy, Nicko, on holiday, who I got on well with (and fancied him a bit too, of course), so we became pen pals and wrote to each other every few weeks for a year or so. I remember that I couldn’t speak German at all, so I used to spend hours looking up every single word in a German dictionary, so I could write to him in his own language (even though he spoke good English). I can’t remember what happened in the end; I assume that things just fizzled out eventually.
Actually… as soon as I’ve finished answering these questions, I’m going to go and raid my ‘Memories box’ (there’s a ‘Memories box’ in Love Digitally which is inspired by mine), to see if I still have the letters from him…. Until answering this question, I probably haven’t thought about him for twenty-five years, but now my mind is seriously wandering! Oh my goodness, what became of Nico? (And: Is there a whole other novel in this?)
What do you hope readers will take away from Erin and Josh’s journey?
This is an easy one! I hope that they take away some of Penny’s optimism about love. As Penny says, ‘Love is almost always a risk. But love is almost always worth the risk’, and ‘To believe in love is the greatest faith that you can have’. I would add that, like Erin and Josh, you have to be brave and go out and get what you want. Don’t just sit around, hoping for it – anything is possible, just follow your heart wherever it takes you!