The Best Worst Thing: a complicated love story with Hermosa Beach as a backdrop

by Alessandra Haddick

An intimate conversation about love, loss and writing unfolded in Hermosa Beach on February 12, as local author Lauren Okie took the stage for a “Seat with the Author” event celebrating her debut novel, “The Best Worst Thing.”

Hosted by the Hermosa Beach Friends of the Library, the evening featured fellow writer Stephanie Pao, author of The Fleuria, in conversation with Okie about the novel’s South Bay setting, its exploration of infertility and betrayal, and the winding path to publication. The event marked the first installment of a new author series in partnership with Made by Inch, a custom sofa boutique on Pier avenue, bringing literary programming directly into the heart of the South Bay community.

“This is more of a cozy conversation,” said Nancy Domingues of the Hermosa Beach Friends of the Library in her opening remarks, noting that the nonprofit has supported the local library since 1959 through book sales, programming and community events. “We highlight local authors… and Lauren lives here in Hermosa.”

That local connection runs deep. “The Best Worst Thing” is set in the South Bay, and audience members nodded knowingly as Okie described landmarks recognizable to anyone who has driven The Strand or biked the Greenbelt. The fictional diner in the novel is styled after Ocean Diner, complete with the real-life toasters mounted on the wall. Characters wander the Greenbelt, drive through Manhattan Beach neighborhoods, and inhabit a version of Hermosa that feels both specific and artfully reimagined.

“I had a really good time getting to know it here,” Okie said of moving to the South Bay after more than a decade in Santa Monica. She began writing the novel in 2022, shortly after relocating with her husband and daughter. At the time, she said, she felt “very new and lonely” in her surroundings. Writing the book and seeing the town from her protagonist’s eyes became a way of discovering the neighborhood.

“It may have been her home,” Okie said of her main character, Nicole, “but it didn’t feel like it belonged to her yet.” By the time the novel was published in October 2025, Okie said the South Bay finally felt like home to her, too. “The whole life cycle of the book,” she reflected, mirrored her own sense of settling in.

At its core, “The Best Worst Thing” follows a woman in her early 30s navigating infertility while discovering that her husband is having an affair with their dog walker. The story evolves into what Okie described as a “very messy love story,” blending sharp humor with emotional depth.

Pao asked about the novel’s origins in Okie’s own fertility struggles. It took Okie four years to have her daughter, ultimately through surrogacy — a “grueling experience,” she said, that reshaped her understanding of her body, marriage and career. Yet writing the book was not, she emphasized, cathartic in the way some might expect.

“I don’t think the books have healed me of my stuff,” Okie said. “The book’s job is to heal my characters of their stuff.”

Instead, fiction offered her a way to explore alternate emotional outcomes — to revisit painful forks in the road and imagine different lessons. The experience, she said, felt less like therapy and more like discovery.

The balance between humor and heartbreak is one of the novel’s defining features. Though the book tackles infertility, infidelity and grief, it is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Okie described herself as someone who would tell even a painful story “at brunch,” lacing it with observational comedy.

“Bad things happen to funny people,” she said. “People are insane. If you just observe a scene, there’s always something funny happening.”

That tonal balance extends to her broader approach to craft. Okie described a meticulous writing process: first drafts focused purely on story, second drafts layering in style, and subsequent rounds devoted to line-level precision. She estimates she has read “The Best Worst Thing” “probably about 600 times,” and editing scenes until they were “quiet,” when not a single word bothers her.

Her journey to publication, however, was less glamorous than it might appear from the outside. After 18 months of drafting and revising, she secured an agent and eventually sold the book to HarperCollins. The process, she said, felt a bit like dating.

“You just need one of those people to think that you are perfect,” Okie said, describing the subjective nature of finding the right agent, editor, and publisher. Luck, timing and alignment of taste all play a role.

The evening also offered a preview of what’s next. Okie’s second novel, “Tropesick,” is a meta-romantic comedy set in the Hamptons. It weaves together a ghostwritten romance manuscript and the opioid crisis, blending the preposterous with the deeply personal — a tonal tightrope Okie appears increasingly comfortable walking.

Throughout the event, the mood remained warm and conversational. Audience members asked about the authenticity of Nicole’s emotions, the dynamics between characters, and Okie’s relationship with her surrogate, to whom the book is dedicated. In one especially moving exchange, a reader described crying while listening to a scene in which Nicole feels small and insignificant in the presence of her surrogate.

Okie responded by reflecting on vulnerability — on what it means to need another woman’s help to build a family, and on the power imbalance that can come with that dependence. Meeting her surrogate, she said, dismantled years of internalized competition and fear.

“What if this woman had all of this power and she just used it to love you?” Okie said.

As the formal program concluded, attendees lined up to purchase books, have them signed and continue the conversation. For a novel that traces heartbreak across familiar streets and sidewalks, there was something fitting about discussing it just blocks from where its scenes unfold. In Hermosa Beach — and across the South Bay — “The Best Worst Thing” feels both deeply personal and unmistakably local. ER