GONE WITH THE WIND

Margaret Mitchell

I read this book when I was 13; it was the story that made me want to be a writer. I used to act out sections as both Rhett AND Scarlett, which explains why I didn't have a boyfriend till I was 15. I was intrigued by the idea of how Mitchell had created an entire world out of words, so rich it felt as if I were immersed in it. I thought, maybe I could do that too.

THE GREAT GATSBY​

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald shows the concept of the unreliable narrator beautifully here and it intrigued me: what if the person telling you the story is lying to the reader? It's a technique I've employed a lot as a result, because it leaves the reader trying to piece together the narrative and separate it from the narrator's motives.

ROMEO AND JULIET

William Shakespeare

The best love story ever. I'm still wondering why, when my husband speaks to me, our conversation doesn't naturally form a sonnet. When I wrote The Pact I wanted to write a variation of Romeo and Juliet, and so I started with the opposite conceit – what if two families weren't warring, but were SO close that they still wound up destroying each other?

THE PAPER BAG PRINCESS

I used to read this to Sammy; it's a children's book about an empowered princess who uses her wits to save the prince that has been abducted by a dragon. But then he only seems to notice that she doesn't look very princess-like anymore – she's dirty and frayed at the edges after moving heaven and earth to try to rescue him – and so she decides she doesn't need this prince after all. Girl power!