Hello!
I should probably warn you that we’re going to be talking a lot about The Idea of You around these parts over the next month.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let me catch you up.
The Idea of You1 is a 2017 book by Robinne Lee that tells the story of an incredibly chic 40-year-old divorced mom named Solène, who embarks on a steamy affair with a 20-year-old boy bander bearing a striking resemblance to one Mr. Harry Styles.
The book’s had a pretty unusual publishing trajectory. Per NPD Bookscan, the year it was released (2017) it sold 2,517 physical copies.2 Modest sales continued through 2018 and 2019, but took off during the pandemic. Sales peaked in 2022—5 years after the book’s release!—with 17,608 copies sold that year.
I first heard about the book in early 2019 when Ashley Spivey raved about it on my podcast, Bad on Paper (then co-hosted with
). After Ashley’s enthusiastic recommendation, I started the book that same night, stayed up until 3 a.m. reading, and finished it within 24-hours. To this day, it is the worst book hangover I’ve ever experienced. We went on to host a book club episode about TIOY, and then had the author join for ANOTHER episode. At one point, it went so viral in our little community, that we wrecked the Amazon recommendations algorithm for the book and the related titles were just other books Grace and I liked.Now, it’s becoming a movie co-starring Anne Hathaway as Solène and Nicholas Galatzine (Red, White, and Royal Blue; Purple Hearts) as Hayes (the Harry Styles stand-in) to be released on Amazon Prime Video on May 2. In the TIOY-verse, the adaptation’s sparked quite a bit of controversy: Is Anne Hathaway sexy enough to play Solène? (Anne, herself, argues yes.) French enough? How could they age Haye’s character up from 20 to 24? Why would they move the meet-cute to Coachella? But, the question I want an answer to is…
Does the real-life Harry Styles know about The Idea of You book or movie and the surrounding hoopla?
My completely unfounded gut instinct is “Probably”? I imagine a friend ribbing him about it over drinks, like, “Hey man, did you know there’s this whole smutty romance novel written about you?” I’d resigned myself to this being one of the great unsolved mysteries of my life. How could we ever know for sure? Especially given Styles’ fairly private public persona.
But then, a follower alerted me to a voicemail submitted on a call in episode of the gossip podcast Who? Weekly (Sidenote: crunch, crunch fellow Wholigans?). In it, the caller says,
“Hey Who? Weekly, I just had to pause the pod on today’s show when you were talking about whether Harry Styles knows Nicholas Galatzine. One thing I can add to this, um, I am friends with the author of the book, The Idea of You, Robinne Lee. And I can tell you Harry Styles is very aware of the book and the fact that he is the inspiration for the book. So, I’m pretty sure he’s aware of and knows about Nicholas Galatzine.”
And then, I realized… there’s a story here. And the people need to hear it. (I am the people). And who better to solve this internet mystery than me? What are my qualifications you may be wondering? Well… 1. I’d argue I’m one of the book’s biggest fans and 2. I’m currently procrastinating finishing a draft of my second book, so I’ve got nothing but time for this (if you are my editor, pretend you didn’t read that).
So, we’re going in. Can I promise it will be as good as the time the Source Code podcast investigated Jake Gyllenhaal’s true height? No. But am I going to give it my all? And then some! But I can’t do it without you, my fellow sleuths. Got any intel? My inbox is open (just reply to this email)! Know Harry Styles? His publicist? His weird third cousin? I want to hear about it!
Excited to have you along for this internet adventure. OK, I’m off to buy a trench coat and a large magnifying glass because theme is important.
Becca
The book is currently out of stock online (good for you, Robinne!), but is avail for free on Kindle Unlimited.
Bookscan only tracks physical sales of books and does not include ebook or audiobook sales, which I imagine this book had a good amount of.
The content I didn’t know I needed. And I think he knows? And that someone from his team follows major alerts or something and the uptick in articles about the movie mentioning him had to be on their radar. But also I don’t know how celebrities actually function. I know there were jokes in the TIOY book about trying to get the book on stage at one of his shows
This feels like the best place to share I accidentally read The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse which is about a woman who has a hard time conceiving and I was utterly confused where’s Harry?! Both books are good and vastly different plots 😂