Taylor Jenkins Reid Just Revealed Her Next Novel—Here’s the Exclusive First Look Adrienne GaffneyThu, July 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC 0 A First Look at Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Next BookMichael Buckner/James Iacobelli After finishing her 2025 novel Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid really thought she was done for a while. The book, about the love between two astronauts in the ’80s, became a blockbuster hit (as had Daisy Jones & the Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Carrie Soto Is Back, and other Reid titles), and Reid had poured a great deal of herself into it.
Taylor Jenkins Reid Just Revealed Her Next Novel—Here’s the Exclusive First Look
Adrienne GaffneyThu, July 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC
0
A First Look at Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Next BookMichael Buckner/James Iacobelli
After finishing her 2025 novel Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid really thought she was done for a while. The book, about the love between two astronauts in the ’80s, became a blockbuster hit (as had Daisy Jones & the Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Carrie Soto Is Back, and other Reid titles), and Reid had poured a great deal of herself into it. Taking some quiet time felt sensible. “I was really creatively spent,” she tells ELLE in an exclusive interview. “I felt like I left it all out on the dance floor. I remember my agent saying, ‘Do you have anything?’ And me saying, ‘Nope, I don’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m still thinking about [Atmosphere characters] Joan and Vanessa. I have nothing. Let me think and I’ll get back to you if I have anything, but don’t hold your breath.’”
It was in the shower, where her best thoughts occur, that a new idea finally came to Reid: “I just went, ‘Pool hustlers,’” she says. “For me, the question of whether to write a story or not is always this question of, ‘Do I see it?’ And I just saw it.” That vague image of pool hustlers eventually grew into the premise for her new novel, The Last Days of Vic & Coco, out March 2, 2027.
As Reid puts it, the story is about “two female pool hustlers on the road in the 1970s, tricking men out of their money. And in the summer of 1974, for reasons that will be revealed, they settle down in a small town called Canyonville, Arizona. And when they do, Vic starts to fall in love and Coco starts lying about exactly what she’s up to. And both of those things are going to send them on a collision course to realize that the gambit is up and they can’t continue this way any further.”
Reid admits she’d never before considered writing about pool, but she thanks her agent for drawing the game out of the depths of her mind. She explains: “I emailed my agent [when I had the idea] and was like, ‘Pool hustlers?’ That’s when I remembered—but maybe heard for the first time—that my agent is a nationally ranked pool player. I must have been told at some point and it was just living in my subconscious, but I forgot.” (This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Reid’s 2021 book Malibu Rising was about surfing in the ’80s. When she shared the idea, her manager reminded her that he had been a surfer in ’80s California.)
Reid has written books about astronauts, rock stars, surfers, and Golden Age actresses, but they all share a narrative thread. “I recognize this is going to sound cheesy: On some level, I do feel like these stories choose me,” she says. “I don’t have a choice. The pool hustlers idea comes to me, I go, ‘I have to write it. Whether anybody likes it or not, I have to write it.’”
Below, Reid shares further insights on the making of Vic & Coco—and reveals the cover design from James Iacobelli.
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Courtesy of Atria BooksOn what she’s waited years to write about
What I saw [when I started writing] was that The Last Days of Vic & Coco was going to afford me the opportunity to do something that I’ve wanted to do my entire career. On some level, I have always known I will not be done [with my career] if I have not written at least one story about it. Finally, here was my moment to do it—and that is female friendship, the specific way that women platonically love one another and the devastation that only friendship can bring to somebody’s heart.
On the friendships that inspired Vic & Coco
I’ve been really blessed by having so many women in my life who feel like another part of my soul. They feel necessary for me to continue living. But those friendships are never simple. [In high school] I had a massive, massive crush on this boy named Colin. And one night we’re all at a party, and I see my friend Ashley and Colin talking, and I go, ‘Oh God, he loves her. He is not interested in me. He loves her.’ They are married now.
I talk to them every day; they are my best friends in the world. But Ashley was my friend, and she ended up with the boy that I was madly in love with, and I was beside myself. But you get over it because the friendship’s worth it. We look back on it now and laugh because Colin’s like a brother to me and the idea that I had a crush on him is absurd and he’s so clearly supposed to be with Ashley. But there are a lot of girls at 17 years old who don’t get over that. Ashley and I figured it out because of the depth of our love for each other. It’s a very long relationship that has lasted nearly a lifetime, and it was worth figuring out.
On the Vic & Coco cover
I’m not a visual thinker, so I never know what [cover designers] are going to come up with. [The publisher, Atria Books] sent two cover options and one of them is the image that stayed. They got it. They knew the vibe that we were going for and all we were doing was tweaking the font. For me to know that the cover so quickly captures what I was going for makes me feel like I did my job. I feel very heard and understood.
On her research process
I knew that I had a choice going down a rabbit hole of different pool players and the history of pool and the specifics. I’ve written books in the past where I learned absolutely everything about the topic. And for this book, I went, ‘I don’t think you’re reading this [to learn about pool]. You’re reading this book because you want to hang out in a dive bar in the 1970s in the desert with Vic and Coco.’
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Source: Entertainment
Published: July 17, 2026 at 06:36AM on Source: RED MAG
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