Mirian Njoh is bringing romance to Canada Reads with Carley Fortune’s Meet Me at the Lake

Fashion content creator and model Mirian Njoh is championing the novel Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune on Canada Reads 2024!

Njoh is a passionate reader who loves romance novels — and she’s thrilled to bring the first of the genre to Canada Reads. 

The great Canadian book debate will take place on March 4-7. This year, we are looking for one book to carry us forward.

The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem, CBC Listen and on CBC Books. The debates will take place live at 10:05 a.m. ET. You can tune in live or catch a replay on the platform of your choice. Check out all the broadcast details here.

Creating content that uplifts and inspires

Njoh is a self-described creative multi-hyphenate and an avid reader. She combines her love of photography, fashion, storytelling and modelling in her everyday life as a content creator and model. Working with labels like Valentino, Uniqlo, Nordstrom, Fenty Beauty, Njoh cultivated a following online of over 235,000 followers who look to her for inspiration. 

Njoh’s also been featured in Paper magazine, Elle Canada and the Globe and Mail’s best dressed list for her eclectic style. A West African immigrant, she currently lives in Toronto. 

As a child, Njoh dreamed of being an author, she told Ali Hassan in a column on The Next Chapter. Because the best writers are voracious readers, this dream had Njoh reading from a young age, she said. 

Though she’s championing the only romance book to ever appear on Canada Reads, her first love when it comes to genre was actually horror, but these days she’s got an appetite for all sorts of reading, including both fiction and nonfiction. 

“It really just depends on the mood I’m in and what I want the book to do for me,” she told CBC Books in an interview. 

Breaking down genre stigma

Despite her varied taste, Njoh was adamant about bringing a romance to the Canada Reads debates.

“There’s such an opportunity to either introduce people to it or change people’s perspective on it,” she said. “Meet Me at the Lake is an amazing gateway to the romance genre.” 

While known for tropes and their signature happily ever after, Njoh argues that romance novels have much more to offer than they are often given credit for, Meet Me at the Lake being a prime example. 

“It features a full cast of richly developed characters as they navigate their way through romantic love, familial love, and the self love that comes from aligning with your passions and purpose,” Njoh said in her 30-second pitch on CBC Radio’s Commotion.

It inspires and empowers us to reflect on our own lives and values, to see how the choices we make bring us closer to our own happily ever after.– Mirian Njoh on why Meet Me at the Lake should win Canada Reads 2024

“The characters’ experiences provide a road map for what it means to have compassion, show grace, be selfless and find your way home. It inspires and empowers us to reflect on our own lives and values, to see how the choices we make bring us closer to our own happily ever after.”

A cottage country second-chance romance

Meet Me at the Lake finds 32-year-old Fern Brookbanks stuck — she can’t quite stop thinking about one perfect day she spent in her 20s. By chance, she met a man named Will Baxter and the two spent a romantic 24 hours in Toronto, after which they promised to meet up one year later. But Will never showed up. 

Now, instead of living in the city like she thought she would, Fern manages her mother’s Muskoka resort by the lake, a role she promised herself she’d never take on.

Disillusioned with her life, Fern is shocked when Will shows up at her door, suitcase in hand, asking to help. Why is he here after all this time and more importantly, can she trust him to stay? It’s clear Will has a secret but Fern isn’t sure if she’s ready to hear it all these years later. 

Fortune is a Toronto-based journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. Meet Me at the Lake is her second novel. Her debut was Every Summer After, a romance about childhood summer friends who reunite years later. 

“What I love as a romance reader is watching two people who can feel very real going through real problems and trying to figure themselves out, trying to figure another person out and ultimately there is this happy ending,” Fortune said in an interview on The Next Chapter. 

I want people to feel like they’ve snooped on a real relationship and I want to give people an escape.– Carley Fortune

“So you go on this very emotional journey but you feel safe. I needed that when I was reading in 2020 and I needed that as a writer.”

“I think my books do look at tough subjects. Meet Me at the Lake deals with mental health, with grief and loss. But ultimately, I want to give people hope. I want people to feel like they’ve snooped on a real relationship and I want to give people an escape.”

Coming of age at any stage

Meet Me at the Lake also resonated with Njoh because it captures Fern at two moments in her life where she has major decisions to make.

“I think it’s because I’m in that place in my life too, where things can go in so many different directions,” she said. “And ultimately I’m trying to find my path.” 

“We see the protagonist through really fundamental years in her life that will ultimately start and keep her on the path for the rest of her life. And we see how she navigates that and we see the choices she makes and we see how she is so imperfectly human. It’s inspiring, it’s freeing, it’s so many things. There’s an opportunity to relate and I think that’s something that I need for me in my life.”

“Carley has such a way with words that she captures the reader whether you are experiencing it now, you haven’t experienced it yet or coming of age is a distant memory for you, at whatever walk of life, it’s going to bring you there with the character.”