LYNN — Former Lynn English High School student Laura Sakine published her first book a few months ago.
“It Must Bee Love” is a young-adult romance inspired by the author’s experiences of her time as a teenager in Lynn, as well as the impressions of the small beach towns of New England.
“‘It Must Bee Love’ is a coming-of-age romance about the overwhelming emotions of first love, shifting friendships and the insecurity of being a lower classman,” the book description said. “When Bee McGrath’s dream boy, Adam Stanson, starts to show interest in her, Bee’s world gets flipped upside down. Not only is Adam her older brother’s best friend but he also has a girlfriend, a girl who has always had it out for Bee.”
Sakine said she thought it was a fun story line to develop and said writing the book started as a distraction from being a full-time mom two months after her second daughter was born.
“With motherhood, it’s just being able to sneak in as much writing as I can at any time,” she said
Before long, it developed into a full-blown book.
The town where the action takes place in her book is inspired by the North Shore. “There are specifics that I took from Lynn, but there are also experiences of all of these towns on the North Shore,” said Sakine. “I was inspired by the beaches of Ipswich, but also by the beaches of Nahant. where I grew up going to.”
She and her family were spending their vacation in Cape Cod, and she felt inspired by the idea of drinking pickle juice, a scene that made it into the prologue, which involves Adam catches Bee drinking it.
“My family has always made fun of me for drinking pickle juice,” said Sakine of her inspiration for the passage.
The author said she also drew upon “being a teenager and the experiences of young love.”
Writing a book never crossed Sakine’s mind when she was majoring in English literature while attending the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
“Writing a book was a really far-fetched idea,” said Sakine. “It seemed like something only superhuman people could do.”
However, she always liked writing. On her website she even quotes Gloria Steinem, who said: “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”
“Writing has always been a part of my life,” Sakine said.
Even at school she didn’t feel impassioned towards any particular subjects except “English and reading and writing.” She wrote freelance and took some creative writing classes at college, before launching a blog.
On her website she wrote that she especially loved writing young-adult romance, because no one on this planet loves harder than young adults.
Her main character, Bee, finds herself “overwhelmed in the best and worst kind of ways,” as the book description says.
“She learns that nothing is ever easy when it comes to love and that following her heart might mean giving up more than she bargained for.”
Despite writing prose that is full of feelings, Sakine describes herself as being a “detail-oriented person.”
When the book was finished, Sakine found out that it might have taken years for the book to be published through a literary agent, which would involve signing a contract with a publishing house. She decided that self-publishing was something she could do.
“For me, the main goal right now is just getting the book out there and having people read it,” said Sakine.
She said that after the book was published in February she received a tremendous amount of support from “her family and friends, and from friends of friends.”