Exclusive Cover Reveal + Q&A: Amy Spalding Concludes Her Out In Hollywood Series with In Her Spotlight
Amy Spalding’s popular Hollywood series is coming to a close next year, but it’s going to go out with a bang. In Her Spotlight is a charming second chance romance that turns its focus to a recurring character that’s been mentioned several times throughout the series, but who now gets a shot at a story of her own, one that grapples with issues of loneliness and self-acceptance even as it celebrates vibrant joy and a queer happily ever after.
In Her Spotlight follows Tess Gardner, an actress famous for starring in big-budget franchise movies that aren’t the sort of work she thought she’d make a career of. Determined to prove herself she agrees to a role in a buzzy stage production—only to find that it’s being directed by the ex whose heart she broke a decade prior.
Here’s how the publisher describes the story.
Hollywood actor Tess Gardner is not the kind of famous she set out to be. She’s ready to show she’s more than Princess Platinum of the Vindicators series, a pretty face with CGI superpowers that literally sparkle. Tess wants to prove herself as an actor and that means theatre—the true calling of her thespian heart. But just when Tess lands a part working with an acclaimed stage director, a brewing scandal forces him out. His replacement? None other than hip, buzzy director Rebecca Frisch. The same Rebecca Frisch whose heart a firmly closeted Tess broke over a decade ago during summer stock . . .
As Tess wrestles with her lingering guilt and attraction to Rebecca, she also finds herself struggling to rein in her superstar status backstage. When things unexpectedly reignite with Rebecca, Tess bristles even more against the walls of her A-list life. Since the industry’s made it clear that girl-next-door superheroes can’t also be gay, coming out isn’t realistic for Tess. And ultimately, Rebecca will head back to New York and likely seek out a less complicated relationship anyway.
Will the curtain close on her chance for happiness or will Tess finally take a leading role in her own life?
In Her Spotlight won’t hit shelves until February 24, 2026, but we’ve got an exclusive first look at its cover right now.
We also had the chance to chat with Spalding herself about what fans can expect from In Her Spotlight, bringing her Out in Hollywood series to a close, and more.
Paste Magazine: Tell us about In Her Spotlight! What can readers expect from this story?
Amy Spalding: In Her Spotlight is a second-chance romance about Tess Gardner, who’s gotten very famous playing Princess Platinum in the Vindicators trilogy, but is dying to be taken more seriously as an actor. She’s thrilled to land the leading role in a new play to be directed by a renowned theatre director, but when a scandal forces him out, his replacement is the buzzy director Rebecca Frisch… who just happens to be the very-closeted Tess’s ex-girlfriend from summer stock theatre more than a decade ago.
Readers can expect the magic of theatre, the fun and frustrations of fame, the power of getting to tell your own story on your own terms, and of course all of the hallmarks of an Out in Hollywood book: local L.A. locations, gratuitous descriptions of food, one extremely cute pet, and some returning characters from past books!
Paste: In Her Spotlight is the latest (and, sadly, final!) installment in your Out in Hollywood series. What made this one the story you wanted to end on, and what sets it apart from its siblings?
Spalding: All of the Out in Hollywood titles are standalones, which has given me a lot of freedom to tell all the stories I wanted to within this particular universe. Fame is something I love exploring in my work, and I thought that before the series was over that I wanted to write about someone really famous. I also felt like a lot of celebrity romances (including my own, For Her Consideration!) are about falling in love with a celebrity, so I loved the idea of switching up to writing from the point of view of the celebrity herself.
After I wrote On Her Terms, I was so incredibly proud of how funny it ended up being. So I knew that since I’d pushed myself to make it the funniest romcom of my career that I wanted to push hard for my next novel, too. In Her Spotlight, though, took me by surprise, no matter how much I’d outlined it. There was this vulnerable earnestness in Tess and Rebecca’s story that felt different than anything I’d written before—look, I’m Gen X, I am not naturally predisposed to vulnerable earnestness!—and I loved almost rediscovering the book I set out to write as I wrote it. There are still jokes, of course, but I pushed myself to linger in serious and more thoughtful moments when they arose, and I’m ultimately so in love with these characters and proud of their story.
Paste: Tell us a little about Tess and Rebecca and the emotional journey they go on together in this story.
Spalding: Tess is an A-list star best known as a superhero, which is not the kind of famous she set out to be! She knows she has a career that people would kill for, but her public image and career path feel almost completely out of her control. Her fame and the closet have really isolated her, though being back in theatre is reopening a world—and parts of herself—she thought she’d lost.
Meanwhile, Rebecca, a rising theatre director, has all but single-handedly engineered her image and career to look exactly like she wants them to. Beneath her cool exterior, though, she’s desperately trying to build something real—a lot of pressure worrying if you can actually live up to your reputation.
Despite what happened between them a dozen-ish years ago at summer stock theatre, they’re still drawn to one another. Tess and Rebecca both lead very public lives in very different ways, but those facades fall so easily around one another. Sure, there are a few minor details to get around, like that the director and the star really shouldn’t fall for each other… or that Rebecca is based in New York… or that Tess is still firmly in the closet.
While Tess is certain the entire thing is a doomed scenario, I genuinely found it thrilling to upend a fictional person’s life in such monumental, unexpected, and joyous ways. I loved writing about two women who were so ambitious and talented and also willing to take so many risks for each other again.
Paste: I love a second-chance romance! What do you think it is about this particular trope that speaks to readers so strongly?
Spalding: It’s interesting; until I wrote this book, I hadn’t thought too much about second-chance romances and what really makes them tick. But diving into one, there’s just so much emotion! I love how you get the story of what happened before in the background of what’s happening now. There’s something so relatable about rethinking your own past in light of who you are now and the people who have come back into your life.
I loved thinking about what pulled Tess and Rebecca together the first time around, how it all went wrong, and how they’d both changed—and hadn’t—since. Especially since Tess—an A-list star—and Rebecca—a niche theatre celebrity—both lead such public lives, I had a lot of fun thinking about the two of them keeping tabs on each other over the years and also how it would feel to watch your ex rise to such prominent fame. (Weird, I concluded, very weird.)
Paste: The question of the celluloid closet and famous figures wrestling with how publicly honest to be about who they are in their private lives feels very timely. What made you want to tackle Tess and Rebecca’s relationship from this angle?
Spalding: Tess had been mentioned in previous books in the series as an actress who had only publicly dated men but had “a certain vibe.” I’d thrown mentions of a few single queer women into previous books as potential main characters for later, and so when I decided to write about Tess, I knew that her closeted life was sort of already baked into the story.
One reason the novel transformed from that version I’d had in my initial outline to what it ultimately became is specifically because of Tess’s life in the closet. There was such a loneliness and sadness to it that I naively hadn’t seen coming. Really grappling with how far down she’d pushed her own identity in order to succeed in a specific way in Hollywood meant that some of the breeziness in my previous books wouldn’t work for her.
I also know that there’s a belief that because there are queer celebrities now that there’s no longer such a thing as a closeted celebrities. But unfortunately, our society can still be so homophobic, and still—especially at a time like now—put so many pressures on what kinds of public figures are still expected to be straight. Writing Tess’s story gave me such an enormous rush of sympathy for folks who, despite their success, are told to hide a huge part of who they are.
It was also very interesting to write Tess in contrast to Rebecca, who’d been out since she was a teenager, but was constructing a manufactured public image in so many other ways. It gave me so much to think about how much we all are willing to share, what we’re willing to put aside, and how we sometimes feel we have to contort ourselves in order to give the world what we think they want from us. I think this is why I so often come back to fame as an interest: it can really shine a spotlight—no pun intended!—on ideas of reputation and identity that all of us wrestle with in at least small ways, no matter how not famous we are.
Paste: Given everything happening in the world right now it certainly feels important to have such vibrant, joyous stories about queer representation out on bookshelves. What has writing this series, in particular, meant to you?
Spalding: I love giving queer women happy endings! The world has felt so fraught for queer and other marginalized folks, to put it mildly, and it’s been wonderful to center joy in my work. When I was growing up, I never read a book where queer women got happily-ever-afters, so to get to be that for other people is something I don’t take for granted. I am so lucky to do the work I do.
On a lighter note, though, it’s also fun. I’ve spent the last five years writing about brunches and chosen families and gay outfits. I’ve engineered meet-cutes and suffered along during dark nights of the soul and, of course, swooned along with the big gestures that lead into those happy endings. Writing romance novels is one of the best jobs in the world, and I’m so happy that it’s mine!
In Her Spotlight will be released on February 24, 2026, but you can pre-order it right now.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB
