Love Island’s Amber Gill on ‘spicy’ sapphic novel and why she almost slid into Billie Eilish’s DMs
Amber Gill’s new book One Summer In Miami is a lesbian romance novel. (Getty/Canva/Amazon)
Love Island winner Amber Gill has spoken to PinkNews about her “spicy” sapphic romance novel One Summer in Miami, given some dating advice on how to get out of “the trenches” and reveals how she “nearly” slid into Billie Eilish’s DMs.
To many people, Gill is probably still just the Newcastle-born winner of 2019’s fifth season of Love Island, who, like so many of the series’ couples, split from her partner not long after.
Since then, it’s fair to say, Gill has had something of a rebirth. Not only did she come out as queer, labelling her sexuality “painfully obvious” upon rewatches of the ITV show, but she’s added an extra feather to her cap. Rather than the standard “influencer” moniker that comes with a Love Island appearance, she’s a published author.
Gill’s first novel, Until I Met You, hit the shelves in 2022. Now, she’s gearing up for the arrival of her second book: a sapphic jaunt called One Summer in Miami.
Speaking ahead of its launch, she doesn’t care whether people think she should be writing novels or not.
“What I do doesn’t have to make sense to everyone to get on board with it eventually. And they’ll realise why.
“I do a lot of different things, and my path hasn’t been the most obvious one, but I always do things that are authentically myself. So, on the face of it, yeah, it looks like: ‘Why the hell is she writing?’ But people [who] know me, will know that it’s something I’ve always enjoyed.”
The enjoyment is backed up by a lifelong love of Jacqueline Wilson books, among others, and in writing her own novels, Gill is keen to provide representation to those looking for it.
“We don’t realise how important it is, to write something that just represents people [who] aren’t always represented because you should you see yourself when you’re younger,” she explains.
“One Summer in Miami has a woman of colour in a queer relationship, and I don’t know if reading about queer women would have helped me in my own journey because I never had that experience. But I’d like to think so.”
And, she adds, the scorching novel doesn’t fall into the pitfall that a lot of gay stories do: trauma.
“It’s just a nice read. It’s not about coming out, it’s not queer people saying: ‘Oh, we have such a hard time’. There’s a lot of joy, and I don’t think that gets written about enough.”
There certainly is joy, but there’s also a level of tension in the enemies-to-lovers arc that the lead character goes through. That idea has always appealed to Gill.
“There’s something about enemies-to-lovers that I love, and I’m like: ‘Well, what would I want to read?’ I love the trope. And apparently it’s a theme for me. It just gives it something. You know, it’s not smooth sailing.”
Until I Met You featured two heterosexual lead characters but for One Summer in Miami, the lead is Kya, and she’s queer. But did writing a lesbian love story as opposed to a straight one spark any realisations when it came to Amber’s own sexuality?
“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to anyway,” Gill begins, before revealing that the she was a lot more comfortable with the “spice level” in the new book.
“When I started to write the second one, and we were in the creative process, I was fine with it being spicy, and the first one I wasn’t. The first one, I was like: ‘And the door closes, then they wake up the next morning’, and you don’t know what happened.
“Whereas with this one I was like, I don’t mind it. I feel comfortable with it being more spicy. I don’t know what that says, but to me it says something,” she laughs. “I was like, spice it up more. More!”
As Amber talks, the sizzling sapphic “Guess” remix has recently dropped, with pop star of the moment Charli XCX enlisting Billie Eilish’s help for a verse, accompanied by an underwear-strewn music video that features Billie telling Charli she’d “hit it”.
The impact of the video can’t be overstated for Gill. “It’s when Billie goes like this,” Amber says, imitating Eilish’s push of the camera, before pulling a face that can only be described as gagged.
“I’m obsessed with it. I was almost gonna DM Billie. I’ve never slid into anyone’s DMs before in my life, I almost didn’t know who I was. I was like: ‘This is amazing’.”
Aside from that, though, and unlike the palpable chemistry in her novels, Amber admits that the state of modern romance for her – and this reporter – is in “the trenches”.
She explains: “It’s awful… awful. And I’m not doing a dating app. I’m not doing it. I don’t want to. I like meeting people authentically, but it’s difficult.
“And everyone seems to be having the same experience. We’re all in the trenches together. It’s not good. People have become too disposable to others, and social media has a big part to play in that.”
One Summer in Miami is available to pre-order now and is published on Thursday (15 August).
