Moth Dark by bestselling author Kika Hatzopoulou is a new romantasy about a girl obsessed with the dark and the shadowy magical prince she falls in love with. Find out about Kika’s latest novel and what she’s been reading.

What are you reading now? 

I just finished All We Hunger For by Anna Mercier, a fantastic YA debut fantasy that blends together a baking competition with rebellion and slow-burn romance. I thought it was one of the best debuts I’ve read in years and can’t wait for the rest of the world to read it in summer 2026!

If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have five books – what would they be? 

This is a great question! My choices change from year to year, but right now, I’d choose: The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson, ‘Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies’ series by Heather Fawcett, Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood and ‘A Deadly Education’ series by Naomi Novik. To me, the true sign that a book is in my top favourites ever is that I pick up and reread it, which I have done for all of these books a couple of times now!

Where is your favourite place to read?  

In bed, under the blankets!

Do you read one book at a time or multiple?  

One book at a time is what I prefer, but I often have to read for work in addition to pleasure, so there might be two at the same time.

Do you use a bookmark or fold the corners of pages?  

I use a bookmark when I have one in hand, but I also just make a mental note of the chapter number or page number and go back to it, which I know is weird but works for me!

What inspired your novel Moth Dark?

A lot of smaller things inspired Moth Dark, like the Greek myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur’s Labyrinth, the kaijus in Pacific Rim, and time-travelling books like The Time-Traveller’s Wife, but what played the biggest part was my desire to write a character who was in love with magic. As a kid, I remember wondering if the shadow outside my window was Peter Pan, coming to whisk me away to a magical island, or wishing the back of my closet was a door into Narnia – I wanted to write that kind of story, where the magic is real but dangerous, and the main character refuses to be afraid and loves it instead. That’s how Sascia, the main character in Moth Dark, was born and how the central themes of the book took shape!

What challenges did you face writing a story across nonlinear timelines?

In Moth Dark, the main character Sascia experiences life in our world in a linear timeline, but realizes the princet of the Darkworld, Nugau, arrives from a non-linear timeline – so each time they appear, they might be from the past, the present or the future. Aside from the logistics of these crossing timelines and the twists of the story, it was challenging to figure out how much Sascia – and the reader – should know about the future and how she would act to change it. It was a true web of plots and subplots, which is why I ended up naming the crossing timelines ymneen, meaning knotted time!

What’s your favourite romance trope? 

I love so many: enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, second chance, rivals-to-lovers, fated romance, slow-burn – if done right, I’m on board with any and all tropes! But I think my absolute favourite is star-crossed romance, where the couple has to fight against their very world to be together. To me, there’s just something terribly romantic about finding your way to each other despite the world trying to keep you apart.

What book character would you be, and why? 

From my books, I’ll likely be Amos from Threads That Bind, the main character’s cinnamon roll friend who owns a coffee shop, or Ksenya from Moth Dark, the main character’s sister who’s safe and sound in sunny Greece – someone who’s away from all the bad things happening in the main plot but still provides support and compassion when needed. From other books, I’d love to be a faerie academic like Emily Wilde in Emily Wilde’s encyclopedia of faeries or a grimoire librarian in Sorcery of Thorns – someone that works with books and stories in a magical world!

If you could meet one author (living or dead) – who would it be and why? 

I’ve met so many of the authors I admire, who have all been lovely! Attending book events as a reader is one my favourite things to do! I think if I could meet anyone, it might have to be Agatha Christie, just so I could pick her brain on mystery (my favourite genre besides fantasy!) and ask her how she paces them, how she builds suspense, how she comes up with her twists, how she kept things fresh and interesting even after more than eighty books!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kika Hatzopoulou writes stories for all ages, filled with lore and whimsy. Her debut YA fantasy novel was Threads That Bind. She is the author of several short stories, including anthologies such as Game On and Firsts & Lasts. She holds an MFA in writing for children from the New School and works in foreign publishing. She currently splits her time between London and her native Greece, where she enjoys urban quests and gastronomical adventures while narrating entire book and movie plots with her partner.

Visit Kika Hatzopoulou’s website