Writer Yulin Kuang Is Pairing Reading with Wine This Summer in Maison Louis Jadot Partnership (Exclusive)

The author of ‘How to End a Love Story’ is teaming up with the company to match her favorite beach reads with wines

Writer Yulin Kuang can now add "wine connoisseur" to her resumé.

PEOPLE can exclusively announce that the screenwriter and How to End a Love Story novelist is teaming up with French wine house Maison Louis Jadot — and she has some recommendations for the best book and wine pairing for readers to enjoy this summer.

“I've always been the eternal student type,” Kuang tells PEOPLE. “I love learning and I love a syllabus. In the lead-up to my book tour for my debut novel, How to End a Love Story, I spent a lot of time thinking about what book recommendations I would put on a romance course syllabus, books that are doing something worth studying.”

“So when Louis Jadot came to me with this partnership, I was just really excited by the opportunity to put together a list,” she adds.

Kuang, who has also written for shows like Hulu’s Dollface and the CW’s I Ship It, curated a list of her favorite beach reads and romance books with their own wine pairings, which features classics and new favorites alike. One of her must-reads is Tia Williams’ A Love Song for Ricki Wilde.

“It felt so grounded, and it was also funny and sexy and deep. I really loved that,” Kuang says of the romance novel, which published earlier this year. “So I paired that with the Chardonnay Bourgogne because it was just a sound wine with a touch of depth.”

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Other pairings range from the forthcoming novel The Love of My Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood (July 2) with Macon-Villages to LaVyrle Spencer’s 1983 book Hummingbird and fruit-forward wine Beaujolais-Villages. One book on the list that was an unexpected favorite for Kuang was The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 2: 1910-1921. Kuang stumbled upon the collection by the Anne of Green Gables author while at a used bookstore in Canada.

“I think a lot of the interesting parts of the diary were her insights on the people around her and the way she was kind of romanticizing her own life while also dealing with the realities of it,” Kuang says of the journals, which contain witty anecdotes about friendship and childhood.

Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn, paired with Louis Jadot’s Rosé, was also a pivotal book for Kuang, as a writer.

“It showed me a real, true range,” Kuang says. “There's charm, and there's levity in the book, and it does make me laugh, but I don't think that calling it a rom-com feels truly accurate ... It's a contemporary romance. And I thought that was so interesting and it was something I was trying to take with me going into the writing of my own novel.”

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Kuang first started her debut novel, How to End a Love Story after a screenplay she planned to direct fell through. The book was chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s book club in May.

“After all that creative heartbreak, I really wanted something where the finished document at the end was the art,” she says. “That was how I decided to write it as a novel.”

How to End a Love Story, feature a romance between Helen, who is adapting her young adult novel for the screen, and Grant, who is hired in the show's writers room. It also touches on more serious topics like dealing with trauma.

“I was kind of looking at the things that I was either a little bit afraid of, or things I was slightly avoiding, and then I would try and careen into them,” Kuang says. But even as she hopes readers love her books, she's her own most valuable reader.

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“It's always to please myself first,” she says. “That's kind of the creative compass I use. I want to write things that surprise and delight myself, and I kind of go into that thinking that I am so un-special that, if I love it, then that means there will be at least a couple thousand other people who will also love it. I'm really inspired by how un-unique we are sometimes, as people.”

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Kuang has also been tapped to adapt another big romance writer’s work into a movie: Emily Henry's hit novel Beach Read.

“I'm very, very excited about it,” Kuang says. “I am putting my whole heart into it, throwing my back out if I have to, trying to make this the best possible version of this film that I can."

"I hope that the fans of the novel are satisfied, but I also hope that it brings new audiences to the books, because I think that is the true purpose of [an] adaptation," she adds.

As for her own summer reading plans, Kuang is looking forward to relaxing with a good read of her own, on her back porch with a glass of something delicious.

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“I think to some people, including myself, the world of wine can be a little bit intimidating, especially French wine,” Kuang says. “There's just so many French words you can't pronounce. So what I really loved was the fact that [Maison Louis Jadot] wanted to make their wine selection approachable to every type of wine drinker. That was something I really wanted to take with me when I'm composing this list, because I think the romance genre, similarly, people who don't know it, they can kind of be a little bit intimidated by it going in.”

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