Audre & Bash are Just Friends

Tia Williams is a New York Times bestselling author of young adult and adult romances. She made her debut as a novelist in 2005 with The Accidental Diva, which tells the love story between Billie Burke, a 26-year-old beauty editor at the world’s top fashion magazine, and Jay Lane, a performance artist from Brooklyn’s housing projects. The book draws from Williams’s experiences as a Black fashion editor working for Elle, Glamour, Teen People, and Essence within the predominantly white beauty magazine industry. 

She published her first young adult novel, It Chicks, in 2007. Set in a prestigious performing arts school in New York, the story follows a group of ambitious young men and women who dream of fame. The sequel, It Chicks: Sixteen Candles (2008), digs further into the romances and rivalries of Skye, Tangie, and their peers at the elite Louis B. Armstrong School of Performing Arts. Like Audre & Bash Are Just Friends, the It Chicks books examine young love, teenage drama, and the cost of the relentless pursuit of excellence.

Audre, her mother, and her stepfather first appeared in Seven Days in June (2021). Eva Mercy and Shane Hall share a passionate but self-destructive week during their senior year of high school. Fifteen years later, Eva and Shane reunite, confront their traumatic pasts, and give their love a second chance. The adult romance novel was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick, and a Prime Video TV series adaptation is in development. 

There is a four-year time gap between the two novels, allowing the author to present the three returning characters at different points in their timelines and their relationships to one another. In Audre & Bash Are Just Friends, Shane has been sober for six years, he and Eva have a baby together, and the besotted couple is busy planning their wedding. They still have challenges to face, such as juggling their careers and family responsibilities, but they are certain that they are meant to be together. 

On the other hand, the close mother-daughter bond Eva and Audre share in Seven Days in June has deteriorated significantly by the time that Audre & Bash Are Just Friends begins. The earlier novel details the Mercy/Mercier ‘family curse’ and other secrets that Eva shares with Audre to repair their bond in Chapter 34 of the later book. Seven Days in June presents a preteen Audre who is brilliant, ambitious, fiercely protective of her mother, and already deeply interested in psychology. Readers’ love for the precocious 12-year-old inspired Williams to write Audre & Bash Are Just Friends: “[S]he became the fan favorite! […] I’d always get DMs asking when she’d get her own book! I decided it’d be fun to catch up with her four years later, as a sixteen-year-old navigating first love” (Dumpleton, Elise. “Q&A: Tia Williams, Author of ‘Audre & Bash Are Just Friends.’” The Nerd Daily, 10 May 2025). Through Audre and her mother’s stories, Williams examines the importance of mental health, the complexities of familial relationships, and the transformative power of love.