Marina De Pass
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Marina joined The Soho Agency in 2016, after working for several years in the editorial departments of Little, Brown and HarperCollins. She adores fiction and is building a list of upmarket commercial, reading group and accessible literary fiction – and is actively looking to take on clients in this area.
She is looking for strong hooks, compelling writing and unforgettable characters. Among other things, she is drawn to books that feature: mysteries; heatwaves and/or raging storms; plot twists; hotels; secrets simmering under the surface; dramatic landscapes, a vivid sense of place; an unusual structure; characters who are not what they seem; cults; against-the-odds survival; dry humour; a light dusting of myths and folklore; chemistry that leaps off the page; love triangles, family tensions, heady affairs and forbidden romances – relationships under pressure, essentially.
Marina reads across all genres in adult fiction, except for sci-fi, and she is most drawn to stories told through a female lens. Upmarket mysteries and thrillers are top of her wish list right now. She is looking for pages soaked with tension, but also something that feels fresh and distinct. This could be a novel with an unusual setting (like in The Sanitorium by Sarah Pearse) or the atmosphere of a Jane Harper novel, but she is also drawn to domestic set-ups. She would also love to find a novel with cooking & food woven through somehow. And she is always looking to be transported and swept up by an epic love story – a novel with the emotional punch of The Titanic or the scope and structure of David Nicholls’ One Day.
She is also looking for beautifully-written and compelling narrative non-fiction.
Books she has loved recently include:
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
It Ends with Us by Coleen Hoover
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
The Maid by Nita Prose
True Crime Story by Joseph Knox
TV shows she has enjoyed recently: Top Boy (Netflix), Bridgerton (Netflix), Defending Jacob (Apple), The Tourist (BBC) and Peaky Blinders (BBC).
Marina is a trained copyeditor and proofreader – and takes spelling and grammar far too seriously. She also oversees the agency’s social media, as well as working with authors on building their channels. In addition to her agenting work, Marina has a rare insight into the publishing industry – she is a published author and has studied creative writing at the Faber Academy.
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