This week we’re bringing you an exclusive Q&A with Grace Walker, author of our November selection The Merge. This is Grace’s debut novel and one of our favourite releases of 2025.
The Merge is a thrilling debut set in a world when Earth and its resources have been pushed to breaking point, giving rise to a revolutionary (and highly controversial) procedure in which two people’s consciousness can be combined to exist in one body. We asked Grace her inspiration for The Merge, more on her writing process plus some of her literary faves. Here is the interview! We hope you enjoy it.
Hi Grace, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us! Congratulations on the publication of your debut novel, The Merge. When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer?
Thank you! I’m not sure there was a single moment. I’ve always loved reading, and writing gradually became both an escape and an anchor during a time when I felt a bit lost. Finishing my first full novel was the turning point though - once I’d done that, I was completely hooked. From then on, writing was the only thing I really wanted to spend my time doing.
The Merge is set in a world where Earth and its resources have been pushed to breaking point, giving rise to a revolutionary, and highly controversial, procedure in which two people’s consciousness can be combined to exist in one body. When did you first come up with the idea for the story?
The idea actually came from a late-night conversation with my partner about marriage. We’re at that stage of life where lots of people around us are getting engaged, and we were talking about how incredible it is that people still promise to love one person forever, even knowing the statistics around divorce.
I remember asking, ‘If divorce wasn’t an option, would people still do it?’ We decided they probably would, because even in marriage you can still live quite separate lives. But then I pushed the thought further: what if you couldn’t separate at all? What if marriage meant being physically and emotionally bound together?
I couldn’t let go of that idea. I started imagining billboards advertising it as the ultimate commitment - wondering who would sign up, what it would cost, and what it would really mean to share yourself that completely. That seed eventually grew into the world of The Merge.
The smothering atmosphere of dystopian planet Earth feels like a character in its own right. How did you approach building that world?
I love that description. That’s exactly the feeling I hoped to create. When I was building the world, I tried to give just enough detail for it to feel believable, but I didn’t want the world-building to overpower the characters. The emotional and psychological experience of the Merge was always the centre of the story.
The novel follows Laurie, who is sixty-five and living with Alzheimer’s, and her daughter Amelia, who once protested against The Merge but now desperately wants to save her. What inspired you to centre the story around a mother-daughter relationship?
Interestingly, I actually started writing the novel from Lucas and Noah’s perspectives, but I kept finding myself drawn back to Laurie and Amelia. The mother-daughter relationship just felt like the most emotionally powerful lens for the story. It’s such a fundamental bond, full of love, but also expectation, sacrifice, and sometimes tension.
I was also influenced by watching my mum lose her own mother to Alzheimer’s, which was incredibly difficult. Imagining how it might feel to watch that happen again made the emotional stakes very real for me. And now that I’m a mother myself, that connection feels even deeper. The bond between a parent and child is so primal, and putting that relationship under the strain of something as extreme as the Merge felt like the most powerful story I could tell.
Laurie and Amelia are grouped with three other pairs also undergoing the procedure. Did you always have these characters and their backstories in mind?
Yes, the wider cast actually came to me very early on. I knew I wanted the story to explore desperate situations that might drive someone to give up their autonomy.
Each pair is motivated by love, but also by fear. The support group allowed me to widen the lens and explore the same central question from different angles: when someone you love is slipping away, how far would you go to hold on to them? And at what point does that desperation stop being an act of love and become something more dangerous?
Amelia’s activism against The Merge creates an interesting tension in the story. How did you balance her conflicting beliefs and actions?
I approached Amelia from a place of desperation. She’s desperate to stand up for what she believes is right and to challenge something she sees as morally wrong. But she’s also desperate to save her mum. That inner conflict was really important to me, because it makes her human. We’re all capable of holding two completely opposing feelings at once, especially when the people we love are involved.
What do you hope readers take away from The Merge?
More than anything, I hope it leaves readers with questions. At its heart, The Merge asks how much of yourself you’d be willing to sacrifice to keep someone you love alive, and how much freedom society might give up in the name of survival. If the book sparks conversations about those ethical dilemmas, about love, identity, and individuality, then I’d feel like it’s done its job.
At Well Read Women, we’d love to know if there are any female writers who have inspired you both as a reader and a writer?
So many! It’s almost impossible to narrow down. Margaret Atwood has been a huge influence. I love the way she makes dystopian worlds feel disturbingly plausible. Malorie Blackman was also very important to me growing up; her writing showed me how powerful speculative stories can be when they’re grounded in real human emotion.
I also really admire writers like Elena Ferrante, Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler for their ability to capture the complexity of relationships and ordinary lives with such depth and empathy. Those different influences all fed into The Merge in some way, the speculative ideas, but also the emotional core of the story.
If you had to recommend one book everyone should read at least once in their lifetime, what would it be and why?
That’s such a difficult question! But one book that has stayed with me is The Giver by Lois Lowry. It’s technically written for younger readers, but the ideas it explores - memory, freedom, control, and what it means to live a meaningful life - are incredibly powerful. It’s one of those books that feels simple on the surface but becomes more haunting the more you think about it.
Lastly, where can readers find you on social media?
You can find me on Instagram at @gracerosewalker.