What Light (Razorbill, Oct. 18) is a lot more than just Jay Asher’s first novel since the 2007 release of his monumentally successful Thirteen Reasons Why. It’s an itch finally soothed, a check off his bucket list, a boulder off his shoulders.

“I had the idea for this story before I even started writing Thirteen Reasons Why, so it’s been percolating for a long, long time,” Asher told PW. “And I knew I was never going to feel fully satisfied until I wrote it. I’ve been talking about it for a decade.”

Inspired by a story he read in his local newspaper about a family who owned a Christmas tree farm in Oregon and traveled to California every season to sell their evergreens, Asher searched for a story to tell in a setting he liked: the fragrant confines of a tree lot, visited by families in search of the perfect holiday centerpiece.

He struggled. Part of the problem was he’d become his own tough act to follow. Thirteen Reasons Why, his first novel, spent more than five years on the New York Times bestseller list, with more than three million copies in print in the U.S. and foreign rights sold into 37 countries.

“Because of the success of that book, I definitely had a hard time with trying to match what I thought people were expecting,” Asher said. “I had written a book that dealt with really serious issues. Was anybody going to want to read a Christmas love story from me?” He voiced his concerns to his editor, Jessica Almon, who told him, “Write the story you need to write.” (In his acknowledgments, Asher says Almon told him What Light “reminds me of a Taylor Swift song!”)

Like Thirteen Reasons Why, much of which is written in the voice of Hannah Baker, What Light is narrated by a teenage girl, Sierra, a stylistic choice that Asher says comes naturally to him. “It felt like I was channeling her voice but I’m not that sex so I did question whether I was getting it right,” Asher said. He asked his wife to read an early draft to make sure 15-year-old Sierra sounded authentic. “She told me, ‘I don’t know how you’re doing it but don’t question it.’ ”

But unlike Thirteen Reasons, What Light at its heart is a romance, albeit one with plenty of friction. Sierra’s father has made it clear he doesn’t want her flirting with the local boys he hires to load trees. The boy she falls for, Caleb, is not only a local but has a troubled past, rumored to include a violent act against his sister. It was that thread that became the most important to Asher, and how he connected the themes of Thirteen Reasons with his new novel.

“It says a similar thing, coming from an opposite direction. It shows the beauty of being there for people, and reaching out to them as opposed to not reaching out,” Asher said. “Caleb made a mistake and is trying to make up for it, but if every time you did something good, your past was brought up, you’d never grow. There has to be forgiveness.”

The release of his second solo novel (he also co-authored The Future of Us with Carolyn Mackler) caps perhaps the biggest year of his career so far. Razorbill is issuing a 10th-anniversary edition of Thirteen Reasons Why in December. Netflix is adapting the book for a 13-episode series, tentatively scheduled for a March 2017 release, produced by Selena Gomez and Tom McCarthy, who directed the Academy-Award winning film Spotlight. Asher visited the set, north of San Francisco, when filming began. “They were filming inside a coffee shop which they built and it was the exact shop that I thought had only existed in my head,” Asher said. “I almost cried a couple of times. These were my characters come to life, saying words I wrote a decade ago. It literally gave me goosebumps.”

What Light by Jay Asher. Razorbill, $18.99 Oct. 18 ISBN 978-1-59514-551-2

Thirteen Reasons Why: 10th Anniversary Edition by Jay Asher. Razorbill, $18.99 Dec. 27 ISBN 978-1-59514-788-2