INTERVIEW - Noor Juman

In conversation with Storizen, the talented author behind The Thief Prince’s Wife opens up about weaving romance, suspense, and crime into a story that’s as emotionally rich as it is thrilling.

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Set against a multicultural backdrop and driven by complex characters, the novel explores arranged marriage, trust, resilience, and power dynamics through a fresh, feminist lens. In this candid interview, the author shares the inspirations behind Payal and Oleksiy’s magnetic relationship, the challenges of writing the mundane with magic, and the deeper truths hidden beneath the crime and chemistry.

The book blends romance, suspense, and crime. How did you strike a balance between these genres while keeping the emotional core strong?

First off, thank you for reading The Thief Prince's Wife, and featuring me on Storizen! As for your question, I don’t think striking a balance was a conscious effort, to be honest. When I write, my first priority is always character—I need them and the worlds they inhabit to feel authentic to me, and to the reader, by extension. I'd set out to write a romance between Payal and Oleksiy. Their worlds and their truths informed the suspense and crime elements of the book. It was all surprisingly organic.

The premise is built around an arranged marriage for protection. Why did you choose this dynamic, and what did you want to explore through it?

I love arranged marriages in fiction, even though I'm not keen on the practice in real life. I mean, if someone finds me an Oleksiy-type, I might consider it [chuckles].

Long before I'd even conceived of Payal or Oleksiy, I had an idea for a conversation between a man and a woman: Their marriage has been arranged. She's pragmatic and flippant and needs it to be free (of what, I didn’t know), and he needs her to say no because he’s in love with someone else. Half a year later, an iteration of that conversation became the very first scene in what would become The Thief Princes Wife. I liked how the set-up flipped the script. Usually, it's the woman who's all, ‘Nahiiin!’ but in this case, it's the man begging her to call it off.