Estella
A novel
By Lara Latcham
Estella has a house, a steady job, and the comfort of routine. What she doesn’t have is joy.
Bored, lonely and quietly miserable, she has spent years trading excitement for stability. Then a chance encounter with Oscar Pérez, alluring, famous, and unravelling, shatters her careful balance. Drawn into his glittering world of opportunity, Estella is forced to confront the one thing she’s always tried to keep under control: herself.
Because Estella doesn’t just feel her own emotions. She feels other people’s too. The pain, the joy, the fury, it all seeps in. To survive, she calls on seven versions of herself, fragments of who she once was, each holding a different strength she’s lost. But when Oscar leans on her compassion and begins to demand more than she can give, the cost of stepping into his life grows dangerously high.
Torn between the sterile safety she’s built and the intoxicating chaos he offers, Estella must decide whether to cling to old patterns, or risk everything for a chance to heal, grow, and finally thrive.
Moving, fast-paced and laced with beautiful emotions, Estella explores what it means to live as a highly sensitive person in a world that rarely makes space for such intensity. It is a story of identity, resilience, and the perilous beauty of feeling everything.
For readers of Meena Van Praag, Ruth Hogan and Sarah Winman, Estella is an unforgettable novel about the dangers of holding on… and the power of letting go.
Lara Latcham came to DBI Publishing with a clear vision for her debut novel, Estella. She had long been confident in her writing but recognised that bringing a book to market required experience, expertise, and technical skill that she did not have the time or confidence to manage herself. She wanted guidance and support from a team who could help turn her story into a fully realised, polished book without compromising her vision.
From the start, Lara knew what she wanted – and what she didn’t. It was essential that Estella reached every woman, regardless of age, ethnicity, or self-confidence. The character and cover design were deliberately non-specific, avoiding over-beautification to reflect the novel’s focus on authenticity and the real pressures women face today. At the same time, Lara wanted the story to explore emotional intensity, mental health, and alternative approaches to healing, creating a narrative that was both moving and thought-provoking.
Working with DBI allowed Lara to focus on the creative side while trusting the professional team to manage editing, design, production, and every technical detail. The result is a debut novel that captures her vision perfectly, an emotionally rich, accessible, and compelling story delivered with care, precision, and professionalism.
- Manuscript Assessment and Critical Review
- Sales Strategy Development for increased global markets
- Merchandising ideas for increased income generation
- Cover Art Design from client supplied input materials and ideas
- Publishing to over 150,000 publishing platforms
- All legal and registration services arranged
- PR: launch and first month of press releases
- Sales: Client’s own methodology
- Copy Editing and Proofreading
- Distribution: Client’s own channels
Lara Latcham
About Lara
Lara Latcham spent much of her childhood in her parents’ bookshop, the local library and acting in plays at school and the local youth theatre. Her grasp on reality hasn’t ever been that firm, but she somehow managed to live and work successfully in the UK and abroad in countries as diverse as Mexico and China as well as in industries ranging from heritage and education to housing and retail. She has been writing stories and poetry since she started to write and has wanted to publish a novel since she was seven years old. With over fifty years of preparation, her first novel, Estella, is a culmination of experience, imagination and observation. Lara is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and finds herself in a unique position to tell people’s stories with insight and compassion. She is an avid reader of novels, an enthusiastic and joyful glutton and an empathetic and compassionate listener. She’s a huge fan of young people and all that they bring to the world and its future, which is useful in her job as a personal tutor at a sixth form college. She’s planning to write more, read more, eat more and visit more countries.