Hidden Gem

Enni Amanda

Enni Amanda is a Finnish–New Zealand romantic comedy author and illustrator who writes warm, witty love stories with real-life bite. Born in Finland, she moved to New Zealand in 2006 and now lives in the Waikato with her husband and two sons.

Trained as a graphic designer, Enni designs and illustrates character-forward covers for romantic comedy and romance, and her visual background carries through into her fiction. She later studied filmmaking and spent years writing screenplays. She brings that cinematic sensibility to her novels through vivid locations, wanderlust-inducing storylines, and clever banter. Together with her husband, she also co-founded Uneton48, the 48-hour filmmaking competition in Finland.

A lifelong storyteller, Enni wrote her first “book” at age eleven on her dad’s Amstrad computer. It was seventy pages in Finnish and starred her dolls in an imaginary coastal town in Norway. Years later, she returned to fiction, writing in English, and built a growing body of romantic comedies that blend humor, big feelings, and swoony chemistry, often set in small towns that become characters in their own right.

Enni’s work has been featured on the TODAY Show. When she’s not writing, she’s usually drawing, spending time with her boys, or trying to learn something insanely hard, like pole fitness.