Carole V. Bell

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

When No One Is Watching

Review by Carole V. Bell

A squeaky-clean honors student gets arrested for selling drugs. A gregarious old man vanishes in the middle of the night, leaving his beloved dog and his belongings behind. Longtime Black residents are disappearing from Gifford Place, and wealthy white people are moving in. Something is definitely wrong with this picture, and it’s worse than run-of-the-mill gentrification.

By now, many will have seen When No One Is Watching described as Rear Window meets Get Out. Those comparisons are shockingly apt. Alyssa Cole’s latest triumph incorporates elements of both psychological thriller and social horror. Its finale is a bit macabre, much like Get Out, and there is a romantic subplot as well, just as there was in Hitchcock’s masterpiece. But Cole’s story is also highly original. She is drawing directly from today’s turbulent social currents and grim realities, crafting a nightmare from everyday terrors, both large and small.

Through the story of one woman defending her home and her neighborhood, Cole dramatizes the economic displacement caused by racialized capitalism, as well as the petty skirmishes that take place between new settlers and old, between Black and white, on a daily basis in places like Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. There’s simply no one better equipped to distill the racial politics of this moment into intriguing and terrifying entertainment.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alyssa Cole shares why she’s wanted to write about gentrification for years.

Perhaps the best evidence of Cole’s skill in this regard is the remarkable correspondence between a fictional event in the book and a real-life incident that occurred just miles away from where the book is set. In May, a white woman was walking her dog off-leash in Central Park (in violation of the rules). When a concerned Black birdwatcher asked her to leash her dog, she falsely accused him of threatening her and reported him to the police. The incident occurred many months after Cole had finished her manuscript, and yet the confrontation strikes a frighteningly similar chord as the one in her book.

A similar standoff occurs between the protagonist, Sydney, an African American woman who is a longtime owner of a brownstone on Gifford Place, and Kim, a “high-ponytailed,” Lululemon-wearing newcomer, who is white. Viewers of the Central Park video saw that Amy Cooper was the aggressor and that she explicitly used her racial identity to claim authority. Readers will find the same is true with Kim and Sydney. It’s all about social control. Kim has done something wrong and tries to get out of it by accusing Sydney of “making [her] feel unsafe” and, again just like Amy Cooper, saying, “I’ll call the police.” As Cole explained on Twitter, “it’s not because I’m prescient, it’s because this kind of power play happens all the time, in ways small and large, often from white people who don’t think they’re racist.”

Here, Cole actually exercises restraint. Though thrillers like Get Out tend to present heightened versions of reality until the grisly denouement, the tensions that Cole brings to life on the page are hardly exaggerated. The petty insults and indignities that occur on Gifford Place happen every day in shops and on corners throughout America. The book also includes snippets of discussions from a neighborhood forum called “OurHood,” which seems to be modeled on Nextdoor. The ending is a bit rushed, and some readers will question the need for some of the violence. Overall, though, this is a brilliant first foray into the genre. Cole leverages her strengths to great effect, incorporating history, biting social observation and even a little romance along the way.

Another element that distinguishes When No One Is Watching is its grounding in not just present-day politics but history. Cole made her name in historical romance, and it shows. The Brooklyn history she includes enriches and deepens the story, placing current events and the characters’ experience with systemic racism today firmly in context and conversation with the past. The story Cole tells is a disturbing one, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Alyssa Cole’s latest triumph—and first mystery—incorporates elements of both psychological thriller and social horror.
RomanceContemporary Romance

You Lucky Dog

Review by Carole V. Bell

A series of unfortunate events lead to a meet-disaster in Julia London’s affecting and ebullient romantic comedy You Lucky Dog. Austinites Carly and Max have very little in common apart from very good taste in basset hounds and bad luck with dog walkers. Carly is a newly independent (and recently unemployed) public relations consultant catering to clients in the fashion and art world. Max is a socially awkward neuroscientist fixated on achieving tenure at the University of Texas.

With such disparate lives, the stars must align just right for these two to get together. When dog-walker/drug dealer/agent of chaos Brant gets caught up in a police sting operation, he enlists a friend to return his canine charges to their rightful homes. This friend, however, has trouble differentiating between Max’s perennially perky Hazel and Carly’s chronically depressed Baxter, and returns each dog to the wrong human. Even worse, with Brant out of the picture, Max has no one to dogsit while he takes his brother to a long-promised weekend in Chicago.

After bonding with Hazel, Carly is more than qualified to pinch hit in an emergency, and by the time Max returns, Hazel and Baxter are bonded, and Baxter’s outlook has improved. From there, it’s only natural that the four keep in touch. Chaperoned doggy dates allow humans and hounds to bond, and attraction evolves into romance. And yet, the course of true love never did run smooth. Otherwise, You Lucky Dog wouldn’t be the entertaining comedy of errors it is. Conflicting career paths and curious coincidences create roadblocks for Max and Carly without ever veering into angst.

London’s loose and limber comedic writing amplifies Max and Carly’s appeal, filling each voice with a unique perspective and personality. Max is a caring man who “was worried about his Very Good dog, a fourteen on a scale of ten on any damn day. He hoped whoever had ended up with her was taking good care of her.” As a scientist, he thinks about attraction in biological terms: “he felt a bit of a flutter in his chest, a telltale sign that the hormone norepinephrine was coming together with the rest of him to brighten his day.” Carly’s free-associative brain, meanwhile, overflows with pop culture references. She lives in a carriage house previously “occupied by a coven of witches or hippies or maybe even Matthew McConaughey—it depends on who you talk to.” The beauty is that the differences don’t just contrast; they complement, making Max and Carly’s love story a delight.

A series of unfortunate events lead to a meet-disaster in Julia London’s affecting and ebullient romantic comedy You Lucky Dog.
RomanceRomantic Suspense

Until the End

Review by Carole V. Bell

Katherine “Kit” Wescott is a rebel with a trust fund, a white-hat hacker and a pacifist who knows only one response to authority: defiance. Castle Kinkade is a wounded warrior who’s dedicated his life to his country, and currently serves as a field operative for a secretive government organization. In Until the End, the third book in former military intelligence officer Juno Rushdan’s Final Hour series, the two reluctantly join forces when the group Kit founded gets unwittingly implicated in a plot to release a biological weapon of mass destruction on American soil. As they work to stop the attack and clear her name, an undeniable attraction springs up between these two very different protagonists.

It’s a delicious setup for a union of opposites: on any other day in the D.C. jungle, Kit and Castle would be competitors, not collaborators. She’s chaos, and he’s order; they’re more natural enemies than lovers. Castle sees himself as the good guy, but to Kit, he looks suspiciously like the predators she’s been trying to avoid. And yet, despite competing agendas and differing worldviews, Kit and Castle find much to like in each other. Castle admires Kit’s intelligence and fierceness as much as her face and figure. Kit appreciates Castle’s integrity (and his “brawny” good looks), but more importantly she trusts him, instinctively and implicitly, with her life, even though she’s not used to trusting anyone.

As the two work to stop the plot, their attraction grows, thriving on a combustible combination familiar to readers of romantic suspense: adrenaline, a common threat and close forced proximity. Both their conflict and their connection are convincing. Yet Kit and Castle are hardly the book’s only attraction. Until the End boasts a diverse cast of secondary characters, none of whom are superfluous. Though the story is told in third person, Rushdan provides access to the inner lives and perspectives of a wide range of actors in this drama—Kit’s irreverent and frequently funny voice makes for a nice change of pace given the book’s intensity. When she first meets Castle, Kitt likens him to both Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and “a satanic cult leader” in her head.

On top of that, the action scenes are incredibly vivid, even cinematic. I felt my heart race at several moments while reading, and at one point my smart watch had to remind me to breathe. Rushdan may be taking liberties with reality—the agency Castle works for is a shadowy, unofficial one, much like the fictional B-613 of “Scandal”—but these embellishments don’t undermine the overall relevance of the plot.

Until the End is not a perfect book—it’s set in the world of politics, yet scrupulously apolitical, and the action and complicated twists threaten to overwhelm the romance at times. Still, the characters and momentum easily propel the reader through. The combination of arresting action, realistic high-stakes conflict, romance and light humor makes Until the End an intensely absorbing romantic thriller.

Katherine “Kit” Wescott is a rebel with a trust fund, a white-hat hacker and a pacifist who knows only one response to authority: defiance. Castle Kinkade is a wounded warrior who’s dedicated his life to his country, and currently serves as a field operative for a secretive government organization. In Until the End, the third book […]
FictionComing of Age

Kept Animals

Review by Carole V. Bell

On one level, Kate Milliken’s dark and beautifully written debut is the story of three young women whose lives become inextricably entangled one summer. On another level, it’s a meditative, multigenerational saga about love, loss, the inheritance of trauma and decades-long secrets. The novel alternates between two different periods, settings and perspectives, offering insights into how one generation’s actions shape the next.

The coming-of-age storyline unfolds over the summer and fall of 1993, when wildfires ravaged the Southern California landscape. Rory, June and Vivian occupy radically different socioeconomic worlds, but emotionally, their lives are similar. All three girls are grappling with their sexuality, and all three have difficult, neglectful parental relationships.

Rory is the talented and hardworking daughter of a barmaid and an unknown father. (All her mother will tell her is “Your father wasn’t anything.”) She develops intense, complicated relationships with both June and Vivian. Rory’s loving but deeply flawed stepfather, Gus, cares for Rory and takes her under his wing, bringing her with him everywhere and teaching her about horses. Their bond and much of the novel’s action revolve around the world of ranching.

Unfortunately, Gus is also an alcoholic who ends up failing himself and those he loves. The negative consequences of Gus’ actions reverberate far and wide, yet he’s one of the most sympathetic characters in the book. That duality is part of what makes this novel so absorbing, even as tragedies accumulate to an almost overwhelming extent.

In the second timeline, which takes place in Wyoming two decades later, at least two of the main characters have made it out alive, but an undeniable sense of loss still hangs over them. It’s in that context that Rory’s daughter, Charlie, investigates the events that have shaped her family, including what happened to her mother that summer in California. 

These questions, and an indelible sense of mystery, propel the story forward despite its sometimes languid pacing and sense of incipient tragedy. Vivid, lyrical prose further enriches the novel’s appeal. It’s fitting that this novel bears an epigraph from a short story by Annie Proulx, as Milliken’s style is sometimes reminiscent of Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain.” Much like Proulx’s masterpiece, Kept Animals is a wonderfully complex story that’s well worth reading, but no one should go into it expecting romance.

Kate Milliken’s dark and beautifully written debut is the story of three young women whose lives become inextricably entangled one summer.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Alyssa Cole

Interview by Carole V. Bell

Alyssa Cole’s work has always had two common threads: a social conscience and a central love story. That combination remains in her debut thriller, When No One Is Watching, as Sydney, a Black Brooklynite, begins to suspect that the gentrification of her neighborhood may be the result of a sinister conspiracy.

What made you want to write about gentrification?
I’ve wanted to write about it for years, in part because real estate and home ownership—who gets to own and who gets to keep what they own—is one of the major forces in American society and the results of the ways in which those forces are guided are often overlooked or attributed to other sources. Everywhere I’ve lived as an adult, I’ve seen the effects of gentrification. One of my first memories of moving to Brooklyn after college was seeing a Black man on the stoop, holding his child and arguing with his landlord, asking where he was supposed to go if he couldn’t afford the rent there. My parents own a home that they’ve put 20 years into but have to sell it due to the absolutely unfathomable increase in property taxes. So, this is specifically personal to me, but it’s also something that is unfair and pisses me off in general which is often a factor for why I decide to write certain things. (Note: I just received a forwarded email from my father, in which one of his friends asked if I had written When No One Is Watching. His reply answers your question too, lol: “Yes she is the author of the book. The book covers one of her interests, gentrification in Brooklyn.”)

When No One Is Watching blends social realism and a strong social justice critique with elements of fantasy and horror. Why did you want to tell the story in this way?
It was a way of processing the emotions I’ve experienced while writing historical romances set in America, and researching and seeing all of the horrible, flat-out evil things done to Black, Indigenous, Asian . . . basically all nonwhite people. Things that were evil in the time they were done were known to be evil, despite what people try to tell you, and were done anyway in the names of white supremacy and profit. There’s a cyclical nature to these things. Fantasy and horror can be a way of grappling with these kinds of overwhelming topics, just as romance can. But also: The things that have been done in America in the name of profit are literal horror stories.

"The things that happen in the book are based on things I’ve experienced, my family has experienced, my friends have experienced, my community has experienced."

There’s a scene in which a recent white transplant to the neighborhood threatens to call the police on Sydney for making her feel “unsafe,” weaponizing her privilege in a way that’s eerily familiar. Did you have anything particular in mind when you were writing this scene?
Amy Cooper threatening a Black bird-watcher with police just to flex her own power; learning that Breonna Taylor was possibly killed because of a warrant executed in the name of gentrifying her historically Black neighborhood; EVERYTHING going on in the news right now—all of that has been a lot. A LOT. The things that happen in the book are based on things I’ve experienced, my family has experienced, my friends have experienced, my community has experienced and things I’ve seen pop up again and again during my years of research. As to Amy Cooper, several of my works, notably my Civil War romances An Extraordinary Union and A Hope Divided, explore how white womanhood has been used as a weapon. It’s something that we see play out every day on social media, with these videos of the “Karens” (a term I don’t like because it cordons these people off into a specific group of evil white woman, when they are just normal people doing what is normal for them in situations where they want to maintain control).

Sydney finds her greatest ally in Theo, who candidly describes himself as a “mediocre white man.” Did you ever consider making Theo Black or multiracial? Or was he always white in your mind?
I’ll be honest that when I was working on this, I didn’t feel like writing a sympathetic white main character at all. I didn’t want anyone who readers might cling to as a white savior. However, though the book is about gentrification, it’s also about whiteness, and I thought that Theo needed to be there to interrogate his own whiteness in a way that many people don’t seem to do. We’re seeing this right now with many white people who, due to an aversion to looking at the reality of things for other people, are just now horrified at what’s been going on forever. Living in a world with so much injustice and only just now realizing how bad it is shows that there has been a kind of walking around with blinders on, but on a societal level. So yes, I did consider making Theo Black or a non-Black person of color, but in the end whiteness works best for this specific story. I also wanted him to be an outsider, not only to the neighborhood but also to the idea of critical thinking about race and how it affects communities. I’ve had so many ideas over the years about how to tell the story of gentrification from the perspectives of Black characters and characters of color. I still want to tell and read those stories, because this kind of injustice is so immense and so central to America that you can come at it from hundreds of angles and have a fresh story every time.

You’ve talked about dealing with burnout and depression and how romance can provide a boost in those times. If you’re willing to talk about that, what are some of the books that made a positive impact on you in the past? What book has made an impact on you this year?
Yes! Some of my favorite recent reads are Wolf Rain and Alpha Night from Nalini Singh, the latest two books in her Psy-Changeling Trinity series. Both of these books, in my reading of them, deal with recovering from psychological trauma, emotional overload and depression through a sci-fi/paranormal romance angle. Rebekah Weatherspoon’s Xeni and Harbor were both sexy, hilarious and emotionally edifying. Courtney Milan’s Hold Me (contemporary) and The Suffragette Scandal (historical) and honestly pretty much everything she’s written. Beverly Jenkins’s Destiny series, and also pretty much everything she’s written! Lucy Parker’s Act Like It (contemporary romance with grumpy hero), and Cecilia Grant’s A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong (historical, and though it’s a bit on the nose since the word is in the title—a perfect romance). For spec-fic romance, Kit Rocha’s Beyond series and their upcoming Mercenary Librarians series starting with Deal With the Devil. For short stories/novellas, I’d recommend Katrina Jackson’s Layover and Nia Forrester’s Resistance (about a couple who meet during the current ongoing protests), as well as their full-length works!

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of When No One Is Watching.

What other books would you recommend for readers who love When No One is Watching?
I’d recommend Victoria Helen Stone’s Jane Doe, about a sociopath trying to get revenge on the man who hurt someone she cared about. Nalini Singh’s A Madness of Sunshine, a super atmospheric thriller set in a tiny New Zealand town where a girl has gone missing. Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay, about a Black-American and Korean-American family in L.A. dealing with the reverberations of a gunshot decades earlier. Two upcoming thrillers people should check out are Rachel Howzell Hall’s And Now She’s Gone, which is full of twists and turns that make for a thrilling read, and Tiffany Jackson’s Grown, which tackles what happens when a teen girl is suspected of killing a famous older singer who’d drawn her into his web.

What’s next for you? Do you have a dream project that you have left to tackle or a writing goal yet to achieve?
Next up after When No One Is Watching is the first in my Runaway Royals series, How To Catch A Queen. It’s about an arranged marriage with a time limit, a kingdom trapped by the trauma of colonialism and a married couple falling for each other and trying to save their kingdom. It’s a play on the Bluebeard fairytale and the laird-takes-a wife trope, with an African highland king.

One of my dream projects is comics writing, which I’ve done a little of and I’m working on a proposal for a project now (I wanted to be a comic book artist when I was younger and love that medium). But I’d also love to write more audio scripts and also try my hand at a screenplay. And also to get back to short fictions and . . . I have so many ideas. It’s overwhelming, lol. So I guess my goal is to be able to write as many of those ideas as I can, in the medium that best suits them, with the time I have. And to show Black women being loved and appreciated in all of those mediums.

 

Author photo © Alyssa Cole.

Alyssa Cole’s work has always had two common threads: a social conscience and a central love story. That combination remains in her debut thriller, When No One Is Watching, as Sydney, a Black Brooklynite, begins to suspect that the gentrification of her neighborhood may be the result of a sinister conspiracy. What made you want […]
RomanceContemporary Romance

Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon

Interview by Carole V. Bell

In their new books, Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon take on the celebrity romance, reveling in its fizzy escapism and dissecting the perils of public image in equal measure. Much of the social commentary in Dade’s Spoiler Alert and Weatherspoon’s If the Boot Fits comes from the fact that both of their heroines are fat. Being catapulted into fame due to their famous beaus is thus far more complicated than it would be for a heroine whose body hewed closer to our society’s restrictive beauty standards. BookPage spoke to Dade and Weatherspoon about their literary inspirations, the joys of fan fiction and fighting for fat positivity in romance.

Both Spoiler Alert and If the Boot Fits complicate the celebrity dating a non-famous person trope—April and Amanda are big, beautiful and smart women dating men who are part of an industry that generally neglects or is hostile to those who don’t fit a narrow mold. Can you talk about what inspired you, and how you approached writing a new twist on this familiar story?

Dade: For me, the part of the story I conceived first involved the star of a blockbuster show anonymously writing fan fiction critical of that show and falling in love with his online, also-anonymous BFF. Since I wanted to play out that story as realistically as possible, I couldn’t pair him with another star also writing anonymous fan fiction. One was enough! So I went with a non-famous love interest. The one thing I knew about their dynamic from the beginning: I didn’t want her to be overawed or intimidated by his fame. That lack of fear—that upending of expectations—was part of what made the story fun for me to write, and it also added one less complication to an already-complex story.

Weatherspoon: If the Boot Fits is part of a fairytale retelling trilogy, so a Cinderella story was always a part of the plan. Cinderella, at its core, is a story about a woman who rises out of poverty and neglect to be with a literal prince. Since the Pleasants were already involved in the film industry, Amanda’s role as an assistant seemed obvious. I made her fat because I always include fat characters in my series.

What are some of the books you’ve read that have done the trope of a celebrity dating a non-famous person particularly well in the past?

Dade: When I read this interview question, I looked at my bookshelf for romances that paired celebrities with non-famous love interests, and I didn’t find any. This surprised me, because I instinctively felt as if I’d read that trope many, many times before. Finally, I realized why: old-school historical romances. I grew up reading countless traditional Regencies in which dukes—handsome, wealthy, well-known pillars of the ton—fell in love with spinsters, wallflowers, governesses, bluestockings and lady's companions, many of whom had little or no social standing or wealth of their own. Those stories weren’t about regular people falling in love with celebrities, exactly, but the dynamic wasn’t entirely different, either, and I suspect I unconsciously drew from that deep well when writing Spoiler Alert.

"Writing fan fiction definitely drove me toward the desire to be paid for my words and my time." —Rebekah Weatherspoon

Representation matters. But more than that, the quality and content of that representation matters as well. It’s a particularly fraught and unresolved concept when it comes to body size and image in romance. Have the discussions on this topic within the romance community influenced what you write versus your own personal experience and perspectives?

Weatherspoon: Not really. I’ve always written body diversity in my stories, including weight and will continue to do so.

 

Dade: Over decades of being both fat and a romance reader, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why and how the few depictions of fat characters I was able to find hurt me. Because in most instances, they did hurt me—and once I started writing fat characters myself, I didn't want to replicate that harm. I would say that the way I write fat characters is more influenced by that decadeslong contemplation than by discussion about fat representation within Romancelandia. That said, my convictions have been sharpened by such discussion, and I’ve become more aware of my own shortcomings through the work and words of people like Corey Alexander. I haven’t always gotten my fat repesentation right, in part because I’m still working through my own history of disordered eating, but I hope none of my books currently for sale would hurt readers the way I’ve been hurt in the past. If that’s true, insightful critics of the genre like Corey should get a good chunk of the credit.

What are some of your favorite fat or plus-size characters in fiction?

Weatherspoon: Phyllis Bourne’s Taste for Temptation, If the Dress Fits by Carla de Guzman, Such a Pretty Face by Gabrielle Goldsby, His Until Midnight by Reese Ryan and basically everything by Katrina Jackson. She always includes fat Black women in her romances and those women are having the time of their fat lives.

Both of you also write fan fiction. How did that influence you as writers? Which fandoms have been important to you?

Dade: I’ve read an endless amount of fan fiction in the last year and a half, but I don’t write any. The main fandom I follow and in which I’ve immersed myself is the Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth pairing; it boasts some absolutely spectacular writers. For many of those authors, I would pay good money to buy their work in print, but it’s all free. That still amazes me, to be honest.

Weatherspoon: I mostly wrote Twilight fan fiction. I haven’t dabbled in the drabbles in years though. Writing fan fiction definitely drove me toward the desire to be paid for my words and my time.

Spoiler Alert has been called a love letter to fandom; it goes deep into that world, from fan fiction to cosplay and more. Olivia, what made you want to delve into this topic?

Dade: During that year and a half when I essentially read nothing but Braime fan fiction, the vast creativity of that fandom stunned me—how they take a story and a set of characters and harness their talents and dedication toward that story and those characters to create something entirely new within a cradle of familiarity. They’ve filled in canon with stories that enrich the text and bring greater depth to the characters. They’ve formed online communities bursting with camaraderie and enthusiasm and support. They’ve worked on their craft, and they’ve made each other laugh and cry, and—and they’re incredible. Just incredible.

They love Jaime and Brienne, and that love has bloomed in a million creative ways, for the enjoyment of all. Like any community, there are issues and problems, because of course there are, and I tried to address that too. But their work has brought me such joy, and so Spoiler Alert is a tribute to them. I hope it reads that way.

Olivia, my sources (Twitter) show that you have some things in common with April: 1) You love fanfic; 2) you have a rock collection, and April studies rock formation. Is April’s story a particularly personal one for you? Tell us about her and why you decided to make her a soil scientist/geologist.

Dade: The fandom elements in this book were definitely inspired by my total immersion in Braime fan fiction over the past year and a half. In my previous books, I mostly gave my characters jobs I’d previously held myself (teacher, librarian, etc.). But for Spoiler Alert, I was trying to be more ambitious, as I said, so I gave my main characters professions that would involve much more research on my part. April is a geologist because one of my good friends is a geologist, and I knew my friend would willingly and patiently walk me through what her work entails. I’m sure my love of rocks played a role, but my inherent desire to avoid unnecessary extra work played a larger one.

How does writing for a major traditional publisher differ from writing independently in terms of content or the process? How do you decide what you want to work on independently and which stories you want to tell within the traditional publishing world?

Dade: When conceiving of stories I want to shop to publishers, I try to come up with higher-concept premises featuring more inherent drama or conflict, or ones where the stakes are higher. Otherwise, I have a tendency to tell quieter stories, and those are the ones I usually self-publish. I think readers appreciate both types of books, and they both have a place in our genre, but publishers tend to acquire one and not the other.

Weatherspoon: [It comes down to] bills mostly, they need to be paid and on time. The story depends on the publisher I’m trying to work with. Working independently gives me certain kinds of freedoms, like setting my own release dates, but you take on more pressure because everything is on you, from hiring an editor to scheduling all promo.

Dade: Traditional publishing offers me resources and reach I simply don’t have on my own. Optimally, I’d love to keep publishing both ways, at least for now.

Rebekah, cowboys are a staple of romance, but that niche has been a bit more segregated than some others. What kind of reception have you had for the Cowboys of California series?

Weatherspoon: I am definitely not an author you should be reading if the idea of Black cowboys bothers you, so I haven’t bothered myself with the segregated portions of publishing. I’ve seen a lot of new readers who enjoy cowboy romances pick up A Cowboy to Remember and that’s wonderful.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of If the Boot Fits.

Olivia, you’re juggling multiple types of storytelling and also managing dark and light elements with April and Marcus’ relationship and their pasts in Spoiler Alert. What process did you use to work them out and were there any big changes along the way?

Dade: The interstitials between chapters—where I introduced elements like fan fiction snippets, script excerpts, fandom direct messages, etc., and accordingly varied my writing style, verb tense and so on, depending on the ostensible “author”—were mostly written after the main story was drafted, which I think helped me keep my voice consistent within the actual chapters. I had a blast writing those interstitials, because I got to play the authorial version of dress-up.

Making certain the book remained light enough to be honestly called a rom-com took a little thought. I tried to counterbalance the more serious elements of the story through those interstitials, which provide some straightforward comedy, and also through the secondary characters in the story. Alex (Marcus’s BFF) and the cast chats especially helped in that regard. 

Rebekah, you did quite a bit of research about Black Hollywood for If the Boot Fits. How did that come to play in the story?

Weatherspoon: I worked in film and television production for 10 years, so most of my additional research informed how I crafted the Pleasants’ matriarch, Leona Lovell, who has been in the industry for decades.

Sam and Amanda in If the Boot Fits are coming from pretty different places in their careers. She’s a struggling writer/assistant; he’s a star. She’s middle class, and he’s Hollywood royalty. What makes them work so well?

Weatherspoon: They are both kind, caring people with a similar sense of humor. They like to make each other laugh and they both bloom when they are honest with each other in tough conversations.

A lot of romances focus on found family, but in If the Boot Fits, Sam’s tight-knit biological family plays a central role. Why was that particularly important here? Is there any chance we’ll get to see his grandparents’ love story?

Weatherspoon: When I sold the trilogy, the plan was to write three brothers and not just three friends or co-workers, so the family aspect was built in and I filled out the supporting characters from there. I have no plans to write Miss Leona and Gerald Sr.’s story. If the series continues, Lilah Pleasant would be the next main character.

Olivia, you've made presentations for chapters of RWA and YouTube videos on the subject of fat representation in romance. What are some of your chief concerns?

Dade: My primary concern, always, is that vulnerable readers—who may be struggling with disordered eating or body-image issues—not be hurt. Like it or not, our words have power, and they can both harm and hearten people. Depictions of fatness that equate it with ugliness, greed, laziness or evil cause harm, and so does dehumanizing language (“blubber,” “elephantine,” etc.) used to describe that fatness. An endless parade of self-loathing fat characters, or fat characters determined to lose weight, drives home the same message: If you’re fat, you should feel shame about it. There is something wrong with you, and you should try to fix it. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t evil or self-loathing fat people, or that fat people on diets don’t exist or shouldn’t be in books, but they also shouldn’t be almost the only fat people we see on the page.

Spoiler Alert is more explicit in dealing with the issue of fat shaming in our culture than your previous books. Why was that important to tackle that in this book?

Dade: I chose to make fatness a more critical element in Spoiler Alert, as you say. I did so because, first, fat people have a wide range of experiences. For some, their body size really is a minor part of their lives. For others, though, fatness will inform their experiences in the world in major, unavoidable ways. I wanted at least one of my books to acknowledge the latter group, but in a way that still didn’t harm readers. Hopefully I succeeded. Second, I’ve read too many books where characters were fat-shamed by family members and loved ones, and no pushback against that ever occurred in the story. To me, the implicit message seemed to be: If you want a family and loved ones, you just have to accept that this sort of behavior will happen, however painful it may be. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In fact, I think that’s a harmful message when repeated often enough.

So one of my goals in Spoiler Alert was to show April setting boundaries on page with a loved one in response to fat-shaming. She doesn’t have to learn to love herself as she is. She already does. What she does need to do is find the courage to say, in service to her own mental health and well-being: “You’re hurting me, and it’s harming our relationship. If you don’t stop, that relationship may not survive.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Spoiler Alert.

What’s next for Marcus’ “Gods of the Gates” crew, and for Olivia Dade beyond that?

Dade: My next book for Avon, Slow Burn, features Alex, Marcus’s reckless, loyal, chatty, charming and highly annoying co-star and best friend. In short, he’s a delightful asshole. Because of his perceived misbehavior, the “Gods of the Gates” showrunners have assigned him a minder to keep him out of trouble: Lauren Clegg, who’s serious, steady, working on her BHE (Big Hag Energy) and—according to Alex—“improbably short.” Even apart from her fatness, she’s considered unattractive by conventional beauty standards. And that was important to me—April is fat and gorgeous; Lauren is fat and not-so-gorgeous; both women can and will be loved.

Slow Burn has some of the best dialogue I’ve ever written, and I think—I hope—readers will fall in love with both Lauren and Alex. I certainly did.

Rebekah, what fairy tale are you taking on for Sam’s brother Jesse’s story? And can you talk a little about his love interest?

Weatherspoon: Jesse’s story will be a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling. His love interest is Lily-Grace, a former classmate he hasn’t seen since the eighth grade. She gives him a run for his money.

BookPage spoke to Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon about their literary inspirations, the joys of fan fiction and fighting for fat positivity in romance.
RomanceContemporary Romance

Talia Hibbert

Interview by Carole V. Bell

Talia Hibbert has a finely tuned sense of how to balance social observation and swoon. With Act Your Age, Eve Brown, she outdoes herself with a hilarious slow-burn romance between Eve, a chaotic ray of sunshine, and orderly grump Jacob, both of whom are on the autism spectrum.

The Brown sisters come from a close-knit family and have a lot in common: All three are attractive, witty and smart. What distinguishes Eve from her sisters? What was different about writing from her perspective?
Chloe and Dani Brown are successful, professional women. Their insecurities are mainly social—can they have richer lives, can they deal with romance? They never doubt their ability to take the world by storm in other ways.

Eve, unlike her sisters, did poorly at school, and it’s always made her feel like a failure. Her talents don’t lie in traditionally respected areas, so she feels silly and useless. She questions her worth in every way possible. Of course, she’d never admit that, not even to herself. Her sisters are grumpy and cynical, but Eve keeps things light—because she’s the baby of the family, and because she doesn’t see herself as a “proper adult.” I had to balance her determinedly upbeat attitude with her inner monsters, and that’s a very vulnerable thing to write. 

"He’s the kind of man who will judge you for your choice in curtains but not for your mental health. . ."

Can you tell us a bit about Eve's love interest, Jacob? What draws Eve to him, and why will readers love him?
Jacob is used to being rejected for his differences. He knows people will read him as cold or alien no matter what he does or how he feels, so he’s learned to reject them first. And possibly my favorite thing about him: He refuses to soften. He’s proud. That’s an important shield for someone moving through a world that devalues them—but it bites him in the butt when he meets someone who’s willing to see him as he really is.

He’s also very bitchy and sarcastic as hell, so his perspective was hilarious to write. He’s the kind of man who will judge you for your choice in curtains but not for your mental health, and I think readers will enjoy that. For her part, Eve reluctantly appreciates his humor. Even when they clash, she likes his rigidity because it’s true to who he is. So she kind of admires him against her will.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Act Your Age, Eve Brown.

If you think about it, Eve and Jacob are the embodiment of chaos and order. What brings Eve and Jacob together, and what makes them work?
Jacob is uncompromising because he’s very high-strung. His thoughts won’t slow down. He notices everything. He physically cannot stop caring. Eve, on the other hand, knows how to be flexible, how to relax, how to forgive. That makes her someone Jacob can learn from, and at the same time, she learns how to stand up for herself by watching him refuse to bend. 

But beneath those differences, they’re actually quite similar. They’re both respectful and sensitive where it matters; they’ll piss each other off, but they won’t cross certain lines. They both try really hard at everything they do. They both know the value of a home and a family, even if they learned those values in very different ways. 

Most of all, they fascinate each other. Eve could never be as subtly cutting as Jacob. Jacob doesn’t know how Eve can bear to be so bold. Neither of them can look away.

There’s an interesting duality between Eve’s confidence and her awareness that the world doesn’t value her as she does herself. As a fat, dark-skinned Black woman, Eve doesn’t fit society’s preconceptions about beauty and was pigeonholed in villainous or comedic side-character roles when she attended a performing arts school. Why did you choose to confront these issues more directly than you have in other books?
The Brown sisters have a really loving, supportive family, so they’ve been raised in this microenvironment of absolute acceptance. (Also, they have a lot of money, which helps.) But obviously, they also live in the real world, so they’re very aware of all the ways they’re marginalized. Chloe and Dani find it relatively easy to ignore because, whenever they’re hurting, they can remember that loving world they have back home. It’s like a thin layer of insulation that makes all the difference. But Eve doesn’t have the same experience of home that they do. She knows her family loves her, but she also knows that she confuses and exasperates and sometimes disappoints them. Her insulation has holes. 

On top of that, her life goals were, at one point, built around an industry that’s very image-conscious. When I was a kid, I was involved in performing arts, and they will tell you to your face, “You’re too fat for this, you’re too ugly for that.” So Eve’s hyperaware of how she’s perceived in a way her sisters aren’t. It makes sense that she’d think and talk about those issues more directly.

You’ve been open about the fact that, like Eve and Jacob, you are on the autism spectrum, but you’re representing different variations and aspects of autism with these two characters. Did you prepare in any special way to write this book?
Alongside my own experience of ASD, most of my friends are autistic or they have ADHD. (I personally believe there’s a lot of overlap.) And then there’s the fact that my mother is a teacher who specializes in behavioral needs. So when I was preparing to write this book and I was mentally building these characters, I sat down and wrote everything I already knew about being autistic and about the ways autistic people are treated. Then I tried to ask myself questions that kind of . . . exposed the things I didn’t know, the things I’d never had to think about.

After that, I spoke with my friends about the characters. It was great getting insight from other people, because I knew I wanted my main characters to be different from each other—or rather, to experience autism differently. And once the book was done, I worked with a sensitivity reader, too. Because like I said, autism is different for everyone, and I’d written characters who weren’t necessarily like me, so I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being a dick about it.

"The characters don’t instantly understand each other just because they’re both autistic. They do have similarities, but they have to discover those similarities the same way they’d discover anything else about each other."

More broadly, are there any particular considerations—good, bad or neutral—that are unique to telling a romance between two characters on the spectrum?
I think my autism informs everything I write. It takes genuine effort to write characters who don’t come off as autistic. My first explicitly autistic character was Ruth in A Girl Like Her, but actually, Ruth’s entire family has ASD—she’s just the only one who’s diagnosed. The characters don’t know that; I know that. (Then I got comments from autistic readers asking if that was the case, which made me very happy.) It’s kind of the same thing with the Brown Sisters series.

This book is the first time I’ve written both leads as autistic, and it was very satisfying because it’s a pairing that makes sense to me. It also reflects the relationship I’m in personally. However, I don’t think it was necessarily a unique romance writing experience. The characters don’t instantly understand each other just because they’re both autistic. They do have similarities, but they have to discover those similarities the same way they’d discover anything else about each other.

The one thing I’d say was unique was writing their similar experience of the world. They’re not treated the same: Jacob is a white man with a diagnosis, while Eve is a Black woman, and that’s a large part of why she isn’t diagnosed. That’s also why Eve has been forced to mask more and is better at socially masking than Jacob. 

But they both have this feeling of being out of step, of being purposefully misunderstood (it does feel purposeful, even if it’s not!) and of consistently misunderstanding. That experience has shaped them in different ways, and it was fun to show those different ways while acknowledging they shared a root.

How do the books you want to read differ from the books you want to write? Or is there no difference for you?
It’s 50-50. I do try to write the kinds of books I love to read. Warm and funny and hot, that’s my goal, so I feel inspired when I read authors like Danielle Allen or Mia Sosa. But I also enjoy super complicated stories with very high stakes. I love mysteries like the ones K.J. Charles weaves into her books, or adventures like the ones in a lot of Beverly Jenkins’ novels. 

With “Virgin River” and “Bridgerton” on Netflix, there’s been a lot of buzz about taking romance from the page to the screen. Is there a novel or series of yours that you’d most like to see adapted?
I think the Brown Sisters series would work very well on screen because they’re so . . .  rom-com-y, for want of a better word. The Princess Trap would probably make a good adaptation, too. There’s a fake engagement and an evil royal family and so on. Very soapy. (I love soapy.) 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Act Your Age, Eve Brown is great on audiobook! Narrator Ione Butler goes straight for the heart but never loses the humor.

Did the COVID-19 pandemic change your reading habits? What were some of the books that helped get you through this incredibly challenging year?
Before the pandemic, I would read whenever I had free time and a good book. These days, I read in gluts of please-help-me-escape desperation, interspersed with lengthy periods of listless, bookless apathy. I’m also much slower now, and I struggle to remember what I’ve read. But I definitely remember Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t, which came out last year. It was a cozy historical rom-com delight, and I felt like it woke me up. 

Get a Life, Chloe Brown was many readers’ first introduction to your writing, but you have a whole body of work you self-published. How does this work compare to the Brown Sisters trilogy, and where do you recommend readers start who want to dive into your backlist?
The Brown Sisters series was the first time I consciously set out to write a rom-com, so I suppose the main difference is that my other books aren’t as hooky or light. There’s still a ton of banter and sarcasm, but the stories don’t have those classic rom-com tropes. They do, however, have tons of classic romance tropes, like friends-to-lovers or only-one-bed. They also have a lot of mental health representation, a lot of family dynamics and a lot of sex. For readers who like more domestic, cozy stories, I would recommend starting with the Ravenswood series. For readers who like a bit more angst, try Work for It. 

 

Author photo by Ed Chappell UK.

Talia Hibbert outdoes herself with Act Your Age, Eve Brown a hilarious slow-burn romance between Eve, a chaotic ray of sunshine, and orderly grump Jacob.

YA FictionYA

Rita Williams-Garcia

Interview by Carole V. Bell

Rita Williams-Garcia is one of the most acclaimed authors of children’s literature working today. Her many prizes include a Newbery Honor and three Coretta Scott King Awards, and she has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Though she is best known for her middle grade novels, including One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven, her new book, A Sitting in St. James, is for older teens and adults. It’s a vividly rendered portrait of the putrid institution of white Creole plantation culture in antebellum Louisiana.

Who and what is A Sitting in St. James about?
The book follows the life of a plantation mistress, Madame Sylvie, but is really about everyone connected to the big plantation house. Madame Sylvie survived the French and Haitian Revolutions and a forced marriage at 13, along with a heap of suffering and humiliation. Now 80, Madame feels entitled to all that she wants—specifically, a portrait sitting. Ultimately, Madame’s insistence on the portrait affects the lives of her son, her grandson, the granddaughter she denies, the enslaved people on the plantation and an unusual young boarder.

How did you come up with the book’s central premise?
The story came to me in pieces over time, through a daydream, a dream and a boy. In the middle of a faculty residency lecture, I daydreamed about a teen grooming his horse. I realized he was thinking of a boy, a fellow West Point cadet whom he was separated from and missed. At another residency, I awakened one morning after dreaming of a woman singing in an African language. In that dream, a young woman had been chased by white men. She couldn’t outrun them, but she managed to throw her baby into the ocean. I remember that her singing was joyful.

About a year later, I was part of a panel discussion at a screening of Stanley Nelson’s documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. A boy of maybe 12 tearfully asked, “Why do they hate us?” They, the police. They, white people. My answer was something like, “When they see us, they don’t see human beings.” I felt I owed him more of an explanation. Almost instantly, the images of the West Point cadet, the African mother saving her baby from capture, a head of cabbage and an elderly woman lifting her neck with vanity and pride while sitting for her portrait came together as a story and as my answer to the boy at the screening.

“The more humanity we see, the better we can judge, acknowledge, understand and even indict. There is the horror, and there is also the hope. I wouldn’t be here if not for the people who endured but also loved.”

The book is steeped in history. What research did you do? 
With all projects that require research, I comb through a lot but include only what is needed to tell the story. I began with online digital archives of local newspapers from the antebellum period, both in French and in English, just to see what was going on and what my characters would be aware of. I speak no French, so my French dictionary was always nearby. I made notes of goods and services from pages of newspaper ads. I visited my neighborhood libraries to research everything from the French and Haitian Revolutions, early Louisiana and Louisiana Creole history, the Battle of New Orleans, the presidential political scene of 1860, the culture of West Point and oil painting in the mid-19th century. 

I studied the Kouri-Vini, or Louisiana Creole language, to hear the voices of the people. There are online sites that offer dictionaries and even tutorials, but ultimately, I deferred to experts to verify and correct my usage. I read plantation letters, journals and ledgers to get firsthand detail of daily plantation life. I read narratives of survivors of slavery in Louisiana that have been collected in government archives, just to have those voices with me, although the central focus of the story is on the Guilberts, whose family owns the plantation.

To portray a working sugar plantation, I had to read about every aspect of sugar-cane planting, harvesting and production, but nothing took the place of being there. As much as I hate to fly, I boarded planes to venture south and visited the Laura, Whitney and Magnolia Mound estates. These plantations and museums stand as acknowledgements of a cruel past but also as relics of pride for culture. I felt that this coupling of a cruel past along with domesticity and pride was what I had to capture in the Guilberts at Le Petit Cottage.

What was the most challenging aspect of this story to get right?
I am an outsider to this historic culture. I had to forget what my North Carolina-born grandmother told me about her grandparents and great-grandparents who were survivors of slavery, because North Carolina isn’t Louisiana. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of A Sitting in St. James.

In a note included with advance editions of the book, referring to slavery and its legacies, you wrote, “At no other time in our nation’s history have readers sought out more this examination and conversation.” Why do you think now is a particularly important moment for this reflection?
I’ve revised this answer 10 times. I have been watching the trial of the police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd. I have become that boy who asked, “Why do they hate us?” And then I have my answer and I get angry. I’m a person in my 60s who sees the present as a cycle. We fight for rights because we experience inequities and brutalities, we get rights, we move forward, and then we repeat the cycle. What is happening—the murder of and violence against people of color, the suppression of rights, the unequal access to health care—is not new. It’s part of the cycle. 

We need to talk openly about what is happening to people because of their race, ethnicity and gender, because the cycle continues. We see it happening before our eyes daily. Each and every one of us has to become the conscience of this country by what we say and do. People are being killed or brutalized on the basis of simply existing. We are not too far from our enslaved ancestors. We have to speak up and act up when the unconscionable is normalized. But we have to talk before there can be any reparations. We have to be unafraid to have uncomfortable conversations with an emphasis on listening.  

You made another statement I found powerful. You wrote that readers will “find hope in the end” of this story. Hope is often a scarce commodity when we discuss matters of race in America. Where will readers find hope in this book? 
I hope to have humanized the Guilberts in a way that allows us to feel a range of emotions about them. Do we root for them? Curse them? Laugh at them? Notice, I’m endeavoring to give to white slaveholders what they failed to see in my ancestors. It’s my hope that if we see the human and not the monster in them (although, yes, they do monstrous things), we will see the suffering and inhumane treatment that they inflict as real, and from there, we can see the survivors of their treatment as real. My intention is that the more humanity we see, the better we can judge, acknowledge, understand and even indict. There is the horror, and there is also the hope. I wouldn’t be here if not for the people who endured but also loved. I want to pass that on to the reader.

Author photo of Rita Williams-Garcia courtesy of Ferdinand Leyro.

Though she is best known for her middle grade novels, Rita Williams-Garcia’s new novel, A Sitting in St. James, is for older teens and adults. It’s a vividly rendered portrait of the putrid institution of white Creole plantation culture in antebellum Louisiana.

FictionComing of Age

White Ivy

Review by Carole V. Bell

Ivy Lin is no monster, but sometimes, when sufficiently motivated, she does monstrous things. She doesn’t just covet what others have; she is consumed by cravings for wealth, status and a boyfriend whose all-American (in her mind, this means white and patrician) good looks are nothing like her own.

In Chinese American author Susie Yang’s debut novel, we meet Ivy at several different stages of life. She grows from fretful child to moody and self-loathing junior grifter. By her late 20s, she has evolved into a smooth, sophisticated adult, determined to attain her American ideal by any means necessary. Her looks and circumstances have improved, but her desperation never fully evaporates.

Rather than a traditional thriller, White Ivy is a slow-burning, intricate psychological character study and coming-of-age story full of family secrets and foreboding. Ivy isn’t an outsider simply because she’s an immigrant; she stands out even within her own deeply dysfunctional Chinese American family. Their treatment of Ivy exposes the minor harms of everyday life—the tiny slights and subtle hits that leave marks that never fade. Alienation appears to be Ivy’s natural state, and this is never more clear than when she is closest to getting what wants: popularity, respect and, most of all, a romantic relationship with her childhood crush, the beautiful scion of an old-money New England family.

Despite the book’s inevitable ending, Yang allows her main character ambiguity. Ivy is strangely, uncomfortably relatable and ultimately unknowable. Her transgressions are mostly minor, yet her sometimes vicious inner monologue shows that she has the capacity for far harsher misdeeds. Perhaps that is the point—that the dividing line between ordinary wrongs and acts of true evil is razor thin. So when signs start to suggest that something very bad is about to happen, the violent act is all the more jarring.

Ivy brings to mind other desperate, liminal characters, such as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. Readers will find a lot to appreciate in this sharply observed psychological thriller.

Ivy Lin is no monster, but sometimes, when sufficiently motivated, she does monstrous things. She doesn’t just covet what others have; she is consumed by cravings for wealth, status and a boyfriend whose all-American (in her mind, this means white and patrician) good looks are nothing like her own.

YA FictionYA

Malla Nunn

Interview by Carole V. Bell

Malla Nunn is the author of four highly praised crime novels for adults, as well as the young adult novel When the Ground Is Hard, which won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature. Her new YA novel, Sugar Town Queens, tells the story of a biracial teen girl named Amandla who lives with her unstable white mother, Annalisa, in the impoverished neighborhood of Sugar Town on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa. Amandla discovers a secret that Annalisa has long hidden from her, and the revelation upends both of their lives. 

You were born in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and have lived in the U.S. and Australia, but South Africa takes precedence in your fiction. What is it about South Africa that commands your imagination?
I ask myself that question all the time! My childhood was embedded in the smell, dirt and heat of rural Eswatini, and those memories have a powerful hold on me. My attachment to southern Africa is confounding. Being there ties me in knots. I swing between anger, anxiety and a hopeless, blinding love for the place. Call it “unfinished business” or “unrealized trauma,” but southern Africa owns a piece of my heart that no other place can lay claim to.

When the Ground Is Hard by Malla Nunn book coverYou wrote your first mystery series for the adult market, but your two most recent books are for young adults. What drew you to writing for teens?
Crime writers spend a lot of time delving into the dark side of human emotions. I love that so many YA stories cover hard topics and still work their way to hope. There’s also a special magic in firsts. First love. First “best friend forever.” First time realizing that your parents are flawed. First broken heart. The path to the future is still being built, and that gives teenagers a special power. Crafting a story with struggle and hope at its heart is deeply satisfying.

I love that teenagers are on the cusp of making discoveries about life and love and what the future might hold. Amandla is on the bridge from girlhood to adulthood, and that’s what makes her life and her experiences in the township so special. She’s old enough to be aware of the dangers of Sugar Town but young enough to dream of a better life.

Dark and long-buried family secrets are at the heart of Sugar Town Queens, but it’s also a coming-of-age story about a girl going through typical teen experiences. What inspired the novel, and what made you want to tell it through the eyes of a teen girl?
The inspiration for Sugar Town Queens comes from real-life moments when I’ve wondered what my life might have looked like had my parents stayed in southern Africa instead of migrating to Australia. In that “what-if” dream space, my visions of poverty and helplessness are tempered by memories of growing up in a close-knit community with countless aunties and friends.

Setting is incredibly important in this novel, and you do a beautiful job of making Annalisa and Amandla’s home come alive on the page. How did you accomplish this?
Years ago, I sent my father a link to a photo essay of “poor whites” living in a township and basically said, “Why should I feel sorry for people who were given every advantage by the government and did nothing with it?” My father’s answer, “I’m sad for everyone who has to live such a hard life,” cooled my anger. Life in the townships is hard. For everyone. When it came time to write Sugar Town Queens, the township location was there waiting for me, but it was tempered by my father’s humanity. 

What is unique about South Africa is that the young are living in the shadow of a dream that felt so close to being realized after Mandela’s release.

Evoking Amandla and Annalisa’s home came easily, and I wasn’t surprised to find (through my father and older sister) that the first house we lived in as a family was a one-room shack with dirt floors and no running water. Call it root memory. I knew every detail of Amandla’s home even though I was too young to recall sleeping on the floor with my siblings.  

The racial dynamics of contemporary, post-apartheid South Africa play a prominent role in the story, as the novel takes us into intimate spaces within vastly different segments of a stratified and still somewhat segregated society. How much of what we see on the page comes from research and how much from your own personal experience?
Pretty much everything that made it into the pages of Sugar Town Queens has a personal component. The location, Sugar Town, is partly based on a “government area” that my mixed-race cousins were forced to move to after their homes inside Durban city were reclassified as “whites only.” On my rare visits back to southern Africa, I have moved (in the space of a few hours) from a rarified beach suburb with ocean views to a one-room tin shack in the country. The gap between rich and poor is shocking. 

Amandla’s journey takes her from the bottom rung of society, where a majority of Black South Africans still live, to the very top of the economic system, where white South Africans still dominate. I have seen and lived this disparity in real life and real time, so no research was needed.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Sugar Town Queens.

Throughout the book, I got the sense that the late South African president and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela had left an indelible feeling of idealism among South Africans—a multiracial, egalitarian national dream that had not yet been reached but was still held sacred. Do you think the idealism of Amandla and her friends is unique to young South Africans, or is it more universal?
The idealism of Amandla and her friends is deeply rooted in South African soil, but it’s also universal. Social inequality and poverty are part of Amandla’s life, but millions of girls around the world share the same struggles. In a strange way, the more location-specific the struggle, the more universal it becomes.

What is unique about South Africa is that the young are living in the shadow of a dream that felt so close to being realized after Mandela’s release. They were promised freedom and opportunity and watched those promises disappear before their eyes. The disappointment and anger is fresh. Reality has fallen short of Mandela’s promises, and a hunger for justice and change has ignited a fire in a new generation of South Africans.

Connection is such an important part of Amandla's culture, yet she and her mother are living very disconnected, isolated lives at the start of the novel. Could you talk about the concept of Ubuntu, how it informs the book and what that means to Amandla?
Ubuntu is the concept that “a person is a person through other people.” We are all connected together, and this sense of togetherness is necessary for us to live a full and meaningful life. Both Amandla and her white mother are so focused on getting out of Sugar Town that they miss the opportunity to connect with others. When Amandla is forced to ask her neighbor for help, she finds kindness and connection. One brief visit opens Amandla’s world up to other people and other ways of doing things. She begins to live more fully inside Sugar Town, and when danger comes to her door it is Ubuntu, not isolation, that saves her.

Malla Nunn discusses her new YA novel, Sugar Town Queens, which tells the story of a biracial teen girl named Amandla who lives with her unstable white mother, Annalisa, in the impoverished neighborhood of Sugar Town on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa.

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