Hello there beautiful people. Casey here and I am here today to share our Simon and Schuster week with you all. So all this week we will be featuring YA books from Simon and Schuster UK the publisher all over our blog. From guest posts from some of their awesome authors, to reviews of their books and an AWESOME giveaway at the end where you can win some of these epic books we have been featuring all week!
So without further or do here is our second post of the week. Its the awesome author Abigail Haas.
Abigail Haas novel is called Dangerous girls and its OUT NOW in the UK! its nothing like she has written before.
Heres a Summary:
It’s Spring Break of senior year. Anna, her boyfriend Tate, her best friend Elise, and a few other close friends are off to a debaucherous trip to Aruba that promises to be the time of their lives.
But when Elise is found brutally murdered, Anna finds herself trapped in a country not her own, fighting against vile and contemptuous accusations. As Anna sets out to find her friend’s killer, she discovers harsh revelations about her friendships, the slippery nature of truth, and the ache of young love.
Awaiting the judge’s decree, it becomes clear to Anna that everyone around her thinks she is not only guilty, but also dangerous. And when the whole story comes out, reality is more shocking than anyone ever imagined...
Sounds fantastic doesn't it? I think this is my next read defiantly! So Abigail is here today to do a guest post about her writing rom-com novels to actually writing something very dark;
When I first got the idea for Dangerous Girls, I was nervous and scared. Not because it was a book about murder and betrayal, but because it was something very different for me: a psychological thriller. With seven romantic comedy novels under my belt (written as Abby McDonald), I felt comfortable writing in that genre. I knew the rules, how I liked to structure the book, the kind of chatty, easy-going narrative voice that readers liked. But writing something dark and twisted? This would be a whole new challenge for me.
Luckily, Dangerous Girls was a gift of a book. Writers will tell you, some novels are like pulling teeth, while others arrive fully-formed, just waiting for you to sit down at the keyboard and write it all out. DG was like that for me: from the very first moment I thought up the idea of a girl standing trial accused of murdering her best friend, I knew I wanted it to be a complex, twisted narrative. We would jump back and forth between the trial, life back in school when they first met, and the vacation in paradise that goes horribly wrong, using police interviews and TV transcripts to shed light on different sides of the story. But the challenge with this kind of structure is that it’s like a huge, intricate puzzle. If you do it right, the pieces all slot together perfectly. If you don’t, the reader is left with one big confusing mess.
Attacking DG’s structure and plot was the most enjoyable part of the writing experience, and something totally new for me. My other books have all gone smoothly from beginning to middle to end. This time, I was jumping all over the place—but I loved it. I could use a scene from the past to shed new light on an event in the current timeline, or show the motivations behind a photograph, and then see how other people in court or TV reacted to just the image on the page. I’ve always been an outliner, plotting out the whole book before I start, but usually I leave plenty to unfold as I write the book. This time, plotting was more important than ever. With a thriller, you’re trying to drop clues and hints to the reader the whole time, so I had to know exactly what was going to happen so I could plant that trail of breadcrumbs from the start.
I also loved delving more into the darker side of relationships and personalities. My YAs have always been fairly light and upbeat; the characters all deal with emotions, but the tone is always positive and uplifting in the end: stories of self-discovery and empowerment. I love writing that kind of book because I loved reading them as a teen, but I have to admit, it was really fun to explore into the darker, twisted sides of life in Dangerous Girls. Anna and Elise’s friendship starts out positive, but soon unravels into something really dependent and claustrophobic. Throw in jealousy over Anna’s relationship with Tate, and Elise’s wild sexual antics, and suddenly, their dynamic isn’t so innocent. Writing these elements rang just as true to me as the lighter relationships: when I was a teenager, I had sweet crushes on boys, but equally, I had feelings of power, and sexual discovery, and intense emotions surrounding friendship and loss. DG let me explore the other side of teenage experience, the darker emotions we like to repress and ignore.
In the end, Dangerous Girls is one of the books I’m most proud to have written, because it represents a new challenge to me: a new way of approaching my writing, and a different style that scared me at first, but I’m glad to have experienced. Now I can’t wait to write my next dark thriller!
Thank you Abigail! thanks for giving us your time! Dangerous girls sounds amazing. We do like Dark here at Dark Readers. Welcome to the Dark side! ;)
Dangerous Girls is out now in the UK and you can get it
HERE.
Please check here on the 9th for another exciting feature from Simon & Schuster.
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