About the Book:
Everything was perfect in the small town of Maple Lakes…until the cheerleaders started screaming.
Clover wishes something would happen in her boring high school – so she can spend more time with her crush Brody, covering it for the school newspaper. But she never wished for this…
When cheerleader Abigail starts screaming in the middle of an exam, people laugh. But as more girls start breaking into uncontrollable screaming fits, it’s clear something is seriously wrong. The authorities don’t have a clue what’s happening – so it’s up to Clover and Brody to investigate. What they discover is a darkness beneath the perfect veneer of Maple Lakes – and it is spreading fast.
Find on Goodreads. Find on Bookshop.org UK (affiliate link).
About the Author:
Holly started her writing career as a news journalist, where she was nominated for Best Print Journalist of the Year. She then spent six years working as an editor and relationship advisor for a youth charity, helping young people with their relationships and mental health. Inspired by what she saw, she started writing teen fiction, educating young people about feminism and healthy relationships. Alongside her writing, Holly has a keen interest in women’s rights. She’s the youth ambassador for Women’s Aid and tours the country educating young people about healthy relationships. She’s also worked with SANE as an ambassador and ran the ReThink mental health book club.
She read Journalism Studies as The University Of Sheffield where she achieved a first class degree, and her dissertation won The Sheffield Star Prize. She also edited the Student Union’s women’s magazine – Stiletto – during her time there.
Interview:
Pitch your book in 10 words!
A feminist YA thriller where the girls start uncontrollably screaming
The girls of Maple Lake are screaming – and no one knows why. What prompted you to choose screaming as the symptom?
I can never start a novel until I know the opening line, and they always appear out of nowhere for me, like they’ve been dropped out of the sky by a stork. I knew I wanted to write about social contagions, but I was still circling the idea, when, suddenly, the line arrived – ‘The first girl to scream was a cheerleader’. I was so excited.
However, as I started writing the book, I realized that screaming is really having a ‘moment’. There’s the new Florence and The Machine album – Everybody Scream – and women around the world are setting up local ‘screaming clubs’. I feel there’s something about screaming that’s a real female form of communication…and there’s also this sense of dread and fear and frustration as women’s rights are being rolled back across the globe, and nobody seems to care very much…and it makes me want to scream!
The book is set in a small American town during the autumn (with all the gorgeous leaves that give the town its name – Maple Lake). How and why did you choose this setting?
I loved writing about Maple Lakes and I set it in an ‘instagram-famous’ town for a few reasons. I wanted the book to be set in a small, seemingly-safe, but suffocating community, where a social contagion is more likely to really take off.
I was also inspired by all the awful news stories that go ‘viral’ and then wannabe tiktok detectives descend on a town, and swarm it, and dehumanise the people at the heart of the story to get likes and online clout.
But, mainly, I have always been fascinated by the concept of ‘spooky season’ and how it treads this weird line between cosy pumpkin patch flavoured lattes and Gilmore Girls re-reuns with violent horror films where women are often chopped up in awful ways for entertainment. As a feminist writer, I always want to confront ‘what’s actually scary?’ about the world we’re living in? And why don’t we like giving these horrors more attention?
The story unfolds through the eyes of Brody (aspiring journalist) and Clover (photographer), but also through interviews with a range of other characters. What led you to choose the narrative framing of a documentary? How did you choose which characters to let speak – and at what points?
I absolutely LOVED this writing device. Oh my, I had such a blast writing those documentary sections. They fulfilled some really important functions. Mainly, they gave me a place to air the fascinating research into screaming, and hysteria, and social contagions that I’d spent a year un-earthing. I’ve started doing some events for this book, and the audience are just riveted by this stuff.
It was also a great device to hand the mic over to all the interesting characters you get in any small town.
Finally, I wanted the book to have a reflective angle, to show what the town has and hasn’t learned since their girls started screaming. Most of the book, as you say, is told in a dual POV present tense, which gives that sense of dread and immediacy, but the documentary sections allow the screamers to breath, to learn, or not learn…
There is such a pervasive sense of fear and tension in the book. What tips do you have for writers trying to evoke a strong atmosphere?
Rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. I was so harsh in my line-by-line edits of this manuscript, as, I feel if you’re trying to drive up fear and tension, there can be absolutely no narrative slack. No unnecessary description, or dialogue, or meandering plot points.
On top of that, it’s the usual helpful culprits. Pay attention to the weather (the screaming all occurs during a freaky month of almost solid-mist), descriptions of creepy things that may or may not be relevant, short sentences, short chapters, finishing those chapters on cliff-hangers. I had a moodboard for this book – with images from The Crucible, Stranger Things, or the painting of ‘The Scream – and just having those hanging over my laptop helped.
You’re known for dealing with feminist issues and this book explores the theme of sexual violence against women and girls and the different forms it can take. Why did you want to tackle this issue now?
Sexual violence against women and girls is a topic I write about frequently because, sadly, if I want to tell the truth about the world we live in, this is a near-constant reality for every girl. It’s the virus we’ve learned to normalise and tolerate, despite the huge long-lasting impact it has on its victims and how that ripples out to our society as a whole.
It’s always bad, but that issue feels particularly awful right now, as we watch world leaders boast about abusing women and still win elections, as we see the Epstein files get released and not one man being arrested for what they contain, as the Manosphere becomes increasingly powerful in radicalizing young men online in believing things like drunk women deserve to get raped. Why aren’t we all screaming? That’s sort of what my book is asking. Because I feel like I need to, pretty much twenty-four-seven.
Clover and Abigail come from two very different backgrounds but both share a similar experience. Why did you want to contrast their stories whilst not pitting them against each other as most would expect between a nerd and the head cheerleader?
We cannot fight these fights divided. Girls and women need to realise we have so many things that unite us than what drive us apart. It was also important to me to show there’s no such thing as a perfect victim, and that’s a dangerous narrative we need to push back against. You can be a bitchy girl at school and still not deserve something bad to happen to you. You can still be telling the truth and deserve to be believed.
Clover has had a crush on Brody for two years – and Brody comes to realise he likes Clover a lot. What was your favourite moment to write between the pair?
I loved these two, I was gunning for them so much. My favourite part between Brody and Clover wasn’t so much the romance, but watching Brody’s journey of becoming a true ally. What does it take to start listening more than you talk? To truly hold space for what girls are trying to tell you? I hope lots of boys pick up this book and are inspired by him.
Please recommend a UKYA book you think readers will love.
ACE OF SPADES* by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé – she’s one of the most exciting new writers to come out of UKYA pool, and this is such a gripping page-turner of a thriller, with dark academia vibes, but also asking confronting questions about race.
Thank you, Holly!
*Affiliate link
#UKYASpotlight 
Leave a comment