Appearance Versus Reality, a guest post by Kara A. Kennedy

How far would you go to convince yourself that everything is fine?

Like most people, I’ve had my fair share of platonic friendships and romantic relationships where things veered into unhealthy territory – and this was always wildly nuanced, with both parties often being unfair to each other. In my debut novel, the sapphic YA speculative thriller I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU, I set out to depict a variety of relationships between teenage girls where there is no wholly perfect person. My goal, although I didn’t realize it at first, was to communicate this message to a young adult audience in a way that felt relatable and interesting rather than condescending and preachy.

In I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU, seventeen-year-old Maya has been friends with Alana for years, and romantically involved with her for most of their high school experience. She loves Alana deeply throughout the entire narrative, even when outsiders (friends, family members, therapists) are begging her to examine the toxic nature of their relationship. Maya is able to recognize that she doesn’t feel great around Alana – when she makes snide comments about her college acceptances, when she scorns how often Maya cries – but can’t quite figure out how to reconcile those bad feelings with her long-felt affection.

For a fully-grown adult, this is incredibly challenging. For a teenager? It could be almost impossible. This was the main reason I chose to depict an emotionally abusive relationship between two teenage girls in my YA debut – with the fervent hope it will reach the readers who need it.

When I first shared early drafts of the book with friends, I was floored by how many of them, across demographics, told me either that they related to Maya and Alana’s relationship immediately, or that the book had helped them realize a previous relationship or friendship had been toxic. This was a green flag in that I knew I was hitting on a topic that could potentially help a lot of readers, but also broke my heart. In a perfect world, everyone would understand that with love must come kindness, care, and respect; the truth is that, especially in the adolescent years when we struggle to figure out who we are, it’s easy to lash out, and for that lashing out to become routine.

Near the end of the book, Maya says about Alana, “we were two girls who loved each other until it became easier to hurt each other.” Reflecting on my own experiences as I crafted Maya and Alana’s dynamic, this was something I knew I needed to focus on: the way that victims of emotional abuse often learn to adapt and do whatever they need to survive. As the two girls move through high school, Alana feels threatened by Maya’s female friendships and even her relationship with her older sister; through subtle, Machiavellian moves, she systematically isolates Maya from anyone who might suggest they’re anything less than the perfect couple.

In a relationship as claustrophobic as theirs, the two girls become incredibly intertwined – and, for better or for worse, similar. Maya learns that when someone questions her relationship, it’s much easier to channel her inner Alana and lash out with anger than to actually look inward. To step back and admit that she might be wrong? That’s a bridge too far, something too frightening to contemplate, because it would mean admitting that her dynamic with Alana is unhealthy. Even scarier, abusive. Maya has been taught to defend Alana at all costs. She believes that her best friend, the girl she fell in love with, is inherently good, kind, and loving, and that everyone else’s perception of her is warped.

This, too, was an experience that felt urgent to depict for teens. Through the filtered and edited lens of social media, it’s so easy to think that you’re seeing an endless stream of people for whom life is simple and perfect. It’s much harder to recognize that what you’re actually seeing is a highlight reel. As a teenager, a close friend once confessed to me that she envied how things “came easily” to me – when I asked what she meant, she told me she struggled with her homework every night, but I could just sit down and get it done. The reality was that I struggled as much as she did with schoolwork, I just hadn’t mentioned it to her because I felt insecure about it. This was such a clarifying moment for me, to realize that appearances and reality can conflict so dramatically.

As the tension in I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU ramps up, Alana goes missing after an argument with Maya – who instantly rushes to blame herself, worrying that by initiating a breakup conversation with Alana, she went too far. Writing this book with a teenage audience in mind, I was careful to make sure we heard opposing points of view from other characters, ranging from Maya’s father to her sister Jazmine to new potential love interest Rowan. I wanted to be clear that whenever Maya went to extreme lengths to convince not just outsiders, but herself, that her relationship was healthy, a voice of reason popped up.

That voice of reason also cuts through with another message: falling victim to manipulation like Alana’s does not make you weak. Maya believes Alana’s cutting insults because Alana has worked hard to build a foundation of trust between them. The title of the book is taken from a promise that Alana first makes to Maya as a preteen: “I will never leave you,” she repeats often in the years to come. It’s an almost impossible promise to make to anyone, but especially in the adolescent era when change comes fast and unrelenting. In reality, it’s okay to leave someone who is making you feel small. It’s okay to walk away from something that started out wonderful, but twisted itself into something dark and wrong and painful.

One of my personal favorite lines comes near the end of the novel when Maya reassures herself, “to save myself, I can do anything.” If there’s one message I would love teen readers to take away from I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU, it’s this.

Meet the author

KARA A. KENNEDY has been telling ghost stories—and sometimes living them—since childhood. She holds a BA in Professional Writing from Penn State University, where she worked as a writing tutor for years. Kara is an Author Mentor Match alumna and a Pitch Wars ’21 mentee. She lives in Pennsylvania with her partner and their two kittens, Roanoke and Renegade. I Will Never Leave You is her debut novel. Find Kara online at karakennedywrites.com and follow her on X/Twitter and Instagram at @karaaislinn, and on TikTok at @karakennedywrites.

https://www.karakennedywrites.com/
https://www.instagram.com/karaaislinn
https://twitter.com/karaaislinn
https://www.tiktok.com/@karakennedywrites
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734355/i-will-never-leave-you-by-kara-a-kennedy/

About I Will Never Leave You

This emotional debut thriller follows a teen girl being haunted by the ghost of her toxic ex-girlfriend, who gives her a chilling ultimatum—help her possess another girl or go down for her murder.

“A blistering exploration of the ugliest and tenderest parts of love, Kennedy turns the classic ghost story on its head.”—Courtney Gould, author of The Dead and the Dark

Maya has always belonged to Alana. After four years of dating, and on the precipice of graduating high school, Maya has been too terrified to consider the idea of life outside of their volatile relationship. Until she finds the courage to break up with Alana while they’re hiking in Southern California.

Then Alana goes missing. As the police get involved and the media run wild with the story, everyone seems to think that Maya is lying about Alana’s disappearance. Secretly, Maya knows they’re right: if Alana’s dead, she’s the one to blame.

But that’s not Maya’s only secret. Alana isn’t gone, not really—and she isn’t going to let Maya go so easily…

ISBN-13: 9780593707463
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Publication date: 07/23/2024
Age Range: 12 – 17 Years

Filed under: Guest Post