July’s YA fiction: from coercive control to Sapphic pirate romance

“Oh, quit being so sensitive. I’m dead. I can talk to you however I want.” Eighteen-year-old Alana’s death seems – to the reader – like the perfect opportunity for her girlfriend Maya to escape from her coercive clutches, but things are not quite so simple in Kara A Kennedy’s debut, I Will Never Leave You (Ink Road, £8.99). Alana is determined to haunt her, and has further plans to possess Maya’s new potential love interest. Faced with the possibility of being charged with Alana’s murder, Maya struggles to do the right thing.

Kennedy uses the supernatural to explore the impact and aftermath of manipulative relationships well here; while it’s hopefully clear to a reader from early on how toxic (if that word hasn’t been yet stripped of all meaning from social media overuse) their dynamic is, it’s also evident how vulnerable Maya is, having isolated herself from friends that might provide support or a second opinion.

“Alana taught me long ago that everyone I love will leave me, and they’ll do it because I’m too difficult.” The girl who swooped into her life and made her feel special is also the one who’s convinced her she’s a problem; a series of flashbacks flesh out the backstory and convey the dizzying appeal of feeling “chosen” by a charismatic individual. This claustrophobic thriller is an unsettling but memorable read.

Works for young people inspired by classical mythology tend to fall into one of two categories. There’s the Percy Jackson variety, action-packed and inviting further research into the original myths, and then there are the retellings, which – like recent work for adults by Pat Barker and Madeleine Miller – depend somewhat on being familiar with the tales, and being able to appreciate the new, often feminist lens that a contemporary writer brings to the table.

Bea Fitzgerald’s The End Crowns All (Penguin, £14.99), following on from her successful Persephone retelling (Girl, Goddess, Queen), is firmly in the latter camp. Here we are in Troy, with the prophetic Cassandra lamenting that “No one listens to a woman on matters of war” and the beautiful Helen noticing that her new husband may not value her as much as she imagined: “All I do is worry about how he feels, and how often does he stop to seriously consider my happiness?”

It’s a pleasing set-up for an “enemies to lovers” romance; as Helen puts it, “I’m the girl who started a war and you’re the one who won’t stop talking about it”. Along the way there is much commentary – mostly managing to be subtle – about what it means to be a woman in that society, and the extent to which Helen is a trophy rather than a person in her own right.

“Women leave their husbands every day and no battles are fought,” Helen notes, “but leave your husband to go to a city as rich as Troy and suddenly there’s an army assembled. Do you actually think it’s me they want?” When considering her affections for her husband, in light of her new relationship with Cassandra, she reflects: “It wasn’t a lie. It’s how we’re taught to act in a marriage to stay safe.” As commentary it is delightful, as its own story slightly less so; the enthusiasm for and interest in the original myths need to be present for maximum enjoyment of this book.

The same is not quite true of Sarah Street’s A Sea of Wolves (Hodder, £9.99), loosely inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, although it shares that slightly frustrating sense of inhabiting a world where divine forces override individual agency. Here be pirates and curses, and a great number of familiar tropes – when we reach the line “what kind of pirate-hunter could ever stand to be loved by a pirate?”, it is tempting to engage in some eye-rolling. Mersey (the hunter) and Golde (the pirate) are, we know, destined to end up kissing.

But I’m not sure we can argue that YA has too many Sapphic pirate romances, not yet (there are some who’d argue we could never have too many), and if it at times veers toward cliche (“I kissed her, and it felt like the first shuddering breath I ever took”), there’s also a comfort in knowing that we have understood the kind of story we’re reading.

The enemies-to-lovers trope (blame BookTok for how often complex titles are reduced to this) also appears in Leanne Egan’s Lover Birds (Harper Fire, £8.99), a work that is part love letter to Liverpool and part a deeply satisfying account of friendship, love and conflict. Narrator Lou has been told, often, how “insufferable” she is, and tends to wear the label as a badge of honour, but when posh new girl Isabel arrives from London and seems to take an instant dislike to her, it gets under her skin.

Lou’s (thankfully temporary) cluelessness about the attraction bubbling between the two is forgivable given how much else is going on; she’s struggling to manage her new diagnosis of ADHD and also trying to be a good friend in the face of a serious falling-out between two of her closest pals. There’s also more than just an identity to discover here; the class differences between the two girls (including Isabel’s embarrassment over Lou’s Scouse ways) are a genuine obstacle and treated with care.

This is Egan’s first book, and she does a superb job at delving into what might seem like “typical” teen drama; the shifting dynamics within the friend group are particularly well handled. The intensity of friendship woes at that (or indeed any) age are not to be underestimated. But the real star of the show is the romance, and it’s gorgeously done. “Something in me just clicks awake,” Lou thinks, a little dazed. “Is this how it’s supposed to feel when somebody kisses you?” This, in contrast to her stance a few minutes before – “I’ve kissed loads of lads, and it’s not really anything. It’s just a thing you do. But it isn’t all magical and life-changing, like it is in books. It doesn’t feel like anything, really” – is the sort of moment that stays with readers years later. It’s the sort of moment that will bring, for some, an awakening just like the narrator’s.

For slightly younger teens, there are similar vibes in Maggie Horne’s Noah Frye Gets Crushed (Firefly Press, £7.99), which juxtaposes Noah’s excitement over her new friend Jessa moving to town with her uneasiness around her existing friends’ newfound obsession with boys. “Make a move? This is so embarrassing. I’m just parroting whatever garbage I’ve seen in teen movies,” Noah thinks as she’s encouraged to flirt with a guy in her class.

The set-up allows for smart commentary on the often daft ways girls are socialised to act once romance becomes a possibility, alongside the heart-warming humour of Noah being the last one in the world to figure out that she likes Jessa as more than just friends. “You just … didn’t seem like the type of kid to be worried about boys,” Noah’s mentor at a local animal shelter says tactfully, while her older sister is all set for a coming-out conversation and then thrown when it doesn’t happen. Endearing, hopeful, utterly adorable.