Author: Makayla Aysien

6 Books I’d Love to See as Television Series

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It is not often that I find myself thinking “I’d like to see that on the screen!” Most of the books I have read fit into three categories: so good that the film would mess it up; so important that transforming into film would be unethical; or so terrible that no money, time, or effort should be wasted on this story. Occasionally, however, a story takes on a unique, colorful, and euphoric sort of life in my mind and I quickly fall into the belief that creating this visual experience in film would be a thing of cathartic beauty which would leave viewers breathless—and in this breathlessness, they would examine their own lives and improve upon them. That might be a bit idealistic, so, at the very least, I am talking about my own self-improvement. The following six books are the handful that I would watch as a television series in a heartbeat.

Cemetery Boys—Aiden Thomas. Cemetery Boys follows Yadriel, a young transgender boy born into a Latinx family of the brujx community in East Los Angeles. Brujx is the all-encompassing word for a community of brujos and brujas, which is a Spanish word generally translated as a sorcerer. When young brujos and brujas in the community come of age, they perform a ritual to gain their powers, which differentiate based upon gender. Yadriel, who was assigned the biological sex of female at birth, wants to prove that he is actually a young man by performing this ritual. After this, Yadriel goes to find the ghost that murdered his cousin, but in the process, he accidentally summons the spirit of Julian Diaz, one of his classmates. As the novel unfolds, the characters work to solve a mystery, an adorable love story takes place, and we grapple with the question of what a family truly is. 

This entire book is set to the backdrop of magic and colorful imagery, which I imagine people in the film industry would trip over to create. There are far too many neutral tones and darkness in television, but this book would take something that could be darkly lit and place pops of color and life everywhere. Besides that fact that it would be visually appealing, this book has LGBTQ+ representation written literally everywhere. It isn’t the kind of story that awkwardly sticks a gay best friend in the corner as an afterthought. The author of Cemetery Boys and all of the main characters are a part of the LGBTQ+ community, so the audience is made aware of real issues that far too many of them face, including homelessness and rejection by their family. What I especially love about this book, however, isn’t simply that the author raises these issues, but that they show a possible world where they find people who love them and those who were previously opposed grow to become accepting. This is the kind of sweet magic we should be putting on our screens.

Girls Save the World in This One—Ash Parsons. June has been obsessed with zombie films her whole life, especially a zombie apocalypse show called Human Wasteland and its dreamy lead character. When she and her two best friends head to ZombieCon to meet him and other prominent actors from zombie-themed films, she is ecstatic. When they arrive, however, some of the fans are acting a bit off. Before they know it, chaos breaks out and June discovers that it’s because real zombies are taking over ZombieCon. June must do everything she can to save her and her friends from the zombies, relying on the skills she has learned as such an avid fan. Along the way, she meets the star of Human Wasteland, and she learns what it means to be a leader in an unlikely situation. 

This is exactly the kind of hilarious, light nonsense I would love to see as a limited series. None of that Marvel-women-coming-together-in-one-scene-as-a-forced-show-of-feminism nonsense. The prospect of this show is giving off the vibes of Netflix’s new show “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”. It’s the perfect satire of those popular zombie shows, while also being powerful, sweet, and relatable (at least in the sense that an avid fan has wished for something like this to actually happen).

Macbeth—William Shakespeare. This play follows the titular character Macbeth on his quest to amass more power and take over as Scotland’s ruler. Persuaded by his wife, Lady Macbeth—and his own ambition—he sets out to obtain this position by any means necessary. Interwoven into the story are themes of love, murder, prophecy, and paranoia, as well as questions about proper gender dynamics, what it takes to be a good leader, why we seek power, and how we should seek power. 

Like many other Shakespeare plays, Macbeth has made it to the big screen many times, the most recent being at the end of 2021 with Denzel Washington playing Macbeth. Call me critical or filled with hubris, but I believe that we should give Macbeth more than a two hour movie. At the very least, it deserves to be a limited series so that we can properly explore the intricacies of this play. There is so much to unpack, and I haven’t seen a single rendition that fully encompasses this story. They’re either lacking the philosophical questions Shakespeare poses about how power corrupts and how a good ruler is made, or they play too far into modern notions of entertainment: blood, drama, sex, and violence (which is ironic because that is exactly what Macbeth covers in the play). Macbeth shouldn’t simply serve as entertainment. It should shock people so deeply that they begin to understand how malleable human nature is and undertake a strengthening of their own character. 

Ash Princess—Laura Sebastian. Ash Princess, which is now a finished trilogy, follows Theodosia, a young woman whose country was taken over when she was a child. She is forced to live among her captors, enduring abuse and ridicule. That is, until a series of events forces her to choose between continuing this life and fighting to regain her and her country’s freedom. This story raises themes of imperialism, colonization, and slavery. In typical Young Adult Fantasy fashion, these characters have powers, Theodosia herself having her own unique force. 

I thought the book series was excellent, but I did think there could have been more detailed storylines. In my vision of a television series adaptation, this story would not stay so much in the Young Adult genre. It would expand on the effects of colonization, and Theodosia would be less whiny. The books spend far too much time on her love triangle, and they don’t adequately show the strength that someone in her position and making those choices would require. In at least five seasons, I can see this story being the next Game of Thrones. 

Second First Impressions—Sally Thorne. Ruthie Midona likes to play it safe. She has a stable job, and her appearance is an absolute paradox—she is a young woman, but she dresses as if she were an elderly lady. Moreover, she works at a retirement villa called Providence. When Teddy Prescott enters her life, he is everything she is not: a motorcycle-riding, tattooed young man who has trouble committing to much of anything. He is everything she wants, though. When Teddy’s father, the owner of Providence, has him live on site with Ruthie and the other residents, Ruthie tries her best to avoid falling in love with him. He’ll be gone soon enough anyway. However, Teddy’s charm and persistence makes her efforts impossible. Every single character, not just Ruthie and Teddy, has a unique and quirky personality that everyone is sure to enjoy. 

When I imagine the setting of this novel, it brings me great peace. In my mind, the cottages of Providence are sporadically placed amid a giant garden-like plot of land. A staple of the novel is also the tiny, endangered turtles that wander around the grounds. This beautiful setting, as well as the eccentric characters that fill the novel, would create a fabulous limited series of absolute hilarity and romance. 

We Were Liars—E. Lockhart. This book follows Cadence, a member of the wealthy Sinclair family who spends their summer vacations on a private island with large estates, one for each little family. When Cadence is fifteen, she suffers a head injury, but doesn’t quite know how this happened to her. Over the next few years, she receives little communication from her two cousins and friend, who she normally spends the summers with. When she finally returns to the island, everyone seems a bit off, and she is pushed to uncover what actually happened to her when she was fifteen. This novel is filled with mystery and frustration over unnecessary wealth and class differences. In a shocking twist at the end (one that had me screaming in my car because I was listening to the audiobook), we are forced to think about how our actions can have severe consequences, even when they begin from someplace righteous. 

This would make an excellent limited series. It’s energetic, exciting, and traumatizing. The setting of a private island during summer would give us so many beautiful scenes. Most of all, I want to see this on the screen because it calls attention to wealth and class disparities, how money can corrupt our personalities, and how it can misguide even the best of our intentions. This is the kind of story humanity needs in order to see the true effect of our actions and become more conscious of our choices. 

An Exploration of Trauma Through YA Novels

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“My stars shine darkly over me. The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours. Therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.”

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 2.1.3–7

Content Warning: This article contains descriptions of domestic abuse, trauma, and suicide. Please continue reading with caution, and take care of yourselves.

People often talk about each other’s pain and trauma in the simplistic language of platitudes and clichés. Sometimes it’s because they don’t understand what another is going through, and other times they simply want another to feel better. Verbalizing assurance and love and thoughtfulness toward someone in this sort of situation is incredibly difficult, and it rarely helps to the degree which we intend. The truth is that most of us don’t possess the emotional tools to help others fix their lives or reframe how they perceive reality, and regardless of if we’ve endured something similar ourselves, we can never fully understand each other’s trauma. Sometimes, whether we are the person impacted by some trauma or the outsider watching its impact, we have to sit in our own misery, because there is nothing else we can do.

In this article, I will discuss two Young Adult books that examine trauma in the lives of two young women. The first, Sparrow, by Mary Cecilia Jackson, tells the story of the lives of the titular character Sparrow and her friend Lucas, before and after she experiences a brutal domestic attack by the hands of her boyfriend Tristan. The second, And We Stay, by Jenny Hubbard, intertwines the present experiences of the narrator Emily Beam with flashbacks of her life mere months before when a series of events led to the death of her boyfriend Paul. In considering these two books, we situate trauma amid the lives of two teenage girls and observe how each deals with her circumstances. As such, we see both the loneliness of pain and the delicate, slow inner strength that emerges from each of them. The quote from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which Sparrow also quotes, helps reflect the unique tones of these books. 

Sparrow is split into the perspectives of Savannah Darcy Rose—or Sparrow, as everyone calls her—and her friend Lucas before and after she is attacked, which depicts both someone enduring trauma and a loved one watching this pain fundamentally change the life of someone they deeply care about. Sparrow and Lucas are two talented ballet dancers who are made pas de deux partners for an upcoming performance of Swan Lake. I stumbled into this novel after searching “YA Romance” in a library database. This was one of the results, and I quickly checked it out without reading the description after I saw the tutu on the cover and my obsession with ballet got the best of me. Boy, was I shocked.

Sparrow begins a romance with Tristan, a popular boy in her class. He sweeps her off her feet with his gentleness and sweetness. She feels seen for the first time, and this is only intensified by the fact that Tristan enjoys great popularity among their peers. She quickly falls in love with him, and other people and commitments begin to slowly fade into the background.

When Lucas discovers this, he tries to tell Sparrow that Tristan isn’t the kind of person she thinks he is. He is mean and violent and gets away with anything he pleases because he has a rich and powerful father. Sparrow, newly in love, takes his warnings as signs of jealousy, but it quickly becomes apparent that Tristan is everything Lucas depicted him as, if not worse. He becomes dominating toward Sparrow, behavior that soon devolves into possessiveness and verbal abuse toward her. Not long after that, he starts physically abusing her.

Sparrow hides the truth from everybody. She lies to her family and friends, even when her injuries are obvious. She persuades herself that Tristan loves her; he can’t control his temper, and it was her fault for enabling it. She cuts herself off from everyone who truly loves her, until, one night, after suggesting to Tristan that they take a break from their relationship to focus on preparing for important upcoming events—her Swan Lake performance and his college applications—he becomes angrier than he has ever been with Sparrow. He takes her to a deserted location, hurts her until she is nearly dead, then deserts her. 

Sparrow is found and taken to the hospital, where she begins a long road to recovery. Her physical state is so damaged that even after months, she looks like a completely different person. Her mental state is even worse. She won’t speak to anybody. When her family takes her to see a therapist, she won’t even speak with her. 

Lucas is forced to stay on the sidelines as he watches Sparrow’s entire life fall apart. He cares for her deeply and wants to help fix her life, but he finds himself restrained by her refusal to speak with him and prove that Tristan was the one that attacked her. He begins his own self-destructive path that forces him to confront his own capacities for bringing about justice. 

After much time passes, Sparrow begins to open up to her therapist. Sparrow had prided herself as not being the girl who tells about the personal demons of others, but she learns that we don’t have to hold ourselves responsible for protecting those who hurt us. Our trauma is our trauma, and we deserve to treat ourselves with that recognition. In being honest with others, we can open ourselves up to being honest with ourselves. We don’t have to hide behind the experiences of other people because our reality is not less important than another’s.

And We Stay takes a slightly different perspective in focusing on the perspective of only one character: Emily Beam. Emily lives in a small town with her family, and her and her boyfriend Paul are coming to the end of their high school experience. Their lives are lightly infused with Christianity, though it becomes clear that both Emily and Paul have troubles with faith. Emily unexpectedly becomes pregnant, but she doesn’t want to keep the baby. She has dreams of attending Harvard, and having a baby would end those ambitions.

Paul, on the other hand, wants her to keep the baby. He thinks having an abortion is wrong and selfish. When Emily decides to break up with Paul, he is devastated. He tries to convince her to get back together—that they should even get married and start a family together. In a desperate attempt to change the situation, Paul brings a gun to school. Throughout the entire book, each character who knew Paul, even Emily, held the belief that Paul had never intended to hurt anybody. He had simply wanted things to go back to the way they were. In a panic, Paul used the gun to commit suicide.

After witnessing this, Emily’s parents pull her out of school. They help her get an abortion, then send her off to a boarding school. Emily meets a few nice people—her roommate K.T. and her French teacher Madame Colche. Her closest companions, however, are Emily Dickinson and her poetry, our Emily’s own poetry, and herself. Emily Beam, who had not written much in the way of poetry in the past, finds herself filled with words that she must form into poems. She writes poetry about Paul, her abortion, and her new life at boarding school. 

What is especially striking about And We Stay is the odd way that the reader feels like they are watching a story unfold through foggy glass. We see the remnants of what happened to Emily, and we hear memories of her past, but it reads exactly as one might recall a memory: short, dark, and undetailed. We don’t know a great deal about her emotional states, which makes me wonder if the author has forced the audience to feel like Lucas in Sparrow: the helpless friend who can guess what is going on in their friend’s mind, but isn’t privy to their entire reality. 

I spent the entire novel wondering why Jenny Hubbard named it And We Stay. The reasons are undoubtedly multifaceted, but one that I came away with is the dual nature of “staying,” both concerning people who have endured trauma and those who know someone who has endured trauma. Emily had people around her who stayed: her parents, her friends, her teachers, and Paul’s family. Some of these people were just around Emily, unaware of her past, but nonetheless loving and kind. While they did not step in and actively fix Emily’s life, their presence helped Emily live through her trauma. However, despite their assistance, in many ways Emily was the only person to help herself. She was the one who had to live with these experiences, who had replayed them over and over in her mind, who had to rebuild some semblance of herself and move on to live. In her own way, consciously or unconsciously, Emily decided to stay. 

While Sparrow and And We Stay depict traumatic events, they do so in such a light and gentle way that the entire experience felt like watching a feather float slowly downward. That might speak to the YA genre, but I would also argue that it speaks to the common and persistent nature of trauma. Trauma doesn’t go away easily, if ever. It lives with us, and we are forced to shape our lives and personalities around it. Moreover, I chose these books to discuss because I wanted to recognize that trauma doesn’t always need to be confronted with a loud voice or a show of having overcome such an event. As cathartic as that may be, we must also recognize that we can and more often confront trauma internally, silently, or alone. Strength doesn’t only emerge from brute force. Sometimes, we are the only ones who know about our own strength, and sometimes, we are the only person who decides to stay for ourself. I think human relationships are absolutely beautiful, but in no way can I deny that the most important relationship from which all other relational beauty emerges is the one we keep with ourself.

Our Favorite Tropes: 6 Recommendations and Why We Love Them

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This post is a collaboration between Makayla Aysien and Lauren Kuhman

Enemies to Lovers

The Hating Game—Sally Thorne. The Hating Game follows Lucy and Josh—two people who work for the same publishing company—who are forced to work in the same office space, and who absolutely despise each other. Lucy is sweet, colorful, passionate, and friendly, while Josh is tough, reserved, and intimidating, but no less passionate than Lucy. The two clash so often and so epically that their heated relationship is infamous at their little publishing company, Bexley & Gamin. When a promotion becomes available—available to only one of them—their competition appears to come to an all-time high. Amid the chaos of change, and the two of them knowing that their current dynamic will surely be altered by this promotion, the main question is what kind of new relationship might blossom between the two of them. 

The Hating Game is the book that pulled me into the romance genre. I thought I had picked up a mediocre book that wouldn’t distract me while I was supposed to be committed to schoolwork, but this turned out to be one of the best mistakes I have ever made! With its endless hilarity and truly passionate romance, I couldn’t put it down. Other enemies to lovers books like to point out the fact that their main characters are “verbally sparring” without actually bantering, but Lucy and Josh know what it means to be witty. I think it’s safe to say that Sally Thorne has reinvigorated the enemies to lovers trope in the modern romance genre.

Found Family

Six of Crows—Leigh Bardugo. Six of Crows follows a handful of teenagers in Ketterdam, a city where capitalists’ dreams come true and gangs run the streets. When an opportunity comes along to become obscenely wealthy, Kaz Brekker—leader of one of Ketterdam’s prominent gangs, the Dregs—recruits an unlikely crew to complete a heist. 

Six of Crows is everywhere, and it deserves all the hype it gets. It intertwines some of the greatest storylines and tropes imaginable, from heists and trickery to young love and friendship. Bardugo has created vivid, lively, but vastly different personalities who somehow come together to achieve their goals. Every member of Kaz’s crew comes from some sort of great familial loss, but in working together, they discover a love for each other that is more important than any other wealth.

Workplace Romance

If I Never Met You—Mhairi McFarlane. This romance follows Laurie, a successful career woman, whose longtime boyfriend suddenly and unexpectedly ends their relationship. Their breakup is made all the more awkward by the fact that they work for the exact same law firm. Laurie hasn’t dated in years, but her ex and his new girlfriend, as well as the workplace gossip about her love life, pushes her to take action. After running into Jamie Carter, the office playboy whose love life is the topic of conversation far too often, they hatch a plan to pretend that they are dating.

If I Never Met You combines one of my favorite tropes—workplace romances—with another amazing romance trope: fake dating. While this is very much a romance novel, it offers a unique type of romance to the genre. It’s subtle, slow, and sweet. This book focuses a great deal on Laurie and what it’s like to move on from a relationship that ended in profound heartbreak, but also offers a gentle hand to those who are learning to open their hearts back up again.

Main Character Ends Up with a Celebrity

Catch a Falling Star—Kim Culbertson. I am a supporter of the fact that romances don’t need to be incredibly physical to be amazing or that adults can’t enjoy YA novels—and Catch a Falling Star is no exception. One of the first novels I bought and read myself at my school’s Scholastic Book Fair, Catch a Falling Star perfectly encompasses all the feelings of young love with the caveat that the main character doesn’t initially want such feelings. This fairly short novel is about a small town girl who, when a movie star comes to film in her town, is asked to portray the celebrity’s girlfriend. While the relationship is tense at first, it isn’t before long that both catch feelings. But is it real? Can the two survive the pull of their completely different lives?

This is a great read any time of the year, but if you don’t like the cold and are dreaming of summer look no further for a perfect wish-I-was-on-the-beach read. As well, for fans of Disney Channel’s movie StarStruck this book encompasses those tensions, feelings, and hope that young love can offer.

Honorable Mention

Girls Save the World in this One—Ash Parsons. We couldn’t include this trope without mentioning Girls Save the World in this One by Ash Parsons. A quirky and lovable novel that combines unlikely romance and the zombie apocalypse, this book is perfect for anyone wanting a typical literary trope with a unique plot.

Self-Discovery and Mental Health

Dear Evan Hansen—Val Emmich. A musical, a book, and now a movie, it goes without saying that Dear Evan Hansen has become a world-wide phenomenon (and with good reason). The story follows Evan Hansen, an anxious and isolated high-schooler. One day he is tasked with writing a letter to himself by his therapist—however fellow student, Connor Murphy, takes the letter. The next day, Evan Hansen is approached by Connor’s grieving parents who believe that the letter was a final note from their son, who took his own life that day. Evan Hansen is pulled into a conflicting situation as he searches for belonging while addressing the harsh reality of being a young person and lifting the grief of the Murphy family.

Dear Evan Hansen is an amazing story and addresses so many ideas but mostly emphasizes the idea of personal growth and self discovery as Evan Hansen searches for meaning and belonging while making some pretty bad decisions. Additionally, the story is available in many formats that all articulate the prevalence of Evan Hansen’s journey. The book and movie are the most accessible, but as always I encourage you to read the book first (and as a bonus listen to the original sound track as you read!).

Psychological / Survivalist

Lord of the Flies—William Golding. Lord of the Flies by William Golding is just an all-around good book. Short and concise, the novel follows a group of young boys who have recently been stranded on an island. What begins as an organized attempt to survive quickly descends to chaos. Declared a classic and recipient of the Nobel Prize, the novel goes beyond its acclaimed status. It is the type of story that offers something new every time you read it; it takes on multiple forms, multiple focuses, and articulates new ideas. It is timeless not only because it speculates some of the most innate qualities of humanity, but because it is a story that answers the age-old question of what would happen if you were stranded on a desert island. So…what would you do?

Why Neurodivergent Representation Matters in the Romance Genre

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When we speak about the romance genre in this setting, I’m referring to complete, nonstop romance. Virtually every scene, every word, every breath is imbued with romance, even if the degree of cheesiness is left to the prerogative of the author. This romance isn’t a mere subplot; it is the very essence of the novel, laying out what is often essentially 300 pages of fluff.

Despite its sweetness and all of the immediate joy these stories bring us, we cannot ignore that this genre is severely lacking in diversity. How many books featuring two cis straight white neurotypical people—one male, the other female—falling in love did publishers reasonably think they could pump out before we demanded more representation in race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity? The romance genre has begun giving us this diversity, but in our reimagining of the genre, I’m worried that queer characters, as well as the subject of this article, neurodivergent characters, are going to be left behind.

Two authors of neurodivergent and inclusive romance novels give me hope that this doesn’t have to be the case: Helen Hoang and Chloe Liese. Hoang has written three books featuring autistic characters: The Kiss Quotient, The Bride Test, and The Heart Principle. Liese has written eight novels featuring characters with autism, anxiety, and physical disabilities in her Tough Love and Bergman Brothers series. What’s even more exciting is that both of these authors have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), meaning that we get to read neurodivergent romance novels by authors who have an understanding of what it’s like to have a neurodivergent mind.

Throughout their books, we are given different illustrations of what the ASD experience might be like for different people. We get to see characters who received their diagnosis early in life, as well as those who weren’t diagnosed until adulthood, like the authors themselves. Moreover, Hoang and Liese sprinkle in particular experiences that people with ASD, and other neurodivergent folks, have, including overstimulation, touch sensitivity, confusion about certain social cues, and special interests.

Not only do we need this sort of representation across different mediums of storytelling and in everyday life, but we need to make sure that neurodivergent folks are incorporated in every genre, from action movies to fantasy novels. I find it frustrating when I go into a bookstore or library and find that books like LGBTQ+ fiction have their own section. Perhaps it’s just me, but it’s frustrating to see that there are usually so few and that they aren’t mixed in with the fiction novels. Why can’t we both write more LGBTQ+ fiction and not set them apart as if they’re an esoteric genre only queer people would read? The same must be said about novels with neurodivergent characters; we need more of them and they need to not be treated as a separate genre. This will help take away stereotypes and stigmas about neurodivergence. After all, if every human experience is unique to the person who experiences it, why should the neurodivergent experience be set apart from what it is: a unique human experience that should be cared about as much as all neurotypical experiences are?

By specifically placing neurodivergent folks in the romance genre, we get a closer look at how they might go about any human relationship, not simply romantic ones, but, of course, how they might want to receive romantic love and how they love others. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, it really is no different from a romantic relationship that neurotypicals would want to pursue. Most neurodivergent folks want a romantic relationship. They want hugs and hand holding and sex. They want their partner to feel loved. As with any relationship, there will be unique interests and things that certain people are uncomfortable with. In that case, people in a relationship should communicate to set up boundaries, but this is typical of any healthy relationship.

This is why romance novels featuring neurodivergent characters, especially those written by neurodivergent authors, are so important—they show us the reality that sweet, sexy, passionate, erotic, loving, and lasting romantic relationships aren’t unattainable or undesirable to neurodivergent folks because of their neurodivergence. What makes these relationships more difficult for some neurodivergent individuals is the expectation that they must act like neurotypicals. They must give and receive love as others typically do. These books show that this expectation is unhealthy, not simply for neurodivergent folks, but for neurotypical folks, as well. Learn how your partner loves. Do they want to infodump? Do they give you random small gifts because they were thinking about you and thought you would like it?

On a personal note, these books were here for me throughout my own diagnosis with ADHD, another neurodivergence. I read them before I even had a clue I had something in common with these characters, during the process of diagnosis, and now, after I know myself better than I ever have before. They serve as a beautiful reminder that my life, and in this context, my love life, doesn’t have to be different simply because I’m neurodivergent. They show me that I am still deserving of love. We all are.