Real-life power couple Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick revel through the ups and downs of teenage crushes and romance with their upcoming YA novel She Gets the Girl – and the cover is debuting exclusively on PRIDE.
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"Alex, headstrong and world’s biggest flirt, has just landed at the University of Pittsburgh after a bad - but hopefully not permanent - breakup," the official description reads. "Molly, on the other hand, arrives as the kind of girl whose mom is her best and only friend and can’t talk around a stranger, let alone Cora, her devastatingly cool crush."
It continues:
"They don't belong on the same planet, let alone the same campus. But when things start off on the wrong foot with Alex's new roommate, and Molly gets an unexpected invite, their paths cross at a party in an unlikely game of Never Have I Ever.
Through the course of the game, Alex discovers that Molly clearly is more never than ever, as in never ever going to tell Cora about the crush she so clearly has on her, and an idea sparks. Maybe if she volunteers to help Molly learn how to get Cora to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she's not a selfish flirt and ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can't deny Alex knows what she's doing with girls, unlike her.
But as Molly and Alex embark on their quests to get their girls to fall for them, they both begin to wonder if maybe they're the one's falling...for each other."
Ahead of the cover reveal, we had a quick chat with both Lippincott and Derrick about the premise, the personal sentiment behind She Gets the Girl, and what LGBTQ+ readers can glean.
PRIDE: Why is it important to y'all to tell LGBTQ+ stories?
Alyson Derrick: It’s important to me to write the kind of content that I also love to consume. Nothing quite compares to the butterflies I feel in my chest when I watch two women fall in love in a book or on screen (*cough* WAYHAUGHT *cough*). It’s something I didn’t get to experience until I was an adult, but that shouldn’t have been the case. We deserve better representation. If I can create stories that give young queer readers that feeling in their chest, then I’ll always keep writing for them.
Rachel Lippincott: Exactly what Alyson said. Every book I write and story I tell is always with the intent of having a reader see a part of themselves, because that’s what I wish I had more of growing up. I think in recent years we’re starting to see more and more quality LGBTQ+ content, but I still think there is a void to fill. I want to see more rom-coms with happy endings! More Tolkien-esque epic fantasies with sword-wielding lesbians! More cheesy sitcoms with cool gay dads! More representation from a variety of different people and backgrounds, in a variety of different genres.
Why did you want to work on this book together?
AD: Rachael and I always joke about how this was our ultimate scheme. I mean, come on. Not only do I get to make up stories for a living, but now I get to do it with my wife? It’s better than anything I could’ve possibly dreamt up. Writing Molly’s chapters felt like writing love letters to Rachael in a lot of ways. It was Molly, but it was really me. It was Alex, but it was really Rachael. Some time down the road, we can look back through this book and see all the little bits where our love story intersected with theirs.
RL: What more can I say? We met in a writing class in college where we were both dreaming about being authors, and to actually have that become a reality? I still can’t believe it.
This particular story just kind of...clicked for us. We’d both been circling around a similar idea for a few months, and when I brought up maybe trying to combine forces and see how it turned out, we were both a bit cautious. We didn’t want to force it. Didn’t know if our styles would mesh well together. Didn’t know if our real-life partnership would translate well to the page and a working relationship. But here we are at the cover reveal, so, I guess it all turned out okay!
What do you hope readers take from the book?
AD: I hope they laugh, but I also hope they see that there’s more to our identity than our sexual orientation. These characters are so much more than just queer. They’re Asian and funny and ambitious and damaged, and they fall in love just like everyone else. It was important to us that the book wasn’t about being stuck in the closet or coming out. We just wanted a good old fashioned rom-com. The characters just happen to be two lesbians. Or...four lesbians?
RL: I’d like them to see that just because you may be broken or healing or struggling, it doesn’t mean you’re unworthy of love. I think that can be hard to see sometimes, especially when you’re fighting every day just to love yourself.
And also that love can find you in the most unexpected of places, at the most unexpected time. Is that cliché? Absolutely. But that’s exactly how it found us.
Expect She Gets the Girl on April 5, 2022.
