Hi friends!

I’m thrilled to share my interview with Gwenyth Reitz, author of You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker. You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker is a “swoonworthy YA supernatural romcom where two academic rivals are trapped as ghosts to haunt the same house. They'd kill each other...if they weren't already dead.” 👻

Gwenyth Reitz was born in Sri Lanka, and has lived and worked in California, Washington, Alaska, Montana, Japan, and Mongolia. When not intrepidly exploring, she writes genre-blending young adult stories with swoony romance, mystery, humor, and heart. Gwenyth now lives with her husband and two kids in New York City, where she can often be found scribbling late into the night on her rooftop like the caffeine-obsessed night owl she is. You're Dead to Me, Reed Walker is her debut novel.

Q: Where did the initial kernel of inspiration come from?

A: I was always that odd kid who would have loved to spend the night in Disney’s Haunted Mansion. In 2021, I was struck with the idea of writing about a decrepit mansion where two teen academic rivals die at their high school graduation party, but rather than follow the living, I wanted to invert the typical ghost story and follow the dead. Inspired by both the reluctant ghosts and forced proximity of Beetlejuice and the academic rivalry of Never Have I Ever, I imagined how complicated it would be to haunt a house with your nemesis. And how this would be so much more challenging if he were both super-hot and disarmingly charming, when he wasn’t being a smug, entitled twit.

Q: You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker is a bright, joyful, and hilarious romcom, but it also explores heavier topics like the weight of expectations, failure, grief, heartache, fear, anxiety, and regret. How did you approach balancing the darker and lighter themes to create an overall hopeful story?

A: As someone who has experienced grief, I wanted to explore the loss that both the living and the dead would feel in this situation. And Tessa, especially, also wrestles with her own anxiety and perfectionist tendencies. The story doesn’t shy away from the hard places, though there’s a light touch, with plenty of romance and humor to balance it out.

I think the trick is not to linger too long in any one direction. The characters feel things deeply, as they should, but they also have good senses of humor and can laugh at themselves. When thinking of the sequence of events, I tried to keep all the story threads moving between the mystery arc, the developing romance, and Tessa and Reed’s very real feelings about life moving on without them. I think this is helped by the fact that they are moving on, too. Their afterlife isn’t stasis. They’re growing, changing, finding love and each other, and ultimately feeling ready to tackle their next adventures.

Q: You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker truly put the rom in romcom. The romance, from the banter to the rivals-to-lovers tension to the delightful forced proximity, was irresistible. Would you walk us through your process for developing Tessa and Reed’s love story?

A: Writing Tessa and Reed’s enemies-to-more rivalry was so much fun. To flesh it out, it helped to give them a shared history going back to the sixth grade. Tessa has spent the past years haunted by all the ways Reed has stolen her glory by constantly snatching up the first-place trophies at spelling bees and science fairs. Rivalries also thrive on misunderstandings, and so the characters enter the story with years of assumptions about one another. However, as their walls come down, they begin to see the real person standing in front of them rather than the story they’ve told themselves.

As Tessa learns how challenging one another can be a positive force, she says, “He raises the bar, but I raise it right back.” Ultimately, they’re able to reframe their rivalry, moving from pushing each other’s buttons to pushing each other to become the best versions of themselves.

Q: You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker is told from both Tessa’s and Reed’s point of view. Would you walk us through your process for developing their distinct voices and characteristics—especially Tessa’s love of fashion and Reed’s love of guitar—and telling the story from two different perspectives?

A: When I originally conceived of and wrote You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker it was a single POV story, told from Tessa’s point of view. When Macmillan bought the book, my incredible editors hopped on a call with me and asked how I’d feel about bringing Reed’s perspective into the mix. I thought it was an inspired choice and I’m so glad we made that decision. I’ve loved writing Reed’s chapters, but it was definitely a challenge. I thought I knew him through his dialogue and presence in Tessa’s chapters, but it was much harder to get into his head and understand him from the inside out. It was also an interesting puzzle to uncover which elements of the story should be told from his point of view. Some chapters flipped from hers to his, adjusted for his voice and inner monologue, but others were written from scratch.

In the end, I truly love both Tessa and Reed. Having the opportunity to more fully explore Reed’s psyche softened me to him and helped me better understand the walls he puts up to the world and why. Plus, there’s something thrilling about writing a romance when you get to linger in both their perspectives. You can share with the reader all those moments of miscommunication and misunderstanding and how deeply they yearn for each other.

When developing Tessa and Reed, it was important to me to showcase their life and passions outside of school. Both are hardworking overachievers with hidden depth. Tessa grows up in a single-parent home where money gets tight after her father loses his job. Resourceful and creative, she thrifts and upcycles her clothes, though she jokes that her favorite thrift shop, Second Place, mirrors her unfortunate situation with Reed stealing the Valedictorian title. Meanwhile, Reed harbors his own secrets. Tessa knows he plays in a band, but she has no idea his true passion is learning flamenco guitar. Coming from a long line of Luthiers in Seville, Spain, Reed uses the instrument to connect with and honor the father he lost too soon.

Q: Tessa and Reed are ghosts for most of the story. How did you approach developing the mechanics of being a ghost—including what they could and could not do—and bonding Tessa and Reed through their shared ghostly experiences?

A: Figuring out the rules of the ghost world was a fascinating world-building challenge. I had to decide which tropes to embrace and which to subvert. Since the story uses a dual first-person POV, I needed the afterlife to feel visceral. After all, it’s hard to write a romance if your characters can’t touch. So, Tessa and Reed are solid to one another and able to sit on furniture. They still have the sensation of breathing or their hearts racing, even as they acknowledge this could merely be a habit that followed them into the afterlife. To feel their romantic tension as a reader, we need those physiological cues. But they don’t eat, they don’t sleep, and I just couldn’t bring myself to let them smell things because that felt too “of this world.”

Tessa and Reed also develop some classic ghostly abilities, like passing through walls, alongside a few unexpected powers I think will really surprise readers. No spoilers here, but those were quite fun to write. Ultimately, though, I didn’t want to magic them a way out of their problems. They have some abilities, but they also have some serious limitations. Learning to work within those boundaries or uncovering ways to channel their skills in unforeseen ways, is a lot of the fun of the book.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Tessa and Reed is how they attack the afterlife with the same gusto they brought to competing in school, determined to win. But as the story progresses, and they grow closer, they bond over their developing ghostly skills and ultimately team up to save their friends.

Q: In You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker, nothing goes as planned for Tessa or Reed. Throughout the story, they realize that they are more than their plans. How did you approach writing their development?

A: That has always been a core theme of the story for me, recognizing that all of us are more than our plans. Young people, especially, can easily engage in catastrophic thinking—"if I don’t achieve [X] by a certain time, I’ve failed”—but life rarely charts the course we expect. Tessa and Reed have the ultimate rug pulled out from under them; they die. But in that experience, and in the afterlife, they’re able to find themselves and find a deep love for each other. It may not have been the story they expected, but I truly believe they still get their HEA.

The book holds a lot: romance, mystery, rivalry, humor, paranormal adventures, and some big feelings. It’s my sincerest wish that readers find themselves both laughing and tearing up within these pages. And that they also learn to extend themselves the same grace that Tessa and Reed find in the end.

But I especially hope reader’s swoon over the fun, flirtatious banter between two academic rivals turned ghostly roommates who now must navigate the most inconvenient feelings ever.

Q: What has been one of your favorite moments as a debut author?

A: It is genuinely hard to pick a favorite moment as a debut author, but if I had to, I’d say one of the biggest joys of launching my book into the world is the reader interactions that follow. I’ve met the most incredible readers on my book tour or at signing events. Some have even cosplayed as Tessa, which blew me away. I’ve had teens reach out to me through my website to send me their fan art of Tessa and Reed, and strangers share messages about how much the book moved them. Writing can feel like such an isolated experience. We dream up these worlds in our little silos, but the story is no longer mine, it’s yours. I have been so touched to know that these characters, sprung from my imagination, have meant so much to people.

Q: After readers finish You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker, what books do you recommend they read?

A: I think a fantastic follow up book to You’re Dead to Me, Reed Walker would be the charming and moving 72 Hours of You by my fellow 2026 debut, Darianne Schramm. The story follows Sydney, who is cursed to see pink death clocks hovering over people’s heads once they have only 72 hours left to live. But when the ever-optimistic and charming Peter comes into her life, they team up to help strangers make the best of their final days. Both books wrestle with themes of death and letting go, and both similarly manage to do so with a fun and humorous voice.

Another possible book to try next, and one that I’m also dying to read, is Jenny Howe’s How (Not) to Renovate a Haunted House. It’s a spooky young adult romance that follows a supernatural skeptic who must team up with an amateur ghost hunter to fix up a haunted house in small-town Massachusetts. It’s similarly full of swoons and spooky season vibes and is the perfect story to dive into wrapped in a cozy sweater with a big mug of apple cider.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

A: I think one of the best things you can do as an aspiring author is to read and read widely. When I started down this path nine years ago, I was already a voracious reader of YA fiction. But as I wanted to step into writing my own stories, I began to read books with fresh and curious eyes, looking closely at the craft involved. I created my own color-coded highlighting system and would make copious notes as I went. That may not be the right path for everyone, but it certainly helped me refine my skills and style.

One of the other things that has really helped me over the years when I’ve gotten stuck or felt like my inner critic was becoming too loud, is to step away from the draft I’m working on and try the chapter again in an entirely new document. I give myself full permission to play and to fail. Somehow, when I take away the stakes of something having to be good enough to include in the novel, I find that I can approach the story with just the spirit of freedom it needs to shine.

Q: What’s up next?

A: My next book is a YA speculative romcom called Prom Anomaly. It’s for fans of The Do-Over by Lynn Painter and See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon with some of the revenge energy of John Tucker Must Die mixed in.

Here’s the pitch: A prom queen wannabe and a loner outcast are forced to relive their same disastrous prom on repeat until they do the improbable—fall in love—in this slow-burn, speculative romcom about prom, probability theory, and the last person you’d ever expect to fall for.

Thank you so much to Gwen for joining me in discussing her incredible debut here on Bindery, as well as at Annabelle’s Book Club LA in May! 💕

Good afternoon, mis internet amigxs!

I need your help! I'm working on my caption for tomorrow's Latinx Heritage Month kick-off and am having a tiny dilemma.

If you're not familiar, I have been doing these flatlays for the kick-off of Latinx Heritage Month for years. If you want to take a look, here are the past 6 years:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

And what I'm wondering is, this year, with everything going on, do I give: defiant eyebrow (A.) or joy as resistance (B.)? Let me know in the poll below.

I think I know which one I am going to choose, but would love your insight and thoughts in the comments if you have them.

You'll get the final photo and caption delivered first to your inbox tomorrow morning along with all the day's Latine releases.

Nos vemos mañana,

Carmen

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Hello my friends!!

The secret is out! We are publishing a cozy horror!