The protagonists of Jodi Meadows’s middle grade novel Confessions from the Group Chat and YA author Susan Metallo’s latest YA book Reasons to Hate Me have found themselves on the outs with their friends, a pivotal turning point in girlhood. In Meadows’s story, eighth grader Virginia Vaughn’s mean comments in a group chat are leaked to the entire school, leaving her a social pariah. Metallo’s novel follows the in-person and digital fallout of 17-year-old Jess Lanza’s friendship with her best friend Chloe after she kisses Chloe’s boyfriend. Here, the authors reflect on navigating public backlash and cancel culture and learning the social cues of girlhood.

Jodi Meadows: How did the idea for Reasons to Hate Me come to you, Susan?

Susan Metallo: I actually got the idea from doomscrolling, seeing post after post making excuses for powerful men’s obvious bad behavior and then nitpicking everything about the lives of the women or girls they harmed. I asked myself, what does that look like in high school? It’s largely online, and it’s often other girls who are weaponizing every little human mistake or perceived flaw.

Meadows: You’re right. We see it all the time!

Metallo: That’s a similarity between Jess in Reasons and Virginia in Confessions. They both make genuine mistakes, but they’re human mistakes. It struck me how Virginia courageously takes responsibility for her bad behavior—and her classmates reject that at first. She’s stuck, in their eyes, as the person she was when she sent a particular text message, and they won’t let her change into someone better.

How did you decide what Virginia’s story would be about?

Meadows: I started from a much sillier place, to be honest. I wanted a text-door neighbor book! It was only later that I started thinking about Virginia’s relationship with her friends, how that group relationship might work, and what a dramatic breakup would look like. I’m sure I’m not the only adult who thinks about how, when I was a teen, it was possible to get away from unwanted conversations at school. But now, with phones everywhere, not so much. If there’s bullying or consequences of one’s actions, it’s nearly impossible to escape.

Metallo: I know! It’s like teens are carrying their bullies around in their pockets!

Meadows: I think another thing we’ve seen—in real life, not just in books—is how the first story out is often the story that gets remembered. That’s true with the news, and it’s also true with things coming out online. You explore that really well in Reasons, and it’s something I wanted to do in Confessions. Virginia isn’t the only one sending mean text messages in the group chat—her comments didn’t happen in isolation—but it takes a lot longer for people to put those pieces together. One target is easy. Nuance is harder.

Metallo: Yes! I also think it’s self-preservation: agreeing with the loudest story makes you part of the group and less likely to become a target.

Meadows: It definitely feels that way!

Metallo: Plus, risk-taking is a pivotal part of teen/tween development, and saying bolder, more brazen, and—yes—meaner things in gossip is part of that. There’s a performative element to it. It’s all too easy, though, to let that kind of private, verbal social risk-taking turn into bullying and targeting classmates in real life.

Meadows: In Reasons, it’s clear that something that began from a place of hurt and wanting to build up a victim turned into something much bigger. It ended up hurting a lot more people! Confessions touches on that a little, too. In both books, the entire school is basically forced to pick a side.

Metallo: Creative work has always been helpful to me in processing social things. I’ve especially struggled with social rules in girl groups. I know that’s normal for autistic people, but I’ve realized that allistic people who are socialized as girls struggle with this too. In Reasons, limiting narratives about women and girls affect how Jess is treated by her peer group and how she relates to other girls. (Pet peeve: When boys act badly, they’re violent toward girls, and when girls act badly, they’re also violent toward girls, just in different ways.)

Meadows: I think a lot of people who are socialized as girls struggle with girl groups and how to perform “girl” correctly. I’m allistic, but I remember very clearly as a kid not quite understanding the rules, how to identify what clothes were “cute,” or how to do various “girly” things. Those things are learned behaviors, not biological directives encoded in your DNA. We absolutely do girl-on-girl violence, just in a different way than boys tend to. Because like a lot of non-dominant groups, the group in power encourages us to fight among ourselves, rather than (in this case) the patriarchy.

Metallo: Truth!

Confessions from the Group Chat by Jodi Meadows. Holiday House, Oct. 21 $18.99 ISBN 978-0-823461-22-6

Reasons to Hate Me by Susan Metallo. Candlewick, Sept. 2 $18.99 ISBN 978-1-5362-4035-1