Much like Buffy the Vampire Slayer brought the mythical creatures of the night into a young adult sphere, Kim DeRose’s new novel Hear Her Howl — set in the world of an all-girls Catholic boarding school — brings a feminist twist to the world of werewolves. This is DeRose’s second book, following 2023’s For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, which was set in her hometown of Santa Barbara.
“I definitely have some recurring themes that I can point to,” said DeRose, a Santa Barbara native who currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two young children. “I would say one theme is the use of speculative fiction. I love speculative fiction as a genre, just personally to read, but I think as a writer, I love it because you can use something that’s supernatural as a metaphor for what the characters are dealing with, or sort of the thematic core of your story. For whatever reason, that just deeply resonates for me.”
Feminism is another theme that is embedded in both YA novels.
“I would say my writing always has a very strong feminist perspective, and I’m always looking to translate some of those ideas for a younger audience,” said DeRose.
Found family is another theme that keeps popping up. “I love that in storytelling in general, because I think that’s so true for many people in their lives, but especially for teens when they’re individuating and trying to really separate, which is healthy for them to do. Their friends become so important and so they become a found family as they’re navigating who they are and their identities.”
In Hear Her Howl, the protagonist, Rue, feels like her life is over after she’s caught kissing a girl and is sent away to boarding school so she can be transformed into her mother’s idea of a respectable lady. The irony of being sent to — of all places — an all-girls Catholic boarding school is not lost on Rue, especially when she falls immediately and irreversibly under the spell of its ferocious outcast, Charlotte, who turns out to be, you’ve got it, a werewolf.
In addition to a complicated young romance, the girls eventually form a wolf pack with some other fearless young women who embrace their wildness and refuse to remain docile.
As DeRose explained, “I feel like there’s this thread of female rage that continues to pop up in my stories, but I always am interested in approaching that from ultimately a hopefully, I don’t know if the word is optimistic, but giving a sense of empowerment at the end of the day. So, dealing with things head on, but bringing people to a place where hopefully they feel empowered.”
Both books have more than enough conflict and humor and romance to keep readers entertained and turning pages quickly. And one of the things DeRose has found is that while the books are labeled for teens, a lot of older readers also enjoy them.
“I think part of the reason that YA appeals to an older audience is it gives us a chance to sort of reprocess what we went through. When you get past your teen years, and then you look back, and at some point, you’re interested in sort of understanding, and maybe re-parenting yourself and processing your experiences,” said DeRose.
She continued, “That’s such a cool function of young adult fiction is that you can be talking to teenagers while they’re in the midst of all of these really big life moments, and also talking to former teens and giving them something to help them reprocess or sort of re-explore their own experiences when they were younger.”
For more information about Kim DeRose and Hear Her Howl (out this month from Union Square & Co., a division of Hachette), see kimderose.com.
