As a rom-com lover, I’m so happy to have this Author Spotlight interview published. This is about a grumpy loner and the happy, sunshiney boy who gets under her skin like no other—until he becomes the boy she can’t stop thinking about. Besides the love story, “All Alone with You” by Amelia Diane Coombs covers social anxiety, making this YA a relatable read.
Eloise Deane is grumpy, prefers to be alone, and is just slogging through senior year with one goal: get accepted to USC and move to California. So when her guidance counselor tells her in order to score a scholarship, which she desperately needs, her applications require volunteer hours, Eloise is up for the challenge. Until she’s paired with LifeCare, a volunteer agency that offers social support to lonely seniors through phone calls and visits. Basically, it’s a total nightmare for Eloise’s anxiety.
Eloise realizes she’s made a huge mistake—especially when paired with Austin, the fellow volunteer who’s the sunshine to her cloudy day. But as Eloise and Austin work together to keep Marianne Landis—the mysterious former frontwoman of the 1970s band the Laundromats—company, something strange happens. She actually…likes Marianne and Austin? Eloise isn’t sure what to do with that, especially when her feelings toward Austin begin to blur into more-than-friends territory.
And when ex-girlfriends, long-buried wounds, and insecurities reappear, Eloise will have a choice to make: go all in with Marianne and Austin or get out before she gets hurt.
With an undergraduate degree in English and an MFA in creative writing, Amelia Diane Coombs is a YA author who’s known for writing unlikeable female protagonists, positive mental health representation and swoony romances with soft boys. When she isn’t writing or reading, Amelia spends her time playing video and tabletop games, binging her favorite comfort TV shows and exploring the Pacific Northwest.
Besides the love story, what is the message you want to make sure your audience knows that you hope they take away from this book?
The message I hope readers walk away knowing is that your people are out there! Socially, I struggled in high school, and most of the time, I felt like a freak for not having a friend group or people who I really gelled with. But I eventually realized that I wasn’t a freak—I just hadn’t found my people yet.
As a writer, how do you feel “All Alone with You” differs from your previous books?
My entire process with this book was much different than my previous three YA releases! In the past, I’ve drafted [and] then quickly moved onto the revision stage but for ‘All Alone with You,’ I drafted the book, mapped out a revision plan, then I had to shelve it for a year to work on my contracted books. As a result, I spent over a year with these characters in the back of my head. When it finally came time for me to sit down and work on the book with my editor, I’d already spent so much time with them and had been envisioning what I really wanted that final draft to look like, which made the whole revision process pretty streamlined and intentional.
“All Alone with You” is your pandemic project which adds to why you emphasize the importance of human connection in this novel. How do you think human connection has changed from the start of the pandemic to now that it has officially ended?
I can’t speak for everyone on a whole but, for me, the pandemic really changed my point of view on relationships. Like Eloise, I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and I didn’t have many friends throughout high school. The pandemic happened just a few months after I moved to Seattle, and I barely knew anyone in the city. It was a very lonely time and the pandemic sort of… highlighted an area in my life that had been lacking for a very long time.
What are some common misconceptions about mental health that you want to address to an audience who may not feel like society is as accepting?
As a society, I think we’re doing so, so much better in terms of accepting and advocating for those with mental health struggles and neurodivergence. But one misconception that I absolutely hate (that I still see floating around!) is that creativity and art come from a place of suffering. As someone with severe anxiety, as well as OCD, I can’t write when I’m in a bad place. There’s nothing romantic about these types of problems and, while they have given me insight into my own journey which helps me write authentically, nothing holds me back creatively more than my anxiety.
Thank you so much Amelia for answering my questions! “All Alone With You” was my first read of the sunshine boy and grumpy girl trope, and I thought the overall cute moments were adorable! The mental health messages seen in both Austin and Eloise were so relatable, and I found how they handled their situations comforting as a reader.
Many thanks to Alex Kelleher-Nagorski from Simon & Schuster’s Children’s Publishing for sending me a finished copy of Amelia’s book along with extending me this interview opportunity! I enjoy our email correspondences and hope to continue them as the semester starts again in a few weeks!