BOOKS

GL: What inspired you to write Unfriended?

Rachel Vail: I love middle school kids. They are such a disaster area of passion and tumultuous change and courage and humiliation. Just when they’ve mastered the whole being a kid thing, boom: Everything gets super weird, especially socially. I wanted to get right into the pit of social politics in middle school. I’ve done connected novels before—characters appear in one another’s books (like The Friendship Ring and The Avery Girls trilogy)—but in Unfriended, I went all in: There are 6 different narrators, each of whom has a very different idea about what the heck is going on and why. 

GL: Which of the characters in Unfriended were you most like in middleschool?

Rachel Vail: It kind of depended on the day. I definitely would have liked to seem like either Brooke (cool, calm, steady, self-confident) or like Hazel (funky, wacky, letting her freak flag fully fly). I hope I didn’t have too many moments of acting like Natasha, lashing out at friends and feeling all slighted and competitive and insecure. Like Clay, I definitely tried to put on a happy, chill front despite any actual feelings (and found humor that knocked me over laughing where others were like, what?), and like Jack I felt a burning if unfocused sense of justice welling up, driving me to try to do the right thing, stumblingly, bumblingly. But in reality I was probably most like Truly—trying to find my way, not always with excellent grace, unsure of how to be true to myself when that self kept feeling so changeable and unfathomable.

Photo: Author Rachel Vail hard at work.

GL: In your opinion, what is the worst form of bullying that occurs in Unfriended?

Rachel Vail: Tough question! Each of the characters gets bullied in some ways. I could make an argument for any of the types (online or in person, subtle or blatant, one-on-one or ganging up) as the worst. But I guess in my heart the rotten tomato goes to Natasha. Her mother so undermines her self-image and self-worth that she feels damaged and unworthy to her core. As much as our friends’ opinions matter to us so deeply, particularly in middle school, a parent’s harsh judgment has horrible, corrosive power.

Photo: Rachel on a ropes course out in the wilderness!

GL: Which character do you have the most sympathy for in Unfriended?

Rachel Vail: I have sympathy for each, for different reasons. I love Brooke’s moral compass and self-confidence, even when it is tested by her self-doubt about whether the boy she loves thinks of her as anything more than a friend. I love Clay’s gnawing sibling rivalry and despair about measuring up, and how it’s mixed in confusingly with his buoyant nature. Both Natasha’s pain and Hazel’s hit me hard in the heart. Truly’s struggles to find her footing in the complex social frenzy drives the story so she gets my sympathy. But I full-on love Jack. He’s deeply honest and forthright and clumsy and earnest and good—so full of good intentions and sandwiches I can’t help but adore him.