There are lots of great things about being a writer, but here’s one of the very best: a brand-new character (or characters, plural, even better) turning up in your head. A living, breathing, entirely fictional person, with a story. And they want you to tell it. 

Magic.

With This Song Is About Us, it wasn’t just one but two characters who turned up in my head. They were walking through a music festival on a sunny day, hand in hand, and they were happy. I could see their love story in how comfortable they were together. This wasn’t a new couple, fresh in the heady excitement of a meet-cute. This was boyfriend and girlfriend, their names were Ruby and Drew, and they were deep in love. And they had a secret.

I love writing love. Not necessarily romance, though this is of course often a part of it, but true, deep, messy, painful, human love. It combines two of my very favourite things to write: emotional angst, and people bringing out the best in each other. (Ruby and Drew showcase a lot of both.)

Writing love stories in YA is different than for any other demographic because teenagers don’t love like anyone else loves. (Maybe this is because it’s the kind of thing you can only do once, before the fire of it burns you so deep you never touch it the same way again.) Love as a teenager is a series of firsts, all promise and hope and terror, combined with out-of-control hormones and lust. Writing teenage love is allowing yourself to be back in that headspace, before you were burned, before you understood why older people even use phrases like “first love” – so inherently pessimistic, because something is only first if it’s followed by another – and before you learned to be wary. 

Because of all of this, there are a lot of assumptions about love stories in YA; a lot of clichés, a lot of tropes. For one thing, most stories tend to focus on those firsts, and all the heady excitement they inspire. Established love stories are rarer, which is maybe why I like them so much. I enjoy subverting expectations of the kinds of teenage love stories we see on the page, and This Song Is About Us is no exception.

In this story, Ruby and Drew have already been together for over two years, and are unusually close for two seventeen-year-olds. They’ve even lived together, because of the Covid lockdowns and the breakdown of Drew’s relationship with his family. They love each other, they trust each other, and they truly believe their relationship can survive anything. Even the fact that Drew’s band, The Kerbs, is about to get really, really famous. Even as they decide to keep Ruby’s existence a secret from the band’s growing fanbase. Even with Drew’s public persona as a playboy heartthrob. 

Any great love story, at any age, needs to survive a few tests and weather a few storms. Over the course of three years and three different festivals, Ruby and Drew will learn about love, fame and each other. And what makes a really great song. 

Sara Barnard – This Song is About Us, Walker 2025