Suri Rosen writes about her new YA novel, Playing with Matches, and about how building a YA world without vampires isn't as easy as you'd think. 

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In my debut novel, Playing with Matches, I explore a phenomenon that seems incongruous to the edgy world of contemporary young adult literature: traditional matchmaking.

Although matchmaking is not entirely incongruous. While young adult literature spans a broad spectrum of subject matter, the exploration of physical and emotional boundaries is a common theme. And romance is almost always an ingredient in a female protagonist’s growth.

In Playing with Matches, I combine the tradition of matchmaking with a most decidedly non-traditional medium—the Internet. This twist provided me with an almost unlimited supply of material for intrigue and mayhem.

And when you’re writing comedy, who doesn’t love mayhem?

But what about plausibility? How believable is it for accomplished professionals to turn to a matchmaker to find them a partner? Can you write about a protagonist in an all-girls school whose goals don’t involve pursuing a relationship? In the YA-verse, that’s pretty outlandish.

As writers, we often have the task of making the impossible seem possible. Readers are willing to enter alien worlds. They want to be transported to the past and future. Young readers also love the immediacy and urgency of contemporary young adult writing. The emerging sense of self, the exploration of the meaning of life, relationships, and family, and one’s place in it—these are underlying themes that grab readers and pull them into the narrative.

So that’s why when it comes to vampires, we’ll buy it. (Well some of us, anyway.) The characters change, but the goals are the same.

Writers can convince the reader to accept alien worlds, distant eras, and alternative societies, because the fundamental themes of their books are closer to home—among them, love, honour, grief, and loss. Conversely though, sometimes more possible stories are a harder sell—they can come across as impossible.

But in a society with as much diversity as ours—given the many ethnic, religious, and immigrant communities that are a part of our fabric—sometimes we have to do a different kind of world-building in our writing. My story takes place in an Orthodox Jewish community, but the concept of a matchmaker is prevalent among many communities. My world-building involved weaving relevant information about the Jewish community and the role of the matchmaker into the narrative through the voice of the protagonist. All to ensure that the possible … really was possible.

My protagonist lives a double life as a secret Internet matchmaker and through the madcap scenes and wacky scenarios she grows and deepens as a human being. It’s a true coming of age story, but with a twist: her growth doesn’t depend on her own romantic interest.

I’ve been almost startled by the reaction to my protagonist’s journey. The idea of a girl evolving in her humanity without romance is being described as surprising and wonderful at the same time. “Refreshing” or a “real feminist story.” As a writer, it was very satisfying writing a character who becomes empowered solely because of her own deeds.

Suri Rosen dabbles in many arts, but excels in daydreaming. She has worked as a professional artist, filmmaker, journalist, and TV producer. Playing with Matches is her first novel. She lives in Toronto.

Suri Rosen recommends five young adult and middle-grade novels:

Under the Moon, by Deborah Kerbel

A girl who's lost her sleep, a boy who's lost his dreams, and twenty-six days that change their lives.

Lily MacArthur has never been much of a sleeper, but since the death of her Aunt Su, she's lost the ability to sleep completely. Night after night she goes to bed and waits for the sun to rise, without catching a wink of sleep. As she pushes people away by day, her closest friend becomes the night-time moon. Looking for a way to spend her sleepless nights, she slips out of the house. She meets Ben, who works the night shift at the local drive-thru. A newcomer to town, Ben has a troubled past-and future-that he keeps from Lily.

As Lily's sleeplessness begins to destroy her health, she has no idea that Ben holds the key to finding her sleep and saving her life. But first, she has to find a way to save his.

Little Black Lies, by Tish Cohen:

Sara and her father are moving to Boston from small-town Lundun, Massachusetts. She is going to attend Anton HighSchool—crowned “North America’s Most Elite and Most Bizarre Public School” by TIME and tougher to get into than Harvard. The entrance exam is brutal: only 175 student are admitted out of the 11,000 gifted kids who apply. (The other 10,825 Lesser Gifteds will live with their failure the rest of their lives.)

Because of the strict admission exam, no one ever transfers to Anton High. Except Sara. What makes her so special? Her father has been hired as a school custodian. Which she doesn’t want anyone to know. And which gets harder and harder to hide when her father’s obsessive compulsive disorder starts attracting attention from all the students. Will all of Sara’s secrets be uncovered?

Recipe for Disaster, by Maureen Fergus: 

Francie's life was almost perfect before the new girl showed up. She had her own business as a weekend baker whose scones almost caused stampedes, a best friend named Holly and a deeply fulfilling crush on Tate Jarvis. She dreamed about the day she'd be famous and have her own baking show. But the new girl at school, Darlene, thinks Francie's obsession with baking is weird, she acts like Holly is her best friend, and she's somehow managed to steal Tate's attention away. Suddenly, everything is unravelling. Unable to stay focused, Francie's pastry-filled dreams are starting to slide. Then Francie gets a chance to meet the sexy celebrity baker Lorenzo LaRue, whose toned pectorals inspire Francie as much as the baking tips she picks up from his TV show. Francie is sure that if Lorenzo could only see how passionate she is about baking, he would help launch her career, and possibly marry her when she reaches legal age. It won't be easy but Francie is starting to understand that although trying won't guarantee success, quitting will guarantee failure.

Word Nerd, by Susin Neilson: 

Twelve-year-old Ambrose is a glass-half-full kind of guy. A self-described “friendless nerd,” he moves from place to place every couple of years with his overprotective mother, Irene. When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich—even though they know he has a deathly allergy—Ambrose is philosophical. Irene, however, is not and decides that Ambrose will be home-schooled.

Alone in the evenings when Irene goes to work, Ambrose pesters Cosmo, the twenty-five-year-old son of the Greek landlords who live upstairs. Cosmo has just been released from jail for breaking and entering to support a drug habit. Quite by accident, Ambrose discovers that they share a love of Scrabble and coerces Cosmo into taking him to the West Side Scrabble Club, where Cosmo falls for Amanda, the club director. Posing as Ambrose’s Big Brother to impress her, Cosmo is motivated to take Ambrose to the weekly meetings and to give him lessons in self-defense. Cosmo, Amanda, and Ambrose soon form an unlikely alliance and, for the first time in his life, Ambrose blossoms. The characters at the Scrabble Club come to embrace Ambrose for who he is and for their shared love of words. There’s only one problem: Irene has no idea what Ambrose is up to.

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow:

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only 17 years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works—and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option to take down the DHS himself.