What led you to write a character like her?

They’re a 2017 stand-in for Dashboard Confessional. In the book, the band is called Drunk Residentials. We’re still best friends and we still bond over our shared music love. We used to drive around a lot and listen to our favorite emo bands. In this book, the protagonist has a best friend and they drive around a lot and listen to the same bands. I’m still friends with a lot of people I grew up with from elementary and middle school-I’m lucky in this way. Was there a particular friendship from your own life that influenced this novel? I think the friendship between Iris and Claudia is the foundation of the book because they both learn a lot from each other. I love to read romances and I love to have romantic elements in my books, of course, but I also love to have a strong emphasis on friendship because friends are such an integral part of the teen experience. What drew you to writing a friendship story?įor me, in high school my friendships were the most important thing, and romantic relationships were secondary. candidate in anatomy and cell biology, with about two years to go before she finishes. Though Mills is already working on her fourth novel with a fifth soon expected, Mills is also a fifth-year Ph.D.

PW caught up with Mills in Indianapolis, where she attends graduate school, for a discussion of mean girls in books and film, and why friendships are even more important than romance during high school. At the center of Emma Mills’s third YA novel, Foolish Hearts, is the evolution of a friendship between the mean girl at school, Iris, and Claudia, who suffers the full force of Iris’s wrath.

Emma mills foolish hearts