Hi everyone, I’m excited to be taking part in the blog tour hosted by Colored Pages Book Tours for Melissa See’s debut novel You Me and Our Heartstrings. For my spot on the four I’m not only bringing you my book review (you can read it here!), I’m also able to share with you my interview with author Melissa See!

Hi Melissa, thank you for joining me today at Just Geeking By. Could you start us off by introducing yourself?

Hi! I’m Melissa See, and I’m the author of both the upcoming You, Me, and Our Heartstrings and Love Letters for Joy, which is out next summer. Thank you so much for having me!

Your debut novel, You, Me, and Our Heartstrings, is out next week. Would you tell us what it’s about?

You, Me, and Our Heartstrings follows two disabled orchestral musicians: Daisy, a violinist with cerebral palsy, and Noah, a cello prodigy with generalized anxiety disorder. They attend the Manhattan Academy of Musical Performance, one of the most elite performing arts high schools in the city.

When it comes time for their school’s annual winter holiday concert, they’re paired up to perform a duet. Daisy and Noah clash over their different approaches to music, but as they rehearse and open up to the other, the more they begin to fall in love.

However, everything changes when their duet goes viral, turning their romance into one of disability sensationalism.

The main character of the novel, Daisy, is described as a “fiercely independent disabled” person, words
that aren’t often used to describe disabled people, especially in literature. What influenced her creation?

I was a violinist for many years. I knew I wanted to eventually write a young adult contemporary romance about musicians; I just wasn’t entirely sure what its premise would be. All I could really know was that it would be set in New York City (Which is where I now call home. Living where your books take place is its own sort of magic.) and have both a cellist and a violinist as characters.

When I started writing You, Me, and Our Heartstrings, I realized very quickly that Daisy was going to push back against the ableism she experienced from the very beginning. And I also knew that she did this by being a fiercely independent person.

Daisy’s fierce independence is a cornerstone of who she is as a character. She knows who she is, she’s confident in what she wants, she knows she’ll achieve her dreams, and she’s not letting the abled world’s perception of disability change that.

Likewise, usually the romantic partner is perfectly healthy. What made you decide to write a story
where the love interest (Noah), has a mental health condition?

When I first started drafting You, Me, and Our Heartstrings, I knew it was going to be dual POV. And I started it in Noah’s perspective, actually. (The beginning then is so much different from how the book starts now! It’s so much fun to see a book change as it’s written!) Like Daisy and her fierce independence, I knew a few things about Noah as well.

I knew that Noah was a cello prodigy. I knew that he was from an illustrious family within the world of orchestral music. And I knew that he put a lot of pressure on his shoulders to exceed the expectations he believes that his family has of him.

As for why I wrote Noah to have a mental health condition, it’s because I have both cerebral palsy and anxiety. I wanted to write about two disabled characters falling in love with each other—and being fallen in love with—for exactly who they are.

Inspiration porn is a topic that usually doesn’t get much attention, let alone be considered a plot for a novel. How important was it to you as a disabled author to include it in your novel?

Including inspiration porn as a topic in You, Me, and Our Heartstrings was one of the initial ideas. And as a disabled author who grew up seeing it in fiction, it was incredibly important for me to include it in You, Me, and Our Heartstrings, especially with how prevalent the internet and social media are in daily life.

Inspiration porn as a concept does not exist to uplift disabled people. Its purpose is to—as the name implies—inspire the abled audience seeing disability. Inspiration porn rejects disabled people being seen as fully human, only seeing us as beings who are on this earth to solely impart lessons upon the abled population.

I wanted to write about inspiration porn from the lens of disabled people experiencing it and being at its helm as my own way to express my feelings about the concept.

You, Me, and Our Heartstrings is one of a number of young adult books that have been released this year featuring disabled characters. What are your thoughts on disability representation in fiction, and pop culture; is it improving?

I’m so excited that You, Me, and Our Heartstrings is one book among many featuring disabled characters being released this year!

So, to answer your question, yes, disability representation is improving in fiction. Here are some
books by authors who are ensuring that disability representation exists:

The Trouble with Robots by Michelle Mohrweis; One for All by Lillie Lainoff; Breathe And Count Back From Ten by Natalia Sylvester; Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass; All the Right Reasons by Bethany Mangle; Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White; and The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd Jones are just a few titles! And more are coming in 2023, including The Lumbering Giants of Windy Pines by Gabe Netz and Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest!

You have another book due out next summer, Love Letters for Joy. Is there anything you can tell us about it?

Set in the same universe as You, Me, and Our Heartstrings, Love Letters for Joy is a retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac.

It follows seventeen-year-old Joy Corvi, a panromantic asexual girl with cerebral palsy, determined to be the valedictorian and pursue her dreams of being a NICU nurse. Wanting to experience romance before graduation, she writes to an anonymous student at her prestigious preparatory academy for love advice. But she’s unknowingly writing to—and falling in love with—the last person she ever expected.

Thank you, Melissa, for taking the time to talk to us!

Thank you for reading my interview with Melissa See! You, Me and Our Heartstrings is an incredible novel with brilliant disability representation, authentic characters you will fall in love with and a romance you will find yourself rooting for. Romance is not my normal genre, and this was a five-star read for me. I can’t recommend it enough, and you can read more about it in my review!

You can find Melissa on her website, GoodReads and she’s on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram!

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