Seventeen-year-old Andy has no friends. When her over-involved mother has the audacity to ship her off to summer leadership camp, she’s thrust into an introvert’s nightmare. Everyone is a Communicator with a capital C, icebreaker activities are scheduled into every waking moment, and worst of all, there’s no coffee. Even the girls who take Andy under their wing are the kind of self-assured people Andy could never dream of becoming.
Then she meets Lucas – hot, attentive, and everything Andy reads about in books. Though the girls in her cottage try to warn her about him, she’s swept into the first romance of her life. But when she discovers her friends may be right, she’ll have to find her inner confidence to save her summer and become the leader she was always meant to be.
We spoke with author Jessica K. Foster about Andy and the Extroverts, mental health representation in YA, and her upcoming projects. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Your introverted protagonist, Andy, never uses the words, but certainly experiences anxiety and panic attacks. What was your experience like writing a character struggling with their mental health?
Oh, poor Andy. She really goes through the wringer, especially at the climbing wall. Yes, Andy’s struggles with panic and anxiety are drawn from personal experience, specifically some of the panic I struggled with in my late teen years. Writing Andy, whose core personality is so different from my own, but who struggles with a lot of the same things I did, has been both a blessing and a challenge. My focus in doing so was to hopefully help a reader who struggles with similar feelings. Sometimes books help us escape to fun places – like summer camp! – but sometimes, we also like to feel seen. I wanted to write a book that did both.
There are all kinds of summer camps out there. What made you decide to set the story in a summer camp centered on leadership?
I was a leadership camp safari guide in my college years. That’s actually where the name of Tyler’s team comes from. Team Hippo for life! I also asked myself what the worst possible camp would be for a sarcastic, introverted teen. I may have had a little too much fun with creating Suzie’s character for that reason.
What inspired this book and its characters?
I think all writers have a different process, but for me, ideas for books come to me in scenes. The first scene I could see so very clearly in my head was the scene where Andy struggles at the rock wall challenge. I’m not sure where it came from, but I wrote it all in the space of a half an hour, and then I wrote a whole book around it. Mostly, it was a process of “what if”. What if Andy was at a leadership camp? She’d never go to one. How could I get her there? How could I make this boy who helps her into a morally gray sort of character with his own struggles? What if there was no villain except the ones that live inside all of us? Who could be comedic relief? What would people want to read in a book that is supposed to be steeped in nostalgia and summer?
According to reviews, Andy is a character a lot of readers see themselves in. Why do you think that is the case?
It warms my heart to see so many people finding themselves in this book. I tried hard to be authentic when writing this sensitive, sarcastic, introverted girl. I hope that people see themselves in her because she learns how to set healthy boundaries for herself, because she pushes herself to be better, to be real with people around her. I think we can all relate to being overstimulated in a society that is so very public and immediate because of social media. I also think that in an age where COVID-19 took so much societal connection from us, we can maybe relate to feeling a little more awkward in those types of situations now.
Do you have other works planned for the future?
I do! My young adult mystery romance titled The Framing Game comes out this winter, and Andy and the Summer of Something, which follows Andy as she returns to camp as a counselor, will release next summer.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
If you’re interested in exclusive content or what’s happening in my author life, check out jessicakfoster.com and sign up for my newsletter while you’re there! I plan to do a slow release of chapters through it about Suzie and Tyler.
