Her Story: Ladies In Literature is a special, month-long series on Pop! Goes The Reader in which we celebrate the literary female role models whose stories have inspired and empowered us since time immemorial. From Harriet M. Welsch to Anne Shirley, Becky Bloomwood to Hermione Granger, Her Story: Ladies In Literature is a series created for women, by women as twenty authors answer the question: “Who’s your heroine?” You can find a complete list of the participants and their scheduled guest post dates Here!
About Diana Urban
Diana Urban is an author of dark, twisty thrillers for teens, including All Your Twisted Secrets (HarperTeen, March 17th 2020). When she’s not torturing fictional characters, she’s a marketing manager at BookBub, a leading book discovery platform. She regularly publishes book marketing content on the BookBub Partners Blog. Outside the bookish world, Diana lives with her husband and cat in Boston, and enjoys reading, yoga, fawning over cute animals, and looking at the beach from a safe distance.
I was never a popular kid in school. While others were partying and guzzling their first beers, I was home burying my nose in school books. While cliques herded down the halls, designer totes dangling from their elbows, my two best girlfriends and I huddled at our lockers, gushing over the latest fantasy craze. While others had sleek, flat-ironed hair, mine was frizzy and untamed.
And though I loved learning, and my few friends, and my fantasy crazes, I always felt like something was wrong with me. I’d been snickered at for eagerly raising my hand in class. I’d been ostracized by one of those big cliques in eighth grade. And dammit, why was my hair a perpetual frizz ball?
But then Hermione Granger came along. I was fourteen, and she was fourteen (during Goblet of Fire, when I caught Harry Potter mania). So I got to finish growing up with Hermione — an unapologetic bookworm with unruly hair, whose superpower was her intelligence. She befriended the most popular kid in school despite her awkwardness. And sure, her friends would tease her over her nerdy inclinations, but they also admired her for them, and she repeatedly saved people’s lives because of them. Not only that, but she was brave, cunning, and she’d die on the hills of social justice and equal rights, no matter who scoffed at her.
I didn’t just see myself in Hermione. I wanted to be more like Hermione.
Like me, she got her feelings hurt and faced derision from her peers, and she was also a victim of prejudice. But did any of it hold her back? Heck no. She always stood up for herself. But more than that, she always stood up for her friends and family — even when she was afraid. She joined Harry in his dangerous quests time after time, sticking with him to the bitter end, risking her life to rid the world of evil. She started SPEW for the house elves and fought against gross injustice, even if it meant putting herself into a position of ridicule. She was ready to sacrifice her parents knowing she existed in order to protect them. I mean, come on. The girl was fierce.
The Harry Potter series was my escape and inspiration, where a nerdy girl like me was strong and bold. The qualities we shared — the things I’d always thought were “wrong” with me — were actually her strengths as she played an active role in saving the world.
Hermione helped me accept myself for who I was, and who I strove to be…frizzy hair and all.
Title All Your Twisted Secrets
Author Diana Urban
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Genre Mystery, Psychological Thriller, Suspense
Publication Date March 17th 2020 by HarperTeen
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository
What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill…or else everyone dies.
Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?
One Response
This post really resonated with me and Diana’s book sounds fantastic! Thanks for sharing, Jen!
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