Sometimes a person has to fall apart to find community, as seen in Love Radio (Simon & Schuster, May 31), the debut novel from Ebony LaDelle. A Black teen romance set in Detroit—LaDelle’s hometown—Love Radio follows the budding relationship between high school seniors Prince and Danielle, called Dani by friends and family. Prince, who is also a popular local DJ, has had a crush on Dani since they were in middle school, whereas Dani has her eyes (and heart) set on a life in New York City, where she plans to attend NYU and become a writer like her idols Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Maya Angelou. Yet Dani is also bogged down by past trauma—an assault that happened the previous summer at a house filled with college boys. The trauma is a barrier between Dani and Prince and between her and her friends and family, each of whom in their own way works to lovingly tear it down. Through this community of people who love her, Dani finds healing and a sense of self-love.

Kirkus spoke with LaDelle, a former marketing director in the publishing industry, via Zoom while she was traveling in California. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Love Radio reads like a love letter to Detroit, a city that is rarely, if ever, the locale of romance novels. Why make it the setting for Love Radio?

When you think about Detroit, from music to cars, it holds so many stories. I realized there weren’t any love stories, especially YA stories, set in Detroit. I was just waiting for these stories. I was waiting for a book from a Detroit native, and it just wasn’t coming in. So why not write it yourself? When I started writing Love Radio, I was thinking about Prince being a love expert and what avenue he would take to give his advice. Immediately, the memory that kept coming back was me and my mother driving to work or to school and listening to Rickey Smiley, Mason & Starr, Donnie Simpson, and all those morning radio shows in Detroit. We would hear the pranks and the interviews and the love advice. And I was like, Oh my God, that’s it! I had this moment of clarity. It can’t be about radio and music and not be in your hometown. Also, Detroit is one of the Blackest cities in America, and there aren’t enough positive stories about it. I just wanted that representation.

Your novel is a love story between Prince and Danielle, but it’s also a love story between best friends and between family. What drove you to depict different kinds of love in your book?

It was important for me to show healthy love all around. You can’t really have a teenage love story without showing the love they’re receiving around them and how they’re influenced by that, especially because teens are so impressionable. Love can be hard to navigate, especially at a young age—it really forces you to grapple with some hard truths about yourself. So showing that you can have a healthy system of folks around you who care and can tell you about yourself and uplift you is really helpful. This book is about finding a community of people who love you and what that can do for you. Dani is a perfect example of someone who blossoms when she’s bringing that community back into her life.

Dani’s past trauma impacts all her relationships. Why did you include this trauma in the book, and what do you hope readers take away from Dani’s handling of it?

One in 6 women has experienced this type of trauma. It has impacted so many women and how they love. So much of it happens at that age or younger, and it has psychological effects for years to come. So that’s one thing. The other thing is that Black women don’t always get to be romantic leads, and we’re often misunderstood. Black girls don’t get to be annoying or messy or cold; we have to be together and powerful. I wanted to subvert the narratives that have been forced on Black girls and just show the nuance of it. That’s why sometimes Dani is unlikable. What I want readers to take away is, there is so much we experience as Black women that is unfair. We’ve had to love ourselves when the world didn’t. A lot of Dani’s journey is dealing with these things she’s experienced and coming into self-love.

Love Radio is unapologetically Black in how characters speak, the music Prince plays when DJing, and the movies Dani’s mom comfort-watches, among other things. Was it a challenge to realize this unapologetically Black vision in a publishing industry still greatly lacking in diversity?

I knew I wanted to create this type of art. One thing I refuse to compromise on is my art, and I was just not willing to publish if I had to. But I guess that’s why we stand on the shoulders of giants, right? There are so many wonderful Black books out that allowed me to get here and be able to write a book like this, and I’m so grateful for that because I was absolutely terrified when I went on submission. I was exposing myself and so much of my personality, my family, my friends. It was a pleasant surprise when the industry read it and loved it and it went to auction. And I’m published by the first place I worked at, so a lot of people I know, admire, and respect are there. So it really felt like, OK, it’s in the right hands and that everything happens for a reason and in the time it’s supposed to. I’m just happy for a first book to be able to finally show up as my full self. It’s liberating.

How did your work in the publishing industry inform your writing?

Working in marketing constantly keeps you on your toes because the audience is literally changing. Tastes are different, and the way you reach an audience is different. Teens will call you out online, which I appreciate. It really helped me in marketing other authors as well as made me confident in what I was writing. I was working on campaigns for Black books. If you bring the author to the right events and the right festivals, if you as a marketer are actually finding them that target audience, then they can be successful. In one week, there were four books by Black authors on the bestseller list, and three of the campaigns I worked on. That list is hard to get on. I went to a conference room and cried because it’s just one of those moments where you realize, I’m not crazy. Black people do buy books. It was nice to have that as proof. Even though the industry is slow to change, we are out here, and we’re hungry for this content.

The appeal of Love Radio goes beyond the YA market. Who do you hope finds this book, and what do you want them to get out of it?

I wrote this book for a Black teenager from Detroit, like me. That’s who I hope, first and foremost, finds this book. If nobody else reads this book but that type of reader, then my life is made. But my readers won’t be just Black teenage girls because love is a universal language. The goal for me as an author is to show this language from a different lens. I grew up watching movies like She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You and The Notebook, and these are completely different experiences for me. Black people have learned to watch these stories and relate. And we all relate through love, so why can’t we flip that? Why can’t other people watch stories about love that center us?

Gina Murrell is a Black queer librarian, writer, and copy editor in New York.