YA author explores themes of inequity

Deanna Cameron book intertwines class struggle and toxic relationships

Deanna Cameron was just 16 years old when she began posting stories to online writing platform Wattpad.

“And I’ve been there ever since. That was, like, 10 years ago,” said the Canadian-born writer.

She’s now an English major at a university in Western New York, where she avoids mentioning that she’s a twice-published author.

Her second young adult novel, a mystery called “Home Wrecker,” comes out next Tuesday.

Now a global community of 90 million readers and writers, Wattpad users have been key to Cameron’s story development.

Her debut novel, “What Happened That Night,” had more than a million likes on the platform.

“I wrote a lot of books before ‘What Happened That Night,’ but none of them were particularly memorable,” she said. “They were just steppingstones, I guess, to becoming a better writer and knowing a little bit more about what I wanted to write …”

She never set out for her first book to be a mystery, said Cameron. “It happened accidentally. And then the more I wrote it, and the theories that people kept sending or commenting on, I thought, you know, it would be really interesting to veer into that a little bit more.”

With “Home Wrecker,” Cameron decided to go all in with the genre. “I was like, you know what? We’re making it a mystery book right from the beginning. It’s going to be a whodunit and we’re going to see where that takes us.”

Although it was a little out of her comfort zone, she’d been a fan of watching true crime shows on television for most of her adult life, and a positive reception from Wattpad users seemed to suggest it was a good idea for her to continue down that path. “The one short story I wrote that did kind of dabble in crime a little bit and mystery, that did actually really well.”

Like her first novel, “Home Wrecker” is published by Wattpad Books, the traditional publishing arm of the company established in 2019.

Its mystery centres around the suspicious death of the protagonist’s mother. Bronwyn, just 16, is initially told her mother has perished in the tornado the teenager narrowly escapes herself. But it’s later revealed the woman — who struggled with addiction — had been murdered before the storm cloud descended.

Cameron said she was initially inspired by reading a book where the protagonist struggled in her relationship with her mother, also because of issues with addiction.

Notably, Bronwyn and her mother live in a trailer park, where their lives are shaped by a struggle just to get by. In contrast, Bronwyn’s biological father — who wasn’t part of her life until her mother perished — is a well-known senator from a moneyed family.

The tension between these two worlds is informed by Cameron’s upbringing in Medina, N.Y.

“I live in an area where there’s a lot of poverty,” she said. “It’s not an affluent community whatsoever. Most people are unemployed. And I guess I was just kind of inspired from seeing what goes on in my own hometown and kind of wanting to shed a little light on it without villainizing it, because there are some stigmas.”

The circumstances that lead to Bronwyn’s mother’s death are tied to the desperate circumstances both of herself and the people around her.

Although the book was mostly written before the pandemic, Cameron said her approach to the editing was informed by the way the crisis has highlighted the inequities around her.

“I work in retail and my coworkers and I talk frequently about how unfair it kind of seems that our corporation gets so much money, but we know we’re getting minimum wage and no paid sick time, up until New York mandated it.

“So those kind of conversations inspired Bronwyn’s train of thought.”

Through another key theme, the book provides readers with a good primer on toxic relationships. Bronwyn has a friendship with a 20-year-old man, Kingston, who lives in the trailer across from her, but when it becomes romantic he reveals himself as jealous and possessive.

“I think there is a lot of romanticization about the bad boy and I don’t think that’s necessarily the healthiest thing. I kind of think we should encourage healthier relationships,” said Cameron. “And I guess in a way that was kind of what I was doing with Kingston and Bronwyn in their relationship, showing how, you know, even if it’s not necessarily a volatile relationship it can still be unhealthy.”

Cameron said it’s been interesting to have feedback from readers on Wattpad who have remarked that Bronwyn’s character has a lot of anger — which seems in context of her difficult life, including the violent death of her mother.

“I guess what I would hope people could take away from it is that, when you have gone through a lot in your life, you can be a very angry person and you can be left very bitter from just how other people have treated you in your life and how that it can change you.”

That seems to cause people more discomfort when it’s a girl or woman who is angry.

“Some people just naturally struggle with their anger. And I think sometimes we only let that be a man’s problem. Like only men can kind of struggle with anger. And if girls are angry, it’s got to be over something really big.”