Is anyone else just desperate to read a few chapters of her book? She's now at uni and can't possibly still be writing her characters as if they've walked out of an Enid Blyton novel surely..... surely??? Will we be surprised with a same sex relationship in this book? Will people be drinking and stuff like that? Will there be boys? If there are, will they actually be regular dudes or will they be wearing top hats and repeating "I say, old bean!" Who knows?
Her agent will definitely be coaching her to include commercially-friendly elements seen in other YA lit, but Ruby's never socialised with anyone who's not a privileged girl/young woman, most of whom she's related to. She definitely won't be able to write a diverse cast of well-rounded or even remotely realistic characters on her own.
We'll get a selection of familiar archetypes stolen from all the YA books she's suddenly interested in skim-reading.
The brief sample she showed does reveal that the characters of this Dark Macademia YA murder-mystery are just entering Year 10, so around 14-15 years old.
I know the tropiest YA tends to make all their teens super precocious and verbose for their age, and teen TV has conditioned everyone into thinking all teens in entertainment have to look and act like 25+ year olds, but yeesh. Ruby will be writing a YA story in which the stock characters are in situations far too mature for their age, from the perspective of someone who never progressed past the mental age of 13.
This is going to be a mess. I can't wait.