Author Interview: Lynette Noni

Get the inside scoop on ‘Shadow Reaper’!

Lynette Noni is the author of our June YA ‘Falling for the Enemy’ featured book: Shadow Reaper. Read on to get the inside scoop from inspiration to favourite scenes and more!

For anyone who hasn’t read Shadow Reaper, could you describe the book in a few words?

I would say it’s a dark romantic fantasy, but with the caveat that it’s YA!

What was the initial inspiration for the story?

So all of my stories come to me differently. I get inspired in the weirdest ways — sometimes I’ll be travelling and have an idea, or I’ll meet someone and their story will resonate with me. But in this instance, it was actually Reeve, the main male character, who came to me in like a shower thought! I wasn’t in the shower, but it was one of those moments that was out of the blue, and it just came into my mind, this really attractive guy leaning against a wall in what was clearly a sort of dungeon. And I was like, I’ve just done an entire prison series! No! But this image stayed in my head because he seemed like he was not at all stressed about being locked up. He looked so confident and so cocky, almost like he was exactly where he wanted to be and was waiting for someone. That idea just stayed with me, and I started asking who are you, what are you doing, why are you here, who are you waiting for? It just started spiralling in my head and I worked backwards from there.

The world of Shadow Reaper is very dark and dangerous. How did you go about creating it?

It was really interesting coming into the world building. Whenever I start a new book or a new series, I always try to challenge myself with something I haven’t done before. This book started off the back of me writing The Prison Healer series, which also has a dark YA vibe, and prior to that I wrote a longer YA fantasy series called The Medoran Chronicles, which is my slightly lighter “Disney” series. So I think when it came to me writing this, the way I wanted to challenge myself was how I could go about writing in a closed environment in a world where nature is against you. There are these obelisks, or ward stones, that protect the city from a deadly mist, but they don’t always work. Sometimes they fail, and because of that most of the people on the island choose to live in the mountains or underground. And I think that was the biggest challenge for me, because I love travelling through an expansive world and visiting different places. In my Medoran series, there’s seven books and we go to all these different lands, and in The Prison Healer series, we go to all these different kingdoms. But to be in this type of world, you have to really stretch your brain to get the world building creative enough to keep people interested! I wanted to challenge myself and make sure that it felt dark and that they were oppressed and stuck in this place, but also, I wanted to bring moments of light and wonder and creativity.

What themes did you want to explore within the story?

I am such a bad author because I never go into writing a book with a theme I want to hit or a checklist of things I want to write. I write for entertainment, and just to see what happens with the characters. But I will say that what I can look back on and see as a running theme across all the books I’ve ever written is light conquering dark, and hope when everything feels hopeless. I really put characters through a lot of things! So I think bringing them to their lowest point and lifting them back up is something I do.

Which aspect of the world was the most fun to write?

I really loved the Mistwood! I really loved being able to be creative about the magic and wonder of that. And when Viri and Reeve are on this quest to go to the castle. It’s the high fantasy elements I really love! And I loved that on that entire quest, there is also so much banter! They are not on good terms at that point, and it was just so fun to have Reeve be so witty with his one-liners, and to have Viri find him funny even though she really didn’t want to.

Viri and Reeve were such an amazing duo! How did you balance their relationship while also maintaining their individual journeys?

Shadow Reaper is maybe the 14th book I’ve had published, and I’ve never had the romantic leads know each other prior to meeting in the book. They haven’t seen each other in several years and there’s this big gap of time in which they’ve changed. Back then, they were just friends, two kids having fun together. Then Reeve vanishes, and when he comes back in her circle Viri finds that he’s best friends with the person that killed her parents, the person she’s given her life to hunt down. To have that dynamic between them, to have that shared history where they were once very close and then him betraying her in the most horrible way, I think I just bounced off that. That created such a bridge between them, because on her side, even though she has a lot of fond memories of him, the him she knows now is her enemy. But he’s not acting like it! He’s so charming and silly, and I really had fun with their chemistry. And especially knowing what I did about both of the characters and the truths that are unveiled both in this first book and in the second book, I just focused on slowly drip feeding them. Having Viri at war with herself regarding her feelings for Reeve really helped too.

Was there anything that surprised you about the story as you were writing it?

This book is kind of told in two timelines. So we have the main narrative which follows Viri and the characters in current time, but we also have journal entries spaced throughout the book that are written from the perspective of an ancient mage from thousands of years earlier. As we’ve said, the island is isolated from the world, but it also isn’t very magical anymore. Back in time, magic used to be everywhere. There were mages and mage academies on the mainland and dragons flying around! I had a lot of fun having those journals as I could play with the magic, and then comparatively, be in this more oppressed place where the magic is gone now and replaced with something that is deadly. But, back in the very first draft of the book that went out to publishers and to auction, those journal entires did not exist! We didn’t have that timeline, we didn’t have the mages and the dragons. Some of that information was scattered throughout the story, and I had planned to touch on it more in a later book. But when I went through the editorial process my editors pointed out that it was a little bit too confusing to have such big gaps in knowledge in the first book, and if I could bring in more of the world building and the magic system into the first book then that would be strengthened. However, there was a very big risk of info-dumping, because adding all that information into the main narrative would spoil the pacing so much. So I had to find a way that would still keep Viri’s story moving, and I had the idea that I could add an entirely new character from back in a different time. I’ve never had such a big structural overhaul in a book before, but now I love those characters and that we got to meet dragons! That all added so much more colour and depth to the story.

We are so excited about the sequel! Is there anything you can tell us about it?

We go to some new locations! There’s a place that we go to that’s like the most fun and creative place I have ever created in any of the books I’ve written. Walnut the bunny also has more page time! And we get a lot more of Reeve’s reaper friends and find out how they became what they are and the choices that they made.

What is your favourite thing about the FairyLoot Exclusive Edition of Shadow Reaper?

It’s so beautiful, I love everything about it! I love the edges, but the endpapers are my favourite thing probably. I always love seeing when artwork of my characters or my world come to life, it’s so magical! I love the interpretation of the cover, with the wave portal and the mist. I think it’s very clever and so different from the trade one. There’s so many details from the book that you probably just think look cool until you’ve read the book. It’s all so beautiful.