Hello everyone, and welcome back to my Author Spotlight series! I love this next book so much that I’m going to dive right in. What starts off as a lighthearted competition to live without modern technology for a year turns into a fight for survival in this young adult thriller by New York Times bestselling author, Jarrod Shusterman, and debut author, Sofía Lapuente.
Retro follows Luna Iglesias, who finds herself at the heart of a brewing controversy after a cyberbullying incident in her school goes viral. When a social media company called Limbo—who are also implicated in the scandal—sweeps in with an offer that sounds like an opportunity to turn over a new leaf and receive a scholarship to the college of her dreams, she’s happy to jump on the new trend. It’s called the Retro Challenge, where contestants live without modern technology, wear vintage clothes, party as if the future weren’t already written, and fall in love as if they were living in a movie.
At first, the challenge is fun, but then things take a dark turn. Kids start disappearing, including Luna’s friends. There are voices in the woods. Blood-red markings on the trees. And Luna increasingly begins to wonder if all these strange happenings are connected with the Retro Challenge. Secrets. Lies. Betrayal. The weight of her family on her shoulders. There’s so much on the line for Luna, not to mention she’s falling in love with the last guy she expected.
Sofía Lapuente is an author, screenwriter, and avid world traveler who immigrated from Spain to the United States to realize her dream of storytelling. Since then, she has received a Masters of Fine Arts at UCLA, worked as a producer and casting director on an Emmy nominated show, and received coauthor credits in Gleanings, the New York Times bestselling fourth installment of the Arc of a Scythe series, with her partner, Jarrod Shusterman.
Jarrod Shusterman is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of novel Dry, which he is adapting for a major Hollywood film studio with Neal Shusterman. He is also the coauthor of the accoladed novel Roxy. His books have all received critical acclaim and multiple starred reviews.
To celebrate the release of Retro, Jarrod and Sofía are going on a book tour (with some special guests such as Adalyn Grace, Neal Shusterman, and Nicola Yoon) beginning in January.
Retro deals with intense topics such as cyberbullying, heterosexual stereotypes, and body dysmorphia and spins it in a way that becomes normal and accepted. How would you recommend subjects like these be normalized in a constantly changing inclusive society that is still critical?
Jarrod Shusterman (JS): In Retro, we tried to show that cyberbullying/bullying isn’t always black and white. Which is why we wanted Luna to make that terrible mistake of uploading that video of Samantha online, and having Samantha be brutally bullied as a result. I’d argue that we don’t normalize it in anyway, but show that we can be the good guys, but we can also be the bad guys sometimes and not even know it. After all, all the best antagonists in movies think they are the protagonist of their own stories. It’s what makes them real and 3D. We wanted to make everyone question if they’ve ever been a bully without knowing it at some point in their lives, because it’s the bullies we need to engage if we’re ever going to make a change.
Sofía Lapuente (SL): As far as heterosexual stereotypes, we try to divorce gender stereotypes from sexuality by depicting Axel with painted nails or wearing eyeliner like a rockstar. We wanted to show that sexuality has nothing to do with the color pink. Ideas that we believe should be commonly accepted at this point in the 21st century.
However, conditions like body dysmorphia are serious disorders and should be treated, rather than accepted as is. Something we made sure to highlight in Retro. Getting help is SO important. And if you’re suffering from this, you should be treated by a medical professional immediately. We don’t think we normalized this in our book, rather, we shined a spotlight on it, addressing eating disorders in males. Because it’s something that is seldom done. All of these stories came firsthand from Jarrod, who was on the wrestling team in high school and experienced the group’s bad relationship between weight and food.
Which character do you relate to the most, and can you tell us your favorite scene with or about the character to give our audience a teaser?
SL: I really empathize with Darnell. He’s a character who is loud proud and has been living as a retro long before it was a challenge. He fights for his values, and rights and is a little bit of a rebel like me. However, being a Hispanic immigrant, I definitely relate most to Luna—she’s strong, fiery, loving, and confident, though not without her own shortcomings or insecurities. I love how Luna stops at nothing to find her friends when they are kidnapped, which really engages the thriller element of this story. One scene in particular is when someone disappears from the biggest party of the year, and everyone becomes a suspect, it’s up to Luna to figure out who is sabotaging the Challenge.
JS: I relate most with Axel, the ‘book boyfriend’ reason being is that in some ways growing up I had a hard time opening up my feelings, and I also fell for a Hispanic girl, (named Sofi) and everything in my life became about winning her over. I think my favorite scene with them is when his car breaks down, so Luna picks Axel up on the side of the road. It’s really when they both start flirting, in an enemies-to-lovers fashion. He always has a cocky line, and she always has a snarky comeback for him. Their relationship is one that you are going to want to see unfold!
Most authors use playlists as an inspiration for their stories or for their characters. The chapters of Retro, however, are song titles and the book will include a QR code that takes readers to Luna’s Playlist. How does the music within your novel differ from other authors? Is there a particular way to listen to the track, or what do you recommend for readers?
SL: With every chapter title being a song, the song title and lyrics had to not only fit the vibe of the chapter but also had to dovetail with the story—so the music is much more embedded into our book than a typical playlist. Typically, the balance in a book is between plot and character, where one affects the other in every way, but in our book we added music so the story would have the ability to make you laugh, cry, fall in love, make new best friends and feel like you’re standing side by side with Luna as she takes on the world.
JS: Being that Retro is a fun thriller with tons of twists and turns, the music had to reflect that. In some moment the song titles have almost secret messages in them and will foreshadow what may come in the chapter. So, you’ll have to read to see that one!
As a Spanish immigrant, how has your experience compared to Luna’s when it comes to facing the truth about white supremacy when you were her age?
SL: Luna decides to ‘go Retro’ and ditch her smart technology for a full year, in order to win a scholarship—because it’s something her family can’t afford. It’s one of her largest motivators, which was always a big fear for me as well. Because going through the immigration process isn’t as simple as ‘wait in line’ there is no line sometimes. So, we both share that struggle. And writing Luna brought me back to my first day in this country when I would get a weird look because my accent was so strong, or times when people thought they could take advantage of me, or that I was stupid for not speaking English as well as them. When, newsflash: I speak two languages, and they just speak one. So, who is really smarter? It’s those logical inconsistencies is where racism shows its ugly face, and we definitely wanted to touch on it in Retro.
Roxy and Dry incorporate more realistic elements to their narratives such as Adderall and the California droughts whereas Retro has a fantastical undertone through Limbo that is perceived as this rainbow filled high tech company. How would you say Retro’s overall message about the severity of cyberbullying still shines through despite the lightheartedness this work of yours has more of compared to your previous works?
JS: Dry and Roxy had important messages that were incased in a serious message, but not all messages have to be done in a straight-forward way. Dry had undertones of adventure, Roxy felt like a dark fantasy at times, and Retro is this addicting, YA guilty pleasure thrill-ride that will make you laugh while you cry. We wanted to write Retro in a way that competed with the 8.25 second attention span that all humans have now. And in order to do that, we had to blast the reader on all fronts with humor, thrill, secrets, lies, cliffhangers, music, and characters that you felt could be your friends. At the end of the day writing is communication, and if people are really entertained and invested in the journey—the message with shine through. And in a character sense, Luna’s guilt about what she did, and the cyberbullying that happened motivates everything that she does in the book, with the goal of showing that behind every screen is a living breathing person, with a beating heart : )
Luna’s mother is such an embodiment of the traditional overprotective Hispanic mother. What are some funny stories you can share about your own experience as a Hispanic daughter?
SL: My mother is always afraid that I am not eating enough, because she wants me to get enough vitamins. She would hide my car keys from me so I wouldn’t leave home without finishing my lentils. And for her, two kisses were mandatory when I came back home later, to check if I smelled like a man’s cologne, cigarettes, or anything else that she deemed dangerous. As Spaniards, we talk really loud, and back when Jarrod didn’t understand Spanish he would think my mamá and I were fighting, when we were really just a mother and daughter showing our unique kind of love.
Would you ever want to partake in a Retro challenge? If so, what prize would you want to win, and how would it compare and differ from the challenge Luna and her friends take?
JS: I would love to take the Retro Challenge! It wouldn’t be easy, but I remember what life was like before phones, when I had to knock on my friends’ doors to hang out or spend time on the house phone talking with their parents. At this point in my life, I would love to take a cash prize! It would be so worth it. I’d buy a nice home and put ALL the smart technology in it. Then I could go Retro in the random moments that I choose!
SL: I am so down to take the challenge, and I would use the time to work on our SECRET PROJECT (our next books about a crazy/dangerous game on the dark internet which we’ll reveal this year) But I think taking the challenge could make my mom get a heart attack!
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A million thanks to Jarrod and Sofía for writing Retro and answering my answers! Reading Retro and coming up with questions for this interview has been one of my favorite Author Spotlights so far, and I can’t wait to see what their next book is now! (I also must agree that Axel is now one of my top book boyfriends.)
I’d like to extend my gratitude to Alex Kelleher from Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing who not only helped facilitate this interview but also provided me with an ARC of Retro.
Jarrod and Sofía would like to thank all their readers who give them the motivation to write. For more fun behind the scenes author content, be sure to follow them on TikTok and Instagram: @sofiandjarrod.