We chat with author Jenni Howell about Boys With Sharp Teeth, which is a mind-bending YA debut about dark revenge, twisted desire, and the sinister secrets lurking behind the walls of an elite boarding school—think We Were Liars meets The Raven Boys!
Hi, Jenni! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hey, Nerds!! Of course! I am a massive nerd so doing this interview with y’all thrills me. Basic Jenni lore and go: I live in the part of Maryland where you can REALLY smell the cows, am married with four children and a giant dog named Loki, love cooking (especially dim sum, because my town has the audacity to have no dim sum restaurants), drink way too many americanos every day, quote Aragon out of context so much that my spawn think I made up his lines, and deeply enjoy a good pair of overalls.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Growing up I was incredibly shy, and the characters in books were my favorite friends. I read voraciously, everywhere—in class, while walking, when I should be doing homework, late late at night, and in the tops of trees—but never imagined being a writer. That is, until my fourth kid when I had fantastic insomnia and anxiety throughout the pregnancy. Midnight Jenni found Ao3! Storytelling became the way I processed my emotions—and then, as I kept writing, it became my passion. I’ve always gotten bored of jobs and hobbies after a year or so, no matter how interesting they were. With writing, that’s about the time I get to start a new book! It’s PERFECT.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: My Picture Bible, a relatively gory cartoon version of the Bible, ha!
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater. That Book. THERE’S NOTHING LIKE THAT BOOK.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan. I’m obsessed with what she did with that book.
Your debut novel, Boys with Sharp Teeth, is out April 8th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Eerie, lyrical, passionate, obsessive, and dark.
What can readers expect?
Vibes so thick you will absolutely get lost in them, a badass but paranoid female MC, private school boys with dark pasts and twisted coping mechanisms, and obsession. So, so much obsession. I’ve also tangled some of my favorite things in there, like philosophy courses, marginalia (two characters fall in “love” over marginalia notes to each other in a textbook!), and unhinged, toxic love interests.
Where did the inspiration for Boys with Sharp Teeth come from?
There’s a scene in The Picture of Dorian Gray where Dorian lays out his true self at its most disgusting before Basil, the one person in the world that could potentially absolve him in any meaningful manner. Yet Dorian comes to the encounter expecting condemnation. That tension between desiring salvation and condemnation from the same person in the same moment is what spawned this book. I wanted to look more closely at what it’s like to be truly seen in your darkest moment by the only person that could save you—and have several different outcomes play out on page.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
ALL OF THEM. No, but seriously. This book was such a wild ride to write. Marin is an incredibly intense, emotional, dramatic main character and writing from her lens with this cast of characters (of whom so, so many are unhinged) made every scene a delight to write. I guess that makes Marin my favorite character, ha!
If I had to pick just one scene, I’d probably say the shower scene. Hehe. There’s just so much delicious tension of so, so many types in that scene—and the twist that happens at the end of it was one that made even me screech when I wrote it.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Absolutely. This is the novel that got me my agent and my first publishing deal, but it’s also the novel I learned to write on. Boys with Sharp Teeth underwent 8 full, burn-it-all-down rewrites and 13 total drafts before it got to the point where you all can read it today. Once we started adding publishing deadlines into the mix, things got real interesting real fast.
The truth is there’s no road map to overcoming difficulties in writing—there’s just why you want to overcome them. Why do I write? Why write this book in particular? If that reason is strong enough, it can carry you through almost anything.
For me, I write so that I can give extravagantly. As much of my writing income as possible is given to International Justice Mission to help their cause of freeing victims of slavery around the world. That’s a BIG why and a big driver—and then when you add in that Boys with Sharp Teeth is a book about opening up the darkest parts of our soul to another and finding love, even if just for one, fleeting moment, there was no way I could give up on it. We need light in our darkness—and that’s true for the hundreds of thousands of people enslaved around the world today, too.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
Bumpy and yet also fast! The first book I ever queried should NOT have been one I tried to get an agent with, it was barely a book. And yet I threw that sucker at over 200 agents thinking maybe if I just kept working on the pitch someone would pick it up. Lol, no.
Then with Boys with Sharp Teeth, I had three rounds of querying. Each had great metrics of requests from excellent agents—but I was still learning so much about writing the first two times that they ended in rejections. Some amazing agents gave me personalized feedback on why that I took to heart, broke the crap out of my book, and tried one more time.
Within a month, I’d signed with my dream agent Claire Freidman. Two weeks later we went on sub—and less than a month after that, I’d signed a pre-empt deal for two books with my absolutely amazing editor, Kate Meltzer at Roaring Brook Press.
FOR FRODOOOOO!! (Please interpret that to mean, no matter how circumstances look, do not give up. If one small shred of light remains, and you want to fight for that light, charge the gates.)
What’s next for you?
Am I allowed to talk about this? I don’t know. BUT I AM GOING TO. My next book, also a standalone, comes out with Fierce Reads in Fall 2026! I call it a dark urban romantasy, as somehow it’s even darker and yet also much, much more romantic than Boys With Sharp Teeth. There’s demons. Curses. Fated love. Alligators. Abandoned ruins. Serial killers. And, oh, a toxic romance or two. Hehe J
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
This. Year. Is. PACKED. I cannot wait for Katabasis, as I am just a girl. I’m also incredibly excited for Xan Kaur’s When Devils Sing, Brittany Arena’s A Dance of Lies, and Maika and Maritza Moulite’s new book The Summer I Ate the Rich. It’s absolutely amazing that I get to go on tour with them and other amazing authors—I cannot wait!!
