Hi Jacqueline,
Thank you for joining us here at YALC. We would love you to introduce yourself?
Hi YALC, my name is Jacqueline Silvester. I write Romantic YA with a dose of trauma, spicy paranormal books with my best friend, and dark adult literary.
Can you give our readers an overview of your new novel ‘The Last Wish List
The Last Wish List is about a girl who loses her best friend. The best friend left her a bucket list to get over her grief, and in hopes of completing the list our MC Nadia embarks on an adventure along Route 66, in pursuit of her favorite pop star. It’s very much in the vein of All the Bright Places, The Fault in Our Stars and PS, I Love You. One of those you will cry but enjoy the crying kind of novels.
Who is your favourite character to write and why?
My favorite character is probably Fran. My MC Nadia is second gen eastern European like me and is going through the grief of losing someone to cancer (which also happened to me) so she was the more complicated one to write because it was quite close to my life. Whereas Fran has other pain points, but he’s very much the Grumpy in the Grumpy X Sunshine trope and I found that kind of reluctant grumpiness fun to write. Like the old man from UP, but in this case an attractive young Mexican guy with a secret and very much Get off my lawn! Vibes. He also has a Teletubby tattoo, which I find hilarious.
Have you done the Route 66 road trip yourself? If so what was your favourite moment? If not, how much research did you have to do to make sure the Route 66 road trip was authentic?
I’ve done part of it, the final leg. For the rest I used old school guide books and map books as I find tactile stuff more helpful in the drafting stages. I used some satellite images, read around 6-7 books, and watched a lot of vlogs from people’s travel (especially the more boring ones with very few views, they are the most helpful because they aren’t edited well and show so much scenery. I mean the 40-minute-long ones of someone just walking through the desert.)
Your book covers grief, which is a difficult thing for anyone to go through, how has was it to write about grief in this book?
It was cathartic at first. I found out my dad was ill and watched him die 8 days later, I really wanted to explore that grief on the page. As the drafts progressed and I healed over the years I found it more difficult to come back to that place of grief. So, in short, I found drafting easy and editing hard. Drafting felt like healing, editing felt like reliving.
Do you have your own wish list? If so can you tell us some things that are on the list, or have you completed any?
I have a bucket list for my life, and one for publishing. The Last Wish List will be sold in airports which is definitely a publishing bucket list item of mine. In my personal life I would like to be invited to the Baftas and walk the red carpet in a fabulous outfit, and I would like to fly my soviet grandparents somewhere on a private jet (mainly because I think it would be very funny.)
What made you want to get into writing?
I won a contest when I was 11 and never looked back. I grew up nomadic and writing felt like a cathartic activity that I could still continue doing everywhere we moved.
Have you read anything brilliant recently?
The Last YA book I really enjoyed was Where the Light Goes by Sara Barnard.
What do you want readers to take away (if anything) from ‘The Last Wish List’
I want them to know that grief isn’t linear. And it doesn’t just happen when someone dies. We grieve former versions of ourselves, friends that changed or moved away, we grieve if our parents break our hearts. And healing is a journey and never linear, but that there’s always hope beyond the storm. And you can always find your way back to yourself.
Where can our readers find you on social media?
@JacquelineSilvester on Instagram is the best place. I like to make silly reels, post my thrifting finds and maximalist trinkets, as well as talk about my books and travels.
Finally, can you give us your favourite quote from a novel (it can be yours!)?
“Then she tells me everything. And we sit there, Faith and Hope, a sea of dough between us.” The Last Wish List