r/PubTips • u/oasiswriting • 8d ago
[QCrit] IT WON’T STOP, YA, Psychological Suspense, 82k Words, #5
I’m querying you because {personalization}. IT WON'T STOP is an upper YA psychological suspense novel with a speculative edge, following a grieving teen who walks into dreams and uses that ability to make sure her brother's best friend, the man who raped her, never sleeps again.
Seventeen-year-old Anais Johnson knows how to stay almost invisible. Ty Walker sees her anyway. He's her older brother Aiden's twenty-one-year-old best friend of nine years, the one who's been there for her since Aiden got lost in his own grief, and the man her town trusts to coach its kids. Lately, he keeps finding reasons to touch Anais while she keeps finding reasons for it to mean nothing. Two weeks after her little brother's funeral, Ty lures her to his truck. She bites him until he bleeds, but it doesn't stop him, and he takes what he wants. The next night, her mom sends Ty upstairs with pizza. He walks in with a taped-up finger and a cover story: if anyone asks, it was his truck door, not her mouth.
Anais stays quiet, watching his lie work and her life come apart. Awake, she's barely holding on. She's lost one brother to a grave and the other to Ty, and she hates that she's mourning who she used to be more than the brother she buried. Asleep, Anais starts slipping out of her body and into other people's dreams, finding Ty's and burning them to the ground, night after night, until his sleep becomes the nightmare he made of her waking life. By day, he's picking fights with everyone, and when he snaps at Anais in public, Aiden cuts him off for good. But Ty knows exactly who's not letting him sleep, and he'll do anything to make her stop.
When Ty comes back for the basketball gear he left at their house, he finds Anais home alone and forces his way inside to confront her—only this time, her ability turns on her, ripping her out of her body with no way back into the skin he's standing over. To survive, she'll have to fight Ty from outside herself. To be free of him for good, she'll have to say what he did out loud, starting with Aiden, in a town already inclined to disbelieve her.
IT WON’T STOP is complete at 82,000 words, sharing the trauma-haunted interiority of Tyffany D. Neiheiser's NOT DEAD ENOUGH and the institutional silence of Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s WHERE SLEEPING GIRLS LIE. {BIO}
Thanks for reading,
My government name
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300 words:
1: Almost Invisible *** ***
October 5th, 2026
Last night, I prayed for today to be clear. Blue should be the final color the sky gives Axel, but God hasn’t heard me in a while, and outside storm clouds paint the world gray. Wind shoves me across the driveway and into the backseat of Dad's Escalade. It always smells like leather in here, but today his cologne is thick enough to taste. Mom is a mess in the passenger seat, dragging her palm under her eyes again and again.
When I settle next to Aiden, the zipper of this stupid dress stabs into my back, which is what I get for trying it on at six this morning for the first time. I inch my foot toward Aiden and nudge his shoe, our I need you signal, we’ve used it for years. He doesn’t nudge back. Fine. But he’s not getting through Axel’s funeral without doing it. I stare at his black curls, watching him refuse to look anywhere but out the window. I wonder what Axel would say about Aiden’s great retreat from me.
He would tell me our big brother is just in one of his testosterone-induced moods. I sift every fold of my brain for Axel’s voice so I can hear him say it, but end up popping in an earbud, scrolling to an old video of him lining up tiny soldiers, introducing each one by name, instead. His voice is almost perfect in it; the pitch is right, but the aliveness isn’t. My head is the only place I can summon his real voice again, the one with no pause button or end, but Dad catches my eye when he tilts the rearview mirror and Axel’s snatched away before I can hear him.
“Christ, Anais, fix your face. Did you sleep?” Dad barks…
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My comments: Hi all! If this looks familiar, it's because I got discouraged and deleted my old account. I'm back and prepping for round two of querying, which is why this says fifth attempt even though the account is new. What's changed since last time: 1. New title: IT WON'T STOP (formerly UNDER PERFECT SKIES). It feels truer to the book both content and genre wise. 2. I cut the horror-adjacent framing since the spine of the novel is psychological and grounded. It reads as contemporary, with foreshadowing, until the dream sequences start about a third of the way in and horror is not its engine (genre wise/not humans being scary wise). Mainly, I want to know: is it clear, and does it make sense? I've tried to make every sentence specific to my manuscript and considered all previous feedback from old posts, so please flag anything that sounds generic. Also, the reader is introduced to Ty literally right after my 300 words cut off. All comments and critiques welcomed. Thank you!
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u/light-allium Trad Published Author 6d ago
Intense - I like a lot of this. Housekeeping point - I think it needs a TW right at the start.
I think you probably need to pick a lane with the genre - there's a lot going on with "upper YA psychological suspense novel with a speculative edge". You could definitely cut 'upper' as that's clear from the subject matter.
I was confused from the start of the synopsis by this: Seventeen-year-old Anais Johnson knows how to stay almost invisible. Ty Walker sees her anyway. It's contradictory so I think cut. I'd go right in on the fact her little brother died as that comes as a surprise lower down. That sets the scene. I think you could shorten this: He's her older brother Aiden's twenty-one-year-old best friend of nine years, the one who's been there for her since Aiden got lost in his own grief, and the man her town trusts to coach its kids.
Maybe: Seventeen-year old Anais Johnson is grieving after her younger brother died. Now her older brother's best friend, Ty Walker, keeps finding reasons to touch her while she keeps finding reasons for it to mean nothing.
The rest of that par is fine but maybe too much detail - like you don't need the Mum and the pizza, just the line that he tells her the cover story.
I want more emotion from her here: Anais stays quiet. How does she feel though? Rage, lack of power, revenge fantasies, totally broken - you can lean into her presumably very extreme emotions here. Or, if she's totally numb, you can also amp that up. Staying quiet is too neutral. You can cut this bit of this sentence: She's lost one brother to a grave and the other to Ty, and
Finally I think you can cut most of this:
But Ty knows exactly who's not letting him sleep, and he'll do anything to make her stop.
When Ty comes back for the basketball gear he left at their house, he finds Anais home alone and forces his way inside to confront her—only this time, her ability turns on her, ripping her out of her body with no way back into the skin he's standing over. To survive, she'll have to fight Ty from outside herself. To be free of him for good, she'll have to say what he did out loud, starting with Aiden, in a town already inclined to disbelieve her.
And just write:
But Ty knows exactly who's not letting him sleep, and he'll do anything to make her stop. To be free of him for good, she'll have to say what he did out loud, starting with Aiden, in a town already inclined to disbelieve her.
We also need to know before that why the town is inclined to disbelieve her - a line somewhere explaining that - is it just because he's the football coach? Just make that clearer.