Tia Williams is no stranger to love, considering her 20-year career as an author, with six adult romances, including The Perfect Find and A Love Song for Ricki Wilde, and the YA drama series It Chicks, to her name. But her first YA romance, Audre & Bash Are Just Friends, marks new territory, pulling the titular heroine Audre from her popular adult book Seven Days in June. The novel follows Audre, daughter of Eva, as she attempts to break out of her shell by befriending newcomer Bash. We spoke with Williams about the parallels between her mother-daughter characters, the importance of writing about mental health for young audiences, and if readers can catch her back on the YA scene again anytime soon.

What was it about Audre was so compelling that you wanted to give her her own story?

I loved Audre when I was writing Seven Days in June, but what I didn’t realize was that she would become a fan favorite. The book is about her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, but she became a favorite because she’s hilarious. She’s so precocious. She was 12 in that book, but always managed to be the wisest person in a room full of adults. She was the audience proxy who kind of felt like her mom and this dude were just flailing idiots and is like, “Get it together!” She had all the answers. She had this thriving secret side hustle therapy business where she would charge her classmates $25 per session. And her advice was stellar. She just knew what she was talking about. I wanted to keep writing her character and find out what was next for her. So I aged her up four years, and it’s been four years since Seven Days in June pubbed. It was real time, and now she’s starring in her own YA rom-com.

Are there parallels between Audre and her mother Eva’s experiences that you wanted to create?

Eva had a very traumatic teenage experience, and so it makes her worried about her own daughter in ways that her daughter can’t understand, because Audre doesn’t know about Eva’s teenage experiences. In fact, only people who read Seven Days in June will know. This book is all through Audre’s point of view, so the way she’s viewing Eva, she’s just so confused as to why Eva and Shane are so concerned [about her]. And it’s definitely a standalone. You don’t have to know anything about Eva’s lore to read it. But I’m finding out from people who are reading it who haven’t read Seven Days In June that it makes them want to go back and read it to find out more about Eva and Shane and what her life was like and what she’s hiding.

Audre and Bash showcase how to navigate their mental health struggles in healthy ways. Why was that important to you?

I feel like mental health is something that teenagers have always struggled with, but it isn’t until now that they have words to describe it and are taken seriously. I had depression and I was struggling with all kinds of things as a teenager. But there wasn’t really any infrastructure around what to do about that. You just kind of soldiered through. Now the emotional and mental health of teenagers is taken seriously, and it’s something that they are comfortable discussing. There’s a way to talk about how they’re feeling and what they’re going through, and it’s a way of relating to other teenagers.

Can we expect more books for young readers from you?

I don’t know. I wrote this YA romance because I wanted to write Audre, but I had so much fun with it, I might return to the genre!

Audre & Bash Are Just Friends by Tia Williams. Little, Brown, May 6 $19.99 ISBN 978-0-316-51108-7