Tell Me Softly
Tell Me Softly
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Mercedes Ron on Tell Me Softly
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
Two brothers, one impossible choiceThe love triangle in ‘Tell Me Softly’ has a specific television ancestor. At the Miami Book Festival, Ron traced the emotional architecture of her two brothers directly to the dynamic she had watched play out between siblings on ‘The Vampire Diaries’: one closed off and burning, the other open and steady. The point was not to recreate that show but to steal its central tension, the way two brothers with opposite temperaments can make the same girl’s choice feel genuinely unresolvable.
I wanted to explore that dynamic.
Readers who came to ‘Tell Me Softly’ from the Culpables series, where Culpables refers to Ron’s three-book forbidden-romance trilogy that generated 100 million combined views across its Prime Video films, might have expected a familiar formula. Ron was deliberate about the ways this book departs from that template, describing the distinction to Remezcla around the time the adaptation finished filming.
Here we have a love triangle. But we are going to have action in another way. We are going to have everything we have in Culpables, but in a different way. So I think it’s going to be a really cool change.
How she wrote it
Resentment on one side, refuge on the otherThe two brothers at the center of the triangle are not simply warmer and colder versions of the same archetype. At a Prime Video book club panel, Ron laid out the psychological asymmetry she built into the pairing: Thiago carries a fury toward Kamila, the protagonist, that the reader has no way to decode until the final pages. That withheld explanation is a structural choice, not a tease: the mystery of what happened between them is what gives the romance its weight.
And one of the brothers, Thiago, is so mad at Cami and you’re not going to know what happened until the end. [paraphrased from audio]
Taylor, the second brother, was built as an emotional counterweight to Thiago’s anger. Where Thiago withholds, Taylor offers something closer to unconditional shelter. Ron described the distinction in the same panel, making clear that Kamila is not choosing between a right answer and a wrong one.
And then we have Taylor, which is the best friend you could ever have. [paraphrased from audio]
The reader’s allegiance splitting between the two brothers was a designed outcome, not a side effect. Ron has spoken across interviews about fan communities forming around her romantic leads, and she addressed the ‘teams’ phenomenon with a specific acknowledgment of what the triangle costs the person at its center.
Having teams is always fun.
She followed that immediately by noting that Kamila, the one caught between the brothers, is the one who suffers most. The fun belongs to the reader; the price belongs to the protagonist.
Ron’s involvement in the Prime Video adaptation of ‘Tell Me Softly’ was shaped by timing: the shoot overlapped with the promotional campaign for the Culpables films, leaving her only a narrow window to visit set. What she found there settled any concern about the casting. Her account to Remezcla captured both the logistical squeeze and the result.
I can say that filming finished yesterday and I was there a few days ago. I was able to go to the shoot for two or three days because it coincided with the entire Culpables promo. And it looks amazing. They are amazing. I think we couldn’t have had a better cast.
The degree of creative control Ron holds across her Prime Video projects follows a consistent pattern she described to the Hollywood Reporter in the context of the ‘Drawn Together’ adaptation, another of her novels being produced under the same collaboration. The scope she named there matches the role she has described taking on for ‘Tell Me Softly’.
I’m very involved in the whole process, mostly in casting and the script, where I feel I can give more input.
What she wants us to sit with
A history that explains everything, revealed lastThe buried event that precedes the story is the book’s real engine. Thiago’s rage at Kamila is present from the first pages, but its cause is withheld until the end, which means the reader spends the entire novel measuring a wound without knowing what inflicted it. Ron structured the disclosure that way deliberately, positioning the revelation not as a plot twist but as the key that unlocks everything the reader thought they already understood about the triangle.
And one of the brothers, Thiago, is so mad at Cami and you’re not going to know what happened until the end. [paraphrased from audio]
Asked about how much of herself appears in her characters, Ron gave an answer that applies to every book she has written, including ‘Tell Me Softly’. She is not working from autobiography, but the characters are not external either. The distinction she draws is between intentional self-insertion and something more involuntary.
There’s a little bit of me in all the characters because they come from me, but I don’t do it on purpose.