The Deal
The Deal
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Elle Kennedy on The Deal
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
A book she never planned to publishBefore ‘The Deal’ existed, Kennedy had spent years writing military romance, romantic suspense, and dystopian fiction. New Adult was a genre she had never attempted, and she approached it with no publisher in mind, no deadline, and no audience to satisfy.
I actually started The Deal in 2014 as a ‘just-for-fun’ book I wrote for myself. Being Canadian, hockey is a way of life, so I incorporated that and a college setting and next thing you know the Briar boys were created! I ended up publishing The Deal after much prompting from friends.
thelovelyteacheraddictions.blogspot.com, “The Lovely Teacher Addictions: My interview with Elle Kennedy, author of The Off Campus Saga and many other series”The decision to write New Adult and sports romance came from the same instinct that governs most of her catalog. Rather than chasing a market trend, she followed what she herself wanted to read.
The Deal was a book I wrote because I wanted to try my hand at writing a New Adult + sports romance. Basically, I usually write what I would want to read.
Kennedy also had no intention of turning ‘The Deal’ into a series. Her track record of underestimating her own books runs long: a romantic suspense she planned as a standalone ran to eight books, a Navy SEAL story to ten. The pattern held at Briar University.
I go into almost every series thinking it’s going to be a standalone. After The Deal, there were just too many good side characters that people wanted to see, so it ended up being way more books than I expected. And I’m not mad about it. I love it.
Her editor pushed for Logan’s story first. Then there were too many others who had taken hold of readers, and the Off-Campus series ran to four books and eventually a television adaptation.
How she wrote it
Starting from the last place you’d expectKennedy’s process for New Adult begins with an idea rather than an outline. She runs with it. What’s surprising about ‘The Deal’ is exactly where that run started: not at the meet-cute, not at the fake-dating contract, but at the book’s most intimate moment.
For example, in The Deal, the very first scene I wrote was the first love scene.
Writing the love scene first clarifies why everything that precedes it in the final book takes so long to arrive. Both Hannah and Garrett carry histories — assault and abuse — that made speed structurally impossible. The slow burn was not a romantic preference but a narrative requirement.
Because the issues were so heavy for Hannah and for Garrett, you can’t just have them suddenly jumping into bed in chapter one, right? It was really important for me to have them have this friendship that was rooted in trust and go from there. They really needed that slow burn in order for those issues to get dealt with in a sensitive and respectful way.
The fake-dating premise, central to the novel’s plot engine, was not a calculated trope selection. When Kennedy tries to explain her attachment to it, she works backward from instinct to reasoning, landing on the specific class and cultural distance between Hannah and Garrett.
I’ve never thought about why I love it, I just do. Probably because, in most fake dating situations, it’s two people who would never be together. It’s probably mostly the opposites attract part of it [that] people resonate with because it’s these two people who make no sense [together]. In The Deal, she’s this music student and he’s a hockey player. How are they gonna find common ground? It’s the tension between these two personalities. That’s probably why I’m drawn to it.
When the television adaptation of the Off-Campus series was in development, Kennedy had one non-negotiable demand that went straight back to her original structural logic. Everything she required the show to preserve traces to the same slow-build architecture she built in 2014.
Hannah and Garrett, in the book their relationship, it’s a friendship, right? It’s a very slow burn. They don’t hook up or make out in the first chapter. It was things like this where I said I need to see the slow burn and slow build. I need that dynamic to feel earnest and realistic to the characters. Especially if you’re keeping their backstories, it needs to be that way.
The personal thread
The book she keeps coming back toKennedy has published more than fifty books across multiple genres and series. When readers ask which is her favorite, she returns to the same answer, even when she catches herself wavering.
Usually The Deal is my favorite, because it really is special to me, but sometimes I think back to Grace’s list of demands, or Tucker’s sweet southern charm, and my mind is easily changed!
What she wants us to sit with
The journey is the pointKennedy published ‘The Deal’ in 2014, years before the wider cultural conversation about romance fiction’s literary seriousness gained momentum. Her defense of the genre is grounded in what she observes readers actually seeking when they pick the book up.
I do think the idea that [romance] is all just spicy scenes is disheartening sometimes because I do think there are such incredible stories, and these themes, and people are drawn to them for a reason. Not that they’re only reading it for the spice. They’re reading it for the journey, for the emotions that they feel.
Beneath the banter and the will-they-won’t-they of the fake-dating plot, ‘The Deal’ carries two characters working through serious trauma. Kennedy describes the tonal challenge of holding both registers without letting either collapse the other.
It is definitely a balance because you want it to be fun and you want the banter, and you want that journey of the relationship, and then you also want to see the characters’ growth and how they change, and how their traumas affect the way they view relationships, and then how they overcome them, whether as a couple, or how they help each other overcome it.
When the television adaptation forced Kennedy to name what she most needed audiences to carry away from Briar University, she pointed past the central romance entirely. The answer says something about what she was building from the first book onward.
These characters are special. It’s like a found family. They love each other. They rag on each other. That’s the same vibe I wanted. I wanted people who watch the show to feel like they are at Briar U and they are friends with these people.