The Graham Effect
The Graham Effect
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Elle Kennedy on The Graham Effect
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
A dog walk and a daughter who had to play hockeyFor years, Kennedy kept a deliberate distance from next-generation stories, and the reason was not squeamishness but structural: a growth arc for a young protagonist almost always requires friction with the parent generation, and she had no interest in retroactively souring the characters readers had loved in the Briar University series.
I tend to not like next-generation stories. I don’t mind reading them depending on how the author handles it, but just especially with the younger characters, if you’re doing a good growth arc, a lot of the time they’re going to have issues with their parents, right? And I don’t want to have characters who were a beloved couple, suddenly be bad parents or have strained relationships with their kids. So I always kind of avoided that.
The resistance broke in a single walk. A fan’s email asking whether she would ever write about Garrett and Hannah Graham’s twins had been sitting unanswered, and when Kennedy finally stepped outside with her dog, the premise arrived fully formed before she got back to the door.
The first answer that flew into my head was, ‘Oh, yeah, the daughter has to be the hockey player.’ And then from there, I’m just walking and had an entire story plotted in my head, and I was like, ‘OK, I guess I’m going to write this.’
Once the premise locked in, Kennedy was asked whether she was ultimately writing the book for the fans who had requested it. Her answer separated fan appetite from her own creative appetite, and made clear which one would have won if the two had ever diverged.
You know what? 50/50. Because I’m a person who enjoys a challenge. I’ve never written a female hockey player, and the second that idea popped into my head, I was like, ‘Oh, I must do this.’ Even if all the fans had said, ‘We changed our minds. We don’t want to see this.’ I would have still written it. Like, once the right story comes along, I’m gonna do it.
That instinct, to chase the untried form rather than repeat what already worked, shaped every subsequent craft decision in the book.
How she wrote it
Inventing a pop culture world to stay in the presentBecause Gigi Graham is the college-age daughter of characters who were themselves college students in the earlier Briar books, the timeline placed the new novel in a near future Kennedy had no intention of writing. Her solution was to sidestep real-world cultural markers entirely rather than try to project what they might become.
I had to figure out how to make it the future / next generation, without it really being the future, if that makes sense. I didn’t want to go all sci-fi and imagine a world with all sorts of new technological advances — it was important to me that the story feel like it was happening right now. For cultural references, I basically created an entire pop culture world (fictional TV shows, musical artists, etc.) so I didn’t ‘date’ the book.
Garrett Graham is one of the most popular figures in the earlier Briar University series, and writing his daughter meant Gigi had to feel the weight of his reputation without the novel asking readers to see him in a harsher light. Kennedy named the tightrope she was walking.
I didn’t want there to be resentment on her part, or for them to have a strained relationship, otherwise you’re creating a villain out of a popular character. So it was a fine line to navigate.
Beyond the parent-daughter dynamic, Kennedy faced a pairing question: who does the coach’s daughter end up with? She could have drawn from the existing Briar roster, but she chose the more combative option and then described her plotting method with characteristic brevity.
I could have done coach’s daughter with an existing player. But let’s do coach’s daughter with an enemy player, instead. I don’t put a lot of thought into it, though. It’s just, I get an idea, and I’ll run with it, and then it will work or it won’t work.
Kennedy also described her preference for working within a continuous fictional world rather than building new ones from scratch, a preference that explains why she keeps returning to Briar rather than launching a separate series for each new cast of characters.
The majority of my books are readable / enjoyable as standalones, but I do prefer to write in a series because I am obsessed with world-building.
That commitment to accumulated world-building is what made the callbacks to earlier books possible: a throwaway line about why the Briar team can never have a pet again, a casual reference to ‘my aunt Summer.’ Small details for new readers, full sentences for old ones.
The personal thread
The one thing she put in that is entirely her ownKennedy rarely maps herself onto her characters, and said so plainly when discussing what she did and did not bring to Gigi. One detail, however, traveled directly from her own life into the book without alteration.
I rarely put much of myself in my books, but the love of butterflies is all me! The first thing I do when I visit a new place is google to see if there is a butterfly garden.
Asked to describe the experience of returning to the Briar University world after writing other projects in between, Kennedy chose a phrase that is less about craft than about emotional geography.
The book has a lot of things that readers have been asking for: a return to Briar University with cameos from some of the original couples, a true-to-form Coach Jensen, the same sizzling romances and banter that readers have come to expect from this universe, and another Graham trying to leave their own unique mark on the hockey world. Also, the chemistry between Gigi and Ryder is off the charts…
When she described writing the book as ‘like coming home,’ she was speaking to her own relationship with this fictional world, not only to what it would feel like for returning readers.
What she wants us to sit with
Chemistry is the vehicle; communication is the pointGigi Graham, the daughter of The Deal‘s central couple, Garrett and Hannah Graham, grows up knowing what a high-functioning relationship looks like, and the book follows what happens when she has to build one herself. Kennedy was direct about what she wanted a reader to take from Gigi and Ryder’s specific journey.
I think Gigi and Ryder’s story shows just how important healthy communication is in relationships. Their chemistry is off the charts, of course, and their journey has lots of little bumps along the way, but I think as long as you’re open and honest with your partner, you can solve anything together.