Interview with CL Montblanc, Author of Pride or Die

Posted by Holly Schindler May 30, 2025

Interview with CL Montblanc, Author of Pride or Die

Welcome to YAOTL, CL! Please tell us a bit about Pride or Die.

Thank you so much for having me! Pride or Die is a young adult mystery-comedy about a group of goofballs who are accused of trying to murder a cheerleader and have to find the real culprit themselves. All the while dealing with crushes, bullies, and a series of increasingly wacky events. Reviews have described it as “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder meets Casey McQuiston” and “Scooby Doo meets Heathers.”

I'm a sucker for humor. Nothing draws me into a book faster. Why did you find yourself writing humorously? Is it just your natural voice? Was there another reason?

I’m incapable of not being silly and goofy, even while under duress, so that naturally feeds into my writing as well. With this book in particular, I wanted to reflect what I see as being an authentic teenage experience. The world is awful, often so ridiculous that it becomes farcical. It’s only natural that many of us use humor to cope.

Tolerance is described early on as ignoring the LGBTQ+ students instead of “throwing around slurs.” But in this book, these characters absolutely cannot be ignored. Can you speak a bit about crafting these true-to-life characters?

I tend to go “write what you know” with main characters. The four kids at the center of my novel all have traits taken from myself, which are then exaggerated and extrapolated upon. And while writing the story, I looked to the characters to inform where the plot went, rather than already having a rigid outline in place that they would need to adhere to. That can often lead to bending your characters so much that they break.

As an offshoot of that, I was fascinated by how Kenley’s character developed and changed over the course of the book. She was a villain but also not a villain. Did you hope to build reader empathy for her?

Honestly, yes and no. I do think people can empathize with feeling closeted, or more broadly, being forced to fit into a certain mold. But she’s a very flawed character who behaves with cowardice and misplaces her loyalties for most of the novel. Both she and Eleanora have a lot to unpack following the events of the book. There’s so much growth to be done at seventeen.

Many of my characters have these good-and-bad elements to them. I really wanted to demonstrate that even “allies” can be flawed and cause harm, and even bigots can skirt by in the world when they put on a pretty enough mask.

The book does become serious when Kenley is attacked. Actually, the attack served a few purposes. Can you speak to how you balanced making this a central plot conflict to the book and also using it as an example of real world wrongful persecution?

Writing a mystery means writing about crime, and with crime comes heavy topics such as police and the justice system. Frankly, I don’t think I’m the best person to be commenting on real wrongful persecution, especially in a book that has so much else going on that the discussion would inevitably be sandwiched in the midst of slapstick goofiness rather than treated with the full respect and care that it deserves. While marginalized people are more likely to be wrongfully persecuted, this is most notably the case for those who are Black or disabled rather than being associated with the queer community.

Mystery is one of the hardest genres to write in. What was your biggest revelation about writing mystery?

My biggest revelation was just how narrow mystery is as a genre. Someone is missing or murdered. A sleuth has to solve the crime because they’re the only one who cares, or they themselves are being pinned for the crime, or both. Formulaic premises aside, what ends up making mystery novels special to me are things like memorable characters, unique settings, and well laid-out clues that lead to a brilliant twist. What I aimed to do with Pride or Die was to write a story where whether or not you’re a fan of mysteries or are able to guess particular twists, you’ll come away from the book thinking, “hey, that was fun!”

I highlighted this statement: “Bigotry doesn’t stop or start with a single person.” Can you speak to how this influenced character arcs throughout the book?

My characters deal with bullying throughout the story, but the main character Eleanora often brushes it off. That’s one component of the quote—there’s no point in letting shitty people get to you. It’s not always worth fighting back when it might make your situation worse, on top of not actually solving the problem. But in terms of bigger villains, like Principal Ballard, and the larger systemic issues that can really impact your life… it’s a tougher battle. All we can do is fight however we can, and if that means taking down one asshole principle for now, that’s still something.

Another statement that stayed with me: “…cowards with ‘ally’ in your Instagram bios. None of you spoke up or stepped in when it mattered.” What do you hope young readers are inspired to do after reading this book? In what way do you hope they step up or speak out?

I hope part of the takeaway of this novel is that the queer kids at its center are just regular people. Even if you don’t know what it’s like to be part of that community, you should be able to understand that everyone is deserving of the same respect. If someone wants you to call them by a certain name or pronoun, it costs you nothing to do that. It all starts by just allowing queer people to be themselves and live. The US government has recently “gotten rid of” the nonbinary identity, scrubbed the T from LGBT, and gay marriage is probably on the chopping block next (by the time this article gets published, even.) I could say a lot about allyship, but right now, I think that the most important thing you can do is to help make sure that marginalized people (of all kinds) are not erased.

What's next? The end sets us up for a sequel. Are there plans to write it (I hope)?

I’ve always had a sequel in my mind—it involves spring break of senior year and switching to Noah’s point of view... But no, there are no concrete plans for one as of now. You can always let the publisher know that you’d want a PoD 2!

My next book is a standalone that mixes “Oh no! We’re trapped together!” locked-room thrills with “Oh… We’re trapped together…” romance. It’s darker and bloodier than Pride or Die, but it retains some of that humor, romance, and social commentary. More news coming very soon!