My parents have told me that when my little sister Maddie was born, I thought she was mine. By the time Lily came a few years later, I was old enough to know what she was to me, but the feeling stayed the same: this person was mine, and I was theirs, and whatever happened in the big wide world and all the years we had in it, that one thing would never change. There are a lot of things I wanted to do with You Have A Match — showcase some of my favorite childhood memories in the Pacific Northwest, make people laugh, continue pushing my aggressive and unrepentant dessert agenda — but more than anything, I wanted it to be a love letter to sisterhood.
In You Have A Match, Abby and Savvy are very different on the surface, but similar in their cores. I know this not just because I wrote them, but because there are pieces of myself and my sisters in them both. Abby’s slight lawlessness and courage comes from Lily. Savvy’s love of order and loyalty to the people she loves comes from Maddie. A little bit of each of them comes from me, because that is what I am in my core: a little bit of all the things my sisters are, the same way they’re both a little bit of everything in me.
That’s what is so unique about having a sister. Your paths might change, but no matter what direction, you’re in each other’s orbits forever. You measure yourself by who they are, and who you are in relation to them. (Sometimes literally measure if your sister, like both of mine, had the audacity to be taller than you.) You grow and you change and you make messes and make a life for yourself, but it always, always comes down to this unshakable foundation, this thing that has its own gravity even when it feels like the rest of the world does not.
“More than anything, I wanted it to be a love letter to sisterhood.”
You Have A Match is a book that’s every bit as much about self-discovery and first love and family ties as it is about sisterhood. And I understand if, at first glance, it doesn’t seem like a book about sisterhood at all — Abby and Savvy don’t grow up together, and don’t start with that foundation so many sisters have. But if time has taught me anything, it’s that being a sister is a thing that is in constant evolution whether you grow up knowing each other or not. It’s not just because you’ll change and your relationship will change with it, but because sisters are all around us, really — they might be the ones we’re raised with. They might be the ones we choose. (On days when one has been particularly annoying, I’m sure any sister would argue that they’re both.) Being somebody’s sister is something that can’t ever really be defined, because it comes in so many beautiful, ever-shifting, sometimes unexpected forms.
Having grown up with sisters, it’s that unexpected element I wanted to explore with Abby and Savvy. That voice you sometimes hear in the back of your head when you are especially grateful someone is in your life, the way I am with all of my siblings: What if I never knew you? Who would I be, without you in my life? And the curious question that chases it: How would we feel about each other if we were strangers? Which of course would mean I’d be a stranger to my own self; so much of what I am is what they are that it would be impossible to untangle. It was this daunting, fascinating question that brought Abby and Savvy to life.
The evolution of this book, though, can be traced the way all things in my life are: through my sisters. When I first came up with the idea for You Have A Match, I was on the subway with Lily, dreaming up weird plots the way we often do. We laughed about it and I tucked it away to think about later — at the time, I hadn’t even sold a book. When later came, and I was plotting out this book, it was Maddie who led me back to Seattle, adventuring with me in her new hometown of Shoreline and our old stomping grounds from when we were little, and our whole family lived just outside the city.
This book is for them, and for our very patient, deeply kind older brother. It’s for the keepers of my heart, who are all grown up now, but still the wild-haired, red-cheeked little kids with big voices and bigger imaginations whose worlds I built mine around. I hope you can feel some of their magic in these pages, and that you feel the same kind of magic in your own life; I am grateful every single day to have theirs in mine.
