Exclusive Interview
‘The Thrashers’ Debrief: Julie Soto Breaks Down That Spooky Cliffhanger & Jolian Situation
Julie Soto has done it again. She’s won over our hearts with her adult romances, Forget Me Not and Not Another Love Song, but the author has proven she knows her way around a young adult thriller as well with The Thrashers, which was released on May 6. The Thrashers centers on Jodi Dillon, a high school senior who is not-so-secretly in love with her best friend, Zack Thrasher, and constantly in fear that she doesn’t really belong in their eponymous clique of friends.
Jodi has little time to worry about fitting in when Emily Mills, a girl one year younger than Jodi and her friends, dies on the night of junior prom. There are rumors that Jodi and her friends were involved in the death, but when those rumors turn into criminal charges against her friends at the start of senior year, Jodi takes it upon herself to find out the truth of what happened to Emily in hopes of clearing her friends’ names. But as Jodi gets closer to the truth, mysterious events continue to threaten The Thrashers, and ominous messages from an unknown phone number threaten to tear apart the only friend group Jodi has ever known.
Warning: The rest of this story contains major spoilers for The Thrashers.
As Jodi investigates the events that led to Emily’s apparent death by suicide, she starts realizing terrible truths about her friends, including Zack. At the same time, she starts growing closer to the rebel of their group, Julian, as he seems to be the only one who saw through Jodi’s brave act. Jodi eventually discovers that the ominous messages came from Emily’s traumatized little sister, who wanted to make sure the people who bullied her sister paid for their crimes. While The Thrashers weren’t directly involved in Emily’s death, she did die trying to get Jodi’s attention when she was left out of The Thrasher limo for prom. The revelation reveals that Emily’s obsessive tendencies were hinged on Jodi at the time of her death and not Zack, as Jodi originally thought.
Kevin Fiscus Photography
The majority of The Thrashers are cleared of any wrongdoing when the truth comes out, including Zack, who gets away with statutory rape due to a date discrepancy between Emily’s real journals and the fake ones her sister turned over to police. It’s Zack’s best friend, Julian, who goes to juvie for sending Emily a Google Drive of The Thrashers’ communications to emphasize how much the group disliked her. That Google Drive inspired Emily to attempt an overdose, though she didn’t intend to kill herself. She wanted to be saved by the paramedics in time to guilt Jodi into being her friend forever.
By the end of the book, Julian is the only Thrasher who Jodi is still interested in talking to. He may have sent Emily the Google Drive, but he never lied about it, and the two formed a real connection over the year. They even got as far as a steamy makeout session on prom night, but it was all derailed when Julian was advised to plead guilty to the bullying charges. His exemplary athletic record helps him negotiate a reduced sentence, and he’ll be able to reunite with Jodi in a few months, but there’s still something significant hanging over their heads.
Throughout the book, The Thrashers encounter multiple near-death experiences like falling drive-in movie screens, freak pool accidents, and electrocutions. It turns out those events weren’t flukes. The ghost of Emily makes her presence known, and The Thrashers ends with her camping out in Julian’s juvie cell. She’s still got her eye on Jodi, and she’s not letting Julian go until they both get the girl. Swooon talked to The Thrashers author Julie Soto about that spooky ending, what she’d love to explore in a potential sequel, and of course: Is it okay to ship Jodi and Julian?
This is Swooon, so most important question first: Should we be shipping Jodi and Julian? The chemistry is there, but he is also so mean to her sometimes. Should I want better for her?
Julie Soto: I ship Jodi and Julian. My friend named them Jolian and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they have a ship name. It’s real.’ I think you can want better for Jodi. She probably deserves better, but here we are.
I think neither of them can actually see themselves together, even if that’s what they want or if that’s what interests them. It is a great coward’s way out for him and I also think he doesn’t understand what it is that’s happening between them. It’s such an easy thing to say it’s probably Emily, you know? He’s lying to himself. That’s such an easy pill for girls like Jodi who have never been wanted by the hottest guy at school. We’ll never have the Bella Swan experience. I definitely love leaving that up to interpretation. How does he actually feel about her? For him, it is so simple in his head to explain that Emily has something to do with that.
What is it about Jodi that made Emily switch her attention from Zack to Jodi?
Soto: I feel like if Emily and Julian could actually chat, they’d find a lot of great things to talk about on that topic. Jodi does have real empathy that her friends lack. Sometimes, she has a moral compass that has steered her wrong many times but will get her back on the right track. Someone like Emily, who has grown up in a very interesting environment of what is right and wrong, and what it means to be kind to people in her household, there’s something about Jodi that she sees as a kindred spirit. It’s not just about being with the popular kids. It’s being connected to that kindred spirit…Emily has found a way that she can fit in really well by being there for Jodi and in ways that other people can’t.
Paige confesses that she’s felt like an imposter through their entire friendship. What does it do for Jodi, knowing that Paige felt the same way that she did, even with everything Paige has done?
Soto: When Jodi is actually able to sit down and process and come back to it in the same way that we go when we go off to college and come back to see relationships in a different light. It probably helps Jodi a little bit to process the trauma of the four years of high school in terms of not feeling good enough, not feeling like she was safe as a Thrasher, to feel that she was part of the group no matter what to have Paige confess that she felt similar things. There’s a great connection between the two of them in the future, maybe as fully-grown adults in their 30s, which is something I do with my Paige and my life. We talk about that one guy who loved stringing all of us along and trying to figure out who was lying to who that Halloween. Paige, for all of her faults, does have a genuine care for everyone in her life. I think Jodi and Paige reconnecting again when they’re older would be something helpful for both of them.
Zack really ended up with some disappointing moral fiber. Can we talk about his fall from grace, at least in Jodi’s eyes, at the end?
Soto: I have a friend who clocked him on page one. She was like, ‘I don’t trust this golden retriever energy. This isn’t a Glen Powell situation. You’re not going to fool me, sir.’ We all know a Zack Thrasher who got away with more than he should have, whether it was in high school or college or someone who was dating a friend of yours. I don’t mean legally or in terms of sexual assault because that’s a whole different story, but just the things that people decide to let slide about someone. Zack has been given grace his entire life because of his charm, his looks, and his family. I have empathy for him because there’s more to him. There has to be a reason that Jodi and he were so close for so many years, but he does tend to choose himself over others. That’s something that a lot of people have a hard time seeing in their friends.
The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger. Have you thought about a Thrashers sequel?
Soto: I want it so bad. I definitely have plans for more books with The Thrashers. I’m excited to see how this book lands and to see what the response is. I’m not saying we have to make sure the book does well before we consider it, but my next young adult thriller is going to be a different set of characters and a different set of circumstances. Returning to Thrashers would be a joy in the next stages, but it is not in the contracted plans right now.
Would it be a new adult romance or stay young adult?
Soto: We would move into college. A lot of it would be first semester, first year at college. I think new adult is going to start having another big boom, which is really great. I would love to have it be considered new adult with the options that open up there. The topics and what can be covered in a different way. I would love for it to be considered a new adult, but that would be a publisher’s decision, and the bookstore would have to create the new adult shelf in order for us to actually have that.
The Thrashers is now available wherever you buy books.
