Reasons to Hate Me

by Susan Metallo

Overview

"Metallo crafts interesting and realistic teens and adults, and offers a unique and nuanced view of an autistic teen experiencing high school." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A hilarious and heartfelt novel about a neurodivergent theater nerd that tackles slut-shaming, what it means to be a friend, and the power of forgiving others—and yourself.

There are countless good reasons to hate seventeen-year-old Jess Lanza, Stone Bridge High’s premier autistic theater nerd and Champion of Questionable Life Choices. Unfortunately, the cyberbullies that hounded her all summer are stuck on last year’s life-ruining mistake, the one that earned Jess the title “Boyfriend Stealing Slutbag.” To relieve the bullies of their stale content, Jess vows to dazzle them with online posts about her own ridiculous fails and embarrassing character traits. But somehow, all of Jess’s posts circle back to her friendship with Chloe—the friendship her alleged sluttiness pulverized—and the gaping hole she left in Jess’s life. As Jess chases Chloe’s forgiveness, she must confront some of her darkest weaknesses—and darker still, the truth of what happened with Chloe’s boyfriend, a story neither of them wants to hear. Told through a series of blog posts and short scripts, this cleverly staged and structured debut novel crackles with spot-on dialogue, features a range of fully developed neurodiverse characters, and sharply evokes high school in all its hilarious and agonizing complexity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536240351
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/02/2025
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Susan Metallo is a neurodivergent author and youth services librarian. Reasons to Hate Me, her debut novel, won the SCBWI Work-in-Progress Award for Young Adult Fiction and the Seven Hills Literary Contest and was honored by Book Pipeline and the Searchlight Writing for Children Awards. She serves as regional advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in New Mexico.

Read an Excerpt

MIGHTY-PEN-JESS
Aug 17
An Open Letter to the Cyberbullies of Stone Bridge High
Dear Hannah, Brooklyn, and Alexis:
Can I tell you how flattered I am that you’ve chosen me as the main character for your story?
Very.
Exceedingly.
Inordinately flattered.
To be honest, flattery wasn’t my first emotion when I saw your blog. At first, it felt more like someone had subjected me to a bizarre temperature-change experiment—a wash of ice, then heat, then the uncomfortable warmth of perpetual humiliation. It took five Milky Ways and two cans of orange soda to restore my body to its normal state of being.
But once I was jangling with excessive sugar and caffeine, the flattery set in. It’s not every day that three esteemed high school socialites take notice of an autistic nerdling. I guess I should be grateful for Noah’s SMS confessional, although I’m kind of hurt that you didn’t notice me before then. After all, I was the leftmost Capulet sword fighter in act 3, scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet last fall (thank you, please hold your applause till the end). Someday, when I’m a Tony Award–winning playwright, you’ll regret that you didn’t pay more attention to me in high school. Or maybe I’ll wind up unemployed and living in a cardboard box in Central Park, which unfortunately seems more likely.
But I’m not here to talk about me.
Let’s talk about you—specifically, your repetitive, lackluster blog posts.
In your latest post, you used the word “slob” seven times. I mean, you’re not wrong—I’m currently lying in the alcove under my stairs on a blanket that hasn’t been washed in two or three years, coated in a fine layer of Cheetos dust, with my hair snarled up into some sort of mud-colored postapocalyptic halo—but you could at least use a thesaurus.
And while I don’t deny that I am ugly or nerdy or badly dressed or even a “boyfriend-stealing slutbag,” isn’t that content getting a little stale? Despite having collected 100 percent of your information from Noah, you seem to have your facts straight about the events of last Memorial Day. But you’ve been writing that story for months. Could it be that you’ve run out of creative insults?
Well, starting tomorrow, I will be the senior editor of your (yes, your) SBHS literary magazine, so it is now my sworn duty to help you with your writing. In the interest of supplying you with more engaging material, I have launched this blog. Here you will find a trove of my many embarrassing and/or hate-worthy mistakes and flaws to improve your web content. I will continue posting until you feel completely overwhelmed by my dazzling terribleness.
Because, sluttiness aside, there are plenty of reasons to hate me, girls. You just need to get to know me.
Yours insincerely,
Jess “That Whore” Lanza

MIGHTY-PEN-JESS
Aug 18
Reason #1: Because of me, you will never date the hottest guy in school.
I let Cam drive me to school today. Mom didn’t have a shift, so she wanted to go to an old-lady Bible study at church before dropping me off. I definitely did not want to go to an old-lady Bible study at church, but neither did I look forward to a twenty-minute ride crammed into a yellow tin can with two dozen other teenagers who might have seen your charming hate blog. Thankfully, Cam has wheels.
The wheels in question are attached to a 2011 Chrysler minivan that was, in its youth, white but is now a sickly milk-at-the-bottom-of-the-Lucky-Charms-bowl gray. Cam was already in the van, fingers drumming against the wheel, when I trudged out of my apartment. His mom watched through their cracked-open door, I guess to make sure that I didn’t get abducted by aliens during the ninety-second walk down the stairs to the parking lot? (It’s nice that she cares, but I’m not sure what Mrs. Lewis in her fluffy pink bathrobe could do to protect me that her gargantuan sportsball-star son couldn’t do better.)
I waved at Mrs. Lewis, and she waved her cup of coffee back at me as Cam leaned across to unlock my door. I clambered in, my jeans squeaking across the duct tape on the seat.
“Wow.” He gave me a skeptical once-over. “So, your new look is, what, Juliet after she takes the poison? Macbeth the morning after the murders?”
“Don’t name the Scottish Play or your car will explode.” I pulled down the sun visor and examined myself in the mirror.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing.”
“Devi Sharma named the play backstage during The Wizard of Oz, and the lighting board blew out within the hour.” I prodded the grayish bags under my eyes. I should have filched some of my sister’s excessive quantities of makeup before she left for college.
“First, that was actually in a theater, which I think is a key component of the curse,” Cam said. He shifted into drive with a squeal and series of thunks that did not bode well for our making it to school in one piece. “And second, it was a coincidence.”
“It can’t be both a curse and a coincidence.”
“I’m just saying that either way, my car is not going to explode if I say ‘Macbeth.’” He rolled through the stop sign at the entrance to the apartment complex, and the brakes wailed. I said a silent prayer to Jesus and/or Lin-Manuel Miranda that we would at least get to 7-Eleven before the car died. I was not going to make it through the day without sugar.
About the only thing in Cam’s car that always works is the radio. Unfortunately. He grumbled when I shut it off. “Can’t you make an exception to your stupid rule today?”
“No exceptions,” I said.
“I’ll pay for your Slurpee.”
“I do not respond to bribes.”
“You used to be fun,” he whined, but he was smiling.
Do you know Cam? If not, you wish you did. He is easily the hottest guy in our grade. It could be his height, or his muscles, or the careless tangle of blond hair flopping over his tanned forehead. But mostly, it’s his shoulders.
I get a perverse sense of pride when girls like you see me with Cam. Jealousy radiates from your lustful eyes and drool-moistened lips. But I’m not friends with Cam because of his hotness or his sportsball prowess—though proximity to his shoulders is certainly a perk. We’re friends because when I show up for school looking like an extra in Night of the Living Dead, he makes a Shakespeare joke and lets me turn off the radio.

Editorial Reviews

Metallo balances acerbic comedy with insightful prose to present an intimate character study. . . .Characterization is a standout feature of this aching and self-aware novel; through Jess’s appealing first-person perspective, Metallo crafts interesting and realistic teens and adults, and offers a unique and nuanced view of an autistic teen experiencing high school.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Metallo's creative debut offers an amusing POV as Jess addresses all of her posts to the trio of popular girls Chloe unceremoniously dumped her for, with plenty of deepcut theater references exhibiting her special interest. An introspective, amusing, thought-driven narrative.
—Booklist

Susan Metallo has the best YA voice I’ve read in years—sharp, hilarious, and heartbreakingly honest. I couldn’t put this book down.
—Rachael Allen, author of A Taxonomy of Love and Harley Quinn: Redemption

From the Publisher

2025-07-19
In this debut, an autistic aspiring playwright pens a blog addressed to her bullies while questioning her sexuality and dealing with messy friend conflict.

“Reason #1: Because of me, you will never date the hottest guy in school,” begins Jess Lanza’s second blog entry addressed to the three classmates who’ve targeted her. Their persecution began in the aftermath of Jess’ kissing Noah, a fellow theater kid who’s dating her former best friend, Chloe, a Black-presenting girl who’s also autistic. Each blog post lists another reason for these bullies to hate Jess, who’s cued white, many of which are tongue-in-cheek (“I assault innocent people with baked goods, and I am reluctant to apologize for it”). In reality, Jess is desperate to make amends with Chloe. As Jess grows closer to athletic Cam, an attractive boy who has floppy blond hair, their friendship complicates her exploration into whether she’s asexual. Jess, who nurses a great love for Shakespeare and a longtime desire to attend the ultra-competitive dramatic writing program at Tisch, sometimes includes in her posts snippets of dialogue in a screenplay format to process the hypothetical scenarios she’s imagining. Unfortunately, meandering and unclear storytelling lessens the impact of the central conflict by muddying the stakes and undermining readers’ understanding of the characters’ motivations.

A potentially interesting drama in need of greater clarity.(Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews