Rebecca Barrow on Doe: Inside Her YA Horror Novel in Verse

Rebecca Barrow doesn’t write horror that tells you what to think. Doe, her YA horror novel in verse, hands you a cheer captain named Maris, a half-dead deer creature who has waited decades for a girl exactly like her, and a friendship squad that speaks in a single unnerving “we.” It’s feminist horror that trusts its reader completely—about female rage, jealousy, and what girls owe each other when softness gets read as weakness. We talked with the author of Bad Things Happen Here about verse, dual timelines, and a final choice she calls a tragedy dressed up as power.

Rebecca Barrow | Doe (Out June 23, 2026) | Nancy Paulsen Books | June 2026 |

Rebecca Barrow on the deer, the dread, and a tragedy dressed up as power.

Doe moves between Maris’s present-day story and Doe’s half-century-old timeline. When did you decide the book had to be a dual narrative, and what was the earliest version of the structure? Was it always chapter-for-chapter, or did one timeline initially dominate?

Writing this book was very experimental and unplanned, so deciding to include Doe’s timeline was as simple as me one day saying, “…what if the deer had a POV?” and then doing it. However, while the present day section felt solid really early on, Doe’s time in the past took me a few different tries to get right. Initially I wrote those sections in prose instead of verse, and one of the main notes I got on the first draft was “why is this in prose?!” which was an extremely good question! Coming back at it in verse really allowed me to expand and dig in more, and made it more of an even split between the two timelines.

You wrote Doe in verse. Did the verse form change the way you plotted? I’m curious if you discovered that certain story beats, reveals, moments of violence, emotional collapses, simply wouldn’t work in poetry and had to be reimagined.

It absolutely changed the way I plotted and that surprised me! Writing in verse, I often find myself thinking there’s just so much less space for things—character actions, little descriptive moments, internal thoughts, they all take up space and there’s just not as much to play with. There were certain plot moments I’d planned for that I ended up cutting entirely in favour of getting to the bigger action sooner—moments that would stay if I were writing prose, but that I couldn’t waste words and time on in verse. Ultimately you’re telling the same amount of story but in a much more limited form, so sacrifices have to be made.

The short chapters create a rhythm that Publishers Weekly described as “incantatory.” That’s a pacing choice that also functions as a thematic choice. Were there places where you deliberately broke that rhythm, a chapter that’s notably longer or quieter, and if so, why there?

I think the early Doe chapters are noticeably longer and that was a choice—we’re switching POVs and going back in time, so I wanted to mark that shift by pulling the reader out of the rhythm they’ve gotten used to. For Maris and the Team, the chapters are short and rapid because that pace fits them—they’re cheerleaders, they’re full of energy, somewhat frenetic. For the early Doe chapters, I wanted it to feel almost like a bedtime story, a fairytale, that’s being recited to the reader, in a way.

The climax involves a convergence of the two timelines. Did you know the ending’s shape before you wrote any of Doe’s historical sections, or did the ending emerge from something you discovered while drafting the 1950s/60s material?

The ending was always going to include that convergence—if anything, I knew that first, and worked backwards to fill out the past timeline from there.

Maris is not a villain, but she’s also not a standard “likeable” protagonist. She’s resentful, possessive of her power, and increasingly vulnerable to Doe’s manipulation. Did you ever worry that readers would lose empathy for her, and did that worry shape any of the dialogue you gave her?

I never worried readers would lose empathy because while Maris is complex and absolutely not a particularly “likeable” protagonist, I think you can see the core of her through her internal dialogue and understand how her perception of herself drives her actions. So I suppose my answer is a little bit yes, too, because I did take care to show Maris’s more vulnerable side through that internal dialogue—outwardly, of course, she can’t show weakness! Never! But internally, I tried to show the way she sees herself and how that influences how she speaks and acts externally.

Genevieve arrives as a threat to Maris’s stability, but the novel doesn’t seem to treat her as a simple antagonist. What’s something Genevieve is hiding even from herself, and where in the text do you think a reader first catches a glimpse of it?

What a great question!! Okay…I think Genevieve is perhaps more ruthless than she thinks, and has a darker side to her than she allows herself to present to the world. Meeting Maris challenges her in a way that I would say excites her, but to Genevieve I don’t think she can acknowledge that, or not in the beginning, at least. She would maybe call herself a bitch or admit to engaging in some light manipulation, but she definitely thinks she’s better than the Team. I think after the incident that gets them all in trouble, the reader starts to see Genevieve exploring the good feelings she got from it and wondering what that means.

Doe is described as an ancient, tired creature trapped in her current form for decades, unable to die but unable to live truly. That’s a portrait of profound loneliness. How much of Doe’s manipulation of Maris is malice, and how much is just a desperate, broken attempt at connection?

I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty split. Doe has a malicious nature, but she is capable of love. In another time, Doe could perhaps have been satisfied by a simple relationship with Maris, but that profound loneliness she experiences coupled with her innate malice distorts that, I think. 

The friendship among the cheer squad, the “hive mind,” as Kirkus put it, is one of the novel’s emotional cores. In writing that group dynamic, was there a secondary character who surprised you by becoming more morally complicated than you’d planned?

I’m thinking about it and perhaps my answer is Lo, although maybe morally complicated in a slightly different way than the question means! When everyone else is operating in a real grey zone, Lo is a little more innocent—which then allows her to somewhat betray the Team, without even knowing she’s doing it, just by not completely shunning Genevieve. In adhering to a generally normal moral code, she’s absolutely violating the ethics of the Team, and that’s an interesting reversal to me.

Maris’s past traumas aren’t spoken aloud in the way we might expect; they leak out in what she does and what she refuses to say. Can you point to a moment where a line of her dialogue is actually a scar talking, even if Maris herself doesn’t realise it?

Honestly, I think it would be easier to find a line that’s not Maris’s scars talking, so maybe the closest example for this question would be quite far into the book when she says, “You think I have a life to ruin?” She’s trying to be funny, self-deprecating, very “see? I’m aware of how everyone views me, and I’m being so cool and joking about!” Except of course nobody laughs.

Spoiler Warning: The following question discusses the novel’s resolution. 

Doe’s freedom is tied to Maris. By the end, Maris has to make a choice that implicates both of them. Did you write that decision as an act of empowerment or as a tragedy, and do you believe Maris would call it the same?

To me, I see it as a tragedy that Maris has dressed up in her mind as empowerment. Of course, she doesn’t know how much she’s been manipulated but even so, I think she views it as a powerful choice, a thing that she’s deciding to do that others around her wouldn’t be brave or strong or real enough to do.

So many of her choices are made with this mindset of hers that they’re the only choices she has, because she’s unable to step back and see any kind of bigger picture, or particularly any version of the picture that doesn’t align with her vision of herself. Of course her choice was not brave or strong, but for Maris feeling so threatened and feeling as if she’s on the verge of losing the one thing she really has, and for this girl who has trained herself to view any kind of softness or weakness as a terrible moral failing, she’s almost left with no other choice.

The novel’s surface theme is about jealousy and belonging, the dangerous allure of revenge, as There’s a subtext running underneath about what girls owe each other. Was there ever a point in drafting where you felt that subtext was fighting the surface theme, and how did you resolve that tension?

Honestly I never felt that the themes were fighting—I think they are so closely woven together that they fed into each other and I was able to build each theme up from the other, if that makes sense.  Friendship can be so complex and women and girls are conditioned to judge ourselves and each other at all times, while also being told that these are the most important relationships, too, so there’s this constant push and pull of jealousy and adoration, frustration and dedication.

The deer-like creature Doe functions as more than a monster; she’s almost a shadow of the main argument about power. What does Doe represent that the human characters cannot carry on their own?

I think it’s possible to see Doe as what many of us wish we could be, if we didn’t have to constantly put on this facade of politeness and kindness and all the things a Good Girl is supposed to be. For Maris and the Team, even as they absolutely do express their anger and let their negative emotions out on others, they know the consequences they’re going to face and that those consequences aren’t just about what they do, but about that they were girls as they did it.

Doe doesn’t have to face those same kinds of consequences and doesn’t have that same conditioning—in fact, it’s in her nature to express the darkness and malice within her, whereas the girls have had that desire suppressed their entire lives.

Doe is a horror novel, but it’s also being marketed to ages 12 and up, which means it sits in that tricky space where a writer has to balance moral complexity with the realities of a younger readership. How did you navigate the line between didacticism and ambiguity, and was there a scene where you purposefully refused to offer a clear moral?

I really try not to ever be didactic, mostly because I think it can come off as belittling or not trusting the reader, and I don’t want to do that. I think as well that books can absolutely be an place for readers to explore or discover things, and I’m one person giving them one kind of thing in the one book they pick up from me. I want to give readers interesting things to think about, more than lessons.

I also kind of have high expectations of my readers, because I think they’re smart and interesting and capable! I think it would be really easy for me or any other author to shove in “by the way, this is BAD and this character is WRONG” in our books, but that doesn’t appeal to me as an author or as a reader myself.

I don’t want to tell readers that Maris deciding on the action she does is Bad; I want them to read and think about it and consider what they would do, and why Maris does what she does, and imagine all the different factors that shaped that choice and what they think that means, too. I have a lot of trust in my readers because I was once a 12-year-old reading these kinds of stories, too, and I felt trusted by those authors.

If a reader walked away from Doe believing that Doe is the true hero and Maris is simply a monster, would that be a misreading? Or is that interpretation one you’re willing to let live?

It’s an interesting interpretation and I’d be so curious to hear about why a reader came to that conclusion and what shaped their reading. I mean, there are things I know people will come away thinking that to me will be very wrong or absolutely a misreading of the book, but I’m always curious and I really do enjoy seeing different responses to stories and how people can read something that seems so obviously one way to me, the author, as something slightly (or even completely!) different.

And there are some interpretations (like Doe as hero, Maris as villain) that are more interesting to me than others, but you know, once it’s out of my hands, it’s up to readers, isn’t it?

The fire that kills the girls in the historical timeline is central to the lore but is described elliptically. Why leave the precise details of that tragedy in shadow?

In this case, the details fade into the background a little because what matters the most to Doe is that those girls are gone. And ultimately, while those girls have such an interesting story that could really have been its own entire novel, they exist in this novel as backstory.

But also—I find that a focus on the granular details of tragedy can sometimes overshadow the most meaningful part, which is that they’re gone. Of course it matters how and why, but it also in a sense doesn’t matter, because knowing can’t undo it. And there’s also an element of Doe missing the bulk of that tragedy, being too late to save them, and so I think it’s natural that, as we’re seeing this history through Doe’s perspective, she can’t or doesn’t want to dwell on those details.

You’ve mentioned in past interviews that your writing process has evolved from all-night, distraction-heavy sessions to a more organised routine of aiming for a thousand words a day with noise-cancelling headphones. Did the verse form of Doe demand a different daily rhythm, did you write in bursts, or could you chip away at it line by line?

I could talk about the process of writing Doe so much, because it was so different than anything before! Because it was such an experiment for me in the beginning (and because of when I was writing it, which was very early in the pandemic), I really didn’t have any structured routine. I didn’t know what writing verse demanded, how long the end product would be, what a good daily goal should be—many of the things I’d learned with previous books just didn’t work here. But I did find that writing in verse is very instinctual for me, so it was a lot of bursts of words, just seeing what came out and what felt right.

What scene in Doe fought you the hardest, and did you eventually win, or did you reach a compromise you’re still thinking about?

I think Maris and Genevieve together and really talking for the first time was a hard one—it took me several different versions to really find the balance of approaching the climax and finally getting some honest conversation from the both of them to each other. My editor Stacey Barney definitely pushed me (on everything, honestly) and I needed that in order to push myself and not let up until what I wanted to communicate and what was actually being communicated were aligned.

Was there a character who was supposed to be a minor player but gradually took up more space on the page? Tell us about the moment you realised they weren’t going to stay in the background.

I suppose Genevieve isn’t really a minor player, but up until the book sold and I was working with my editor, she didn’t appear as a POV character. Very early on my editor asked me about Genevieve’s motivations and I was expressing all this stuff that’s going on inside her head, and why she did X, and what she thought about Y, and my editor basically said, “Is there a reason she doesn’t have a POV?

Could we hear from her?” Of course once I heard that, it felt obvious that she needed her own chapters, and once I was writing them I felt like she became such a stronger and more interesting character now that the reader could see everything through her eyes, too.

Do you see this book as a closed chapter for you as a writer, or are there threads you might want to revisit in your work years from now?

I am generally a one-and-done writer—when we get to the end, I’ve really told the story I was interested in telling and my brain moves on to something new. I guess never say never, but in order to revisit this world (or anything I’ve written before), I’d have to find a story interesting enough to tell, and I also really like leaving the ends of my stories at a new beginning, with space for the reader to imagine what might happen next.

What is the question you were hoping someone would ask you about this book, but no one has? (And what’s your answer to it?)

You know, no one has asked why I wrote the Team in first person plural, which I am choosing to believe is because it feels obvious and right to everyone! Which is kind of my answer: I started writing them in third person, as I usually do, and then the thought of using first plural popped into my head. I tried it with a little snippet of a scene and it immediately felt like I had found the thing that had been missing. What better way to write a creepy hive-mind group of girls, anyway?

Doe by Rebecca Barrow

Thrilling crossover YA Horror perfect for fans of Krystal Sutherland and Tiffany Jackson, where the captain of a high school cheer team is caught in a bitter rivalry and turns to an ancient, supernatural creature for help, not knowing she’s just  made a deal with a devil and could lose everything that matters, including her life.

Maris Larsen is the captain of the West Eaton High cheer team. She’s Coach’s favorite and the team worships her. Being on the team makes her feel special—powerful. When she’s leading the girls on the mat, Maris doesn’t have to think about her dead-end life in a dead-end town. She can forget about her depressed mother and absent father and the fact that her girlfriend doesn’t really love her.

But when newcomer and Coach’s new golden girl, Genevieve Ray, joins the team, the only thing going right in Maris’s life is suddenly in jeopardy. A bitter rivalry develops between the two, but Maris is determined to take Genevieve down. The knife she needs to wield comes to Maris in her dreams.

While sleepwalking, Maris is visited by a monstrous, decaying beast in the shape of an enormous deer. Doe is an ancient, tired creature who has been wandering, trapped in her current form for decades. She cannot die, but she cannot go on living as she has. Only a girl related by blood to those who bound her in this form can free her, but those girls she loved died years ago—murdered in a fire.

But Maris is somehow linked to Doe’s beloved girls—linked by blood—and so she has the power to free Doe, to unleash her immense power. In Maris’s dreams, she and Doe form a bond, but Maris doesn’t know the creature from her dreams is real. Maris doesn’t understand the danger she’s in. She only knows Doe has promised her a way to win her battle with Genevieve. But for Maris to win, someone has to die, and the only real winner in the end will be Doe.