Author Interview: Deadly Ever After by Brittany Johnson

Fairy tales promise happy endings, but Deadly Ever After by Brittany Johnson asks a darker question: what happens when love itself becomes the risk? In this sharp, emotionally layered reimagining, Amala and Kha’dasia don’t just fight fate; they fight the expectations placed on them by family, grief, and the roles others have already written for their lives. With the high stakes rule that the wrong kiss can kill, Brittany blends romance and tension into something both swoony and dangerous. In our interview, she opens up about writing through loss, building a love story where choice matters as much as destiny, and why second chances aren’t just about romance…they’re about power. Check out our interview below and pick up Deadly Ever After, out now!

Deadly Ever After

by Brittany Johnson
Published by: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
on November 4, 2025
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult
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Two dead princesses must find true love's kiss to bring them back to life in this heart-stopping romantic fantasy debut. For fans of Cinderella Is Dead and Girl, Serpent, Thorn.

Amala has spent her whole life trying to be the perfect delicate, quiet, obedient. But when she’s murdered on the night of her wedding, her story is cut short before it begins.

Kha’dasia has been told her whole life that she is too rough, too loud, too much. She’s no ordinary princess but a ruthless warrior on a quest to fulfill her late brother’s dying wish. Except she dies before reaching her destination.

When both girls wake up in a cursed forest, the gods offer them a second chance at life—if they can find true love’s kiss. But there’s a catch, the gods warn. While the right kiss will save you, the wrong kiss will kill you.

On their journey, the princesses must overcome challenges that force them to face the truth of their lives…and their deaths. And as Amala and Kha’dasia grow closer, they can’t help but wonder if true love has been standing right in front of them all along.

Interview with Brittany Johnson

Amala and Kha’dasia are both shaped by what other people expect from them. When you were writing them, which of those expectations was hardest to unpack, and why?

In the beginning, Kha’dasia’s expectations were the hardest to unpack, only because so much of hers is shaped by grief and loss. When I first started writing this book back in April of 2020, I had never experienced loss. I knew what it was like to feel like a misfit in the family, or to be emotionally misunderstood and have your sadness, anxiety, or fear seen as aggression—but you never know how loss can change someone until you’ve experienced it firsthand. Once I (sadly) experienced personal familial loss, I understood Kha’dasia more and more. With every death, I learned a new level of her experience and niche or nuanced things people would expect from her in her most challenging moments, and how she’d react.

The idea that the wrong kiss can kill adds a lot of tension to a familiar trope. When did you land on that rule, and how did it change the story you thought you were telling at the start?

It was there from day one. The first moment I conceived this idea, I knew that would be the caveat. Many true love’s kiss tropes in modern-day stories have a twist that makes the main character question themselves and love. I didn’t have to sit and brainstorm to figure out the rule. It was instant and didn’t change once from the first to the final version of the story.

Both girls die before they ever get to choose their own paths. Once they’re given a second chance, what did you most want them to learn about themselves before the romance even comes into focus?

Balancing their own personal journeys with their romantic arc was tough, given that love, community, and support were massive lessons in and of themselves.  That being said, for Amala, I needed her to understand that she has power—whether it’s to simply advocate for herself, choose a different life path, or decide who is or isn’t in her life, she has that power. Kha’dasia needed to learn…quite a lot, namely that 1. Not everyone around her is destined to betray or hurt her, 2. Some methodologies of “protecting” yourself can ultimately lead to hurting yourself, and 3. Much like Amala, she gets to choose what path she goes down and can change her mind.