In writer Melody Robinette’s debut novel, These Vile Hearts, the protagonist, a mortal named Maddox, seeks out the dryad Myrtle Queen to be cured from type 1 diabetes.
Robinette knows too well what her heroine struggles with,
having the condition herself.
She was inspired to work type 1 diabetes into the story after a change in her health insurance saw the cost of insulin and supplies skyrocketing from about $200 a month to $2500.
Robinette recalled being “absolutely furious,” and noted, “I'm lucky enough, privileged enough to have insurance, but there are diabetics out there who are not as privileged who have to ration their insulin in order to make it to the next month or the next time they get paid … And so to me, as someone who lives with this disease, I know how you could get to that place where you're like, ‘I have to do something. I'm going to die if I don't find a way to afford my supplies, my insurance and my insulin.’ So, I did want that anger, that frustration, that panic to be present in the book because I feel like it shouldn't be that way.”
This sense of desperation drives Robinette’s character Maddox to make a pact with the Myrtle Queen: kill the Redwood King and be cured of her condition.
Maddox travels on into the dryad realms and meets Prince Castor, mistaking him as the Redwood King. Castor is hiding his own dark condition: he is cursed—anyone who loves him dies. Maddox and Castor see each other as a way to end their personal miseries, at the cost of each other’s lives, but real feelings and attractions between them threaten their missions.
Robinette admitted that she knew at the start that her book would have an enemies-to-lovers theme.
She said, “I think there's so much delicious tension in there because they are starting to develop these feelings as they are going along. She wants to kill him; he knows that she's going to die if she falls in love with him. They're both doing these things anyway and they don't want to care about each other.”
Robinette credits a love of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and TV shows like “Love Island” for inspiring her storytelling, world building, and interest in people and their relationships.
She noted, “I would say both of those … definitely inform my storytelling. I'm just a sucker for romance, but also like people in general. I think it's a great way to study human behavior.”
Learn more about Melody Robinette on her website. These Vile Hearts is published by Penguin Random House.
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