Danielle Younge-Ullman

Danielle Younge-Ullman is a Canadian novelist whose books examine young people confronting family pressure, reputation, grief, and questions of personal agency. He Must Like You, published by Penguin Teen in 2020, follows high-school student Libby as workplace harassment, financial strain, and a difficult home life force her to reconsider what she has been taught to accept. The novel places consent and anger within a realist account of growing up rather than treating them as isolated lessons. Younge-Ullman also wrote Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined, which was a Governor General’s Literary Award finalist and won the White Pine Award, as well as Lola Carlyle’s 12-Step Romance and the novel Falling Under. Across these works, she combines sharp dialogue with emotionally complicated families and protagonists who must make practical choices under pressure. Her fiction is especially attentive to the difference between how a situation appears socially and how it feels to the person living through it.