Author: Scott Brown

Scott Brown made his fiction debut with XL, a comic and compassionate novel about body image, family expectations, and sudden change. Sixteen-year-old Will Daughtry has spent years expecting a growth spurt that never arrives, while his tall stepbrother Drew and longtime friend Monica make his own height feel even more conspicuous. When Will finally begins growing, the change becomes far more extreme than the ordinary transformation he imagined. The premise lets Brown examine attention from classmates, romantic longing, and the uneasy bond between brothers without reducing Will to a physical joke. Alfred A. Knopf published XL in 2019, and the publisher places it among teen fiction concerned with self-esteem and social pressures. Before writing the novel, Brown worked in journalism and entertainment media, experience that suits the book's quick comic timing and awareness of public scrutiny. XL remains his central published book, balancing an outsized speculative device with recognizably human questions about belonging and being seen.