Spunky Los Angeles author Zan Romanoff paid a visit to McNally-Jackson Books last Wednesday, Oct. 26. As the audience gathered round, she read from two defining moments of her thrilling debut novel “A Song to Take the World Apart,” before hosting a Q&A session with the audience, delving into some of the tactics and inspiration that helped her as a writer.

In her book, Los Angeles is the perfect atmosphere for tough punk bands and high school fun. Chris is the cool upperclassman that Lorelei’s been crushing on. He’s in a band. He’s handsome. When she gets the chance to finally hang out with him, she is excited to learn everything she can from him about music, something her conservative grandmother forbids her from ever practicing. It couldn’t hurt if she doesn’t sing though, right? But the longer she listens, the more overwhelming the temptation to sing becomes. Little does Lorelei know, the power of her voice will send her entire world tumbling down.

Lorelei grapples with long-kept family secrets, young love, friendship and the discovery of unanticipated magical qualities of her voice in Romanoff’s story. It is a masterful depiction of teenage girlhood combined with the magical power of song.

“One of the big things that inspired me was my own experiences,” Romanoff said. “It was strange to me that I had never read a book about teen girls going to concerts because I feel like that was my entire life as a teenager.”

Romanoff talked about how reading young adult fiction helped her understand some of the popular components of a successful young adult novel. “Very often in these books, the hero discovered a magical power that they had no idea they possessed,” Romanoff said. She said she took that idea and created something of her own with it. “What if you found out you had a magical power and it kind of sucked?”

The idea of Lorelei’s crumbling world was drawn from Romanoff’s own life. “The huge thing for writing the book was it was about making mistakes. I made a big mistake in college. It was very hard to come back from. I realized that when you make a mistake like that, you feel like you can never be the heroine. You become the side character or you are written out of the story. I wanted to write a book about a girl who just does the wrong thing.”

A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Oct. 31 print edition. Email Khrysgiana Pineda at [email protected].