7 parts Complete Here's a concept and story setup for your YA "it girl" romance book featuring a Yale student and a teacher assistant:
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Title: Velvet & Vinyl
Pitch:
At Yale, where legacy and brilliance collide, 19-year-old Elle Navarro reigns as the campus "it girl"-model, heiress, and secret songwriter. But when she catches feelings for her new music theory TA, her curated world of perfection starts to unravel.
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Main Characters
Elle Navarro
• A first-year Yale student, majoring in Music and Literature.
• Daughter of a world-famous actress and a tech billionaire.
• A successful model since age 15, but secretly dreams of being a singer-songwriter instead.
• Effortlessly stylish, fluent in charm, but carries loneliness behind her cool-girl persona.
• Torn between following her passion and the path her family expects.
Julian Rhodes
• A 24-year-old graduate student and TA for Yale's advanced composition class.
• Brilliant, mysterious, and a little awkward. From a modest background, driven purely by his love for music.
• Tries to keep a strict boundary between himself and students-until Elle walks into his seminar.
• Plays the piano like it's a confession.
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Plot Overview
Elle's entire life has been built around performance-on runways, red carpets, and in her parents' curated social media world. Yale was supposed to be her escape. A place where she could figure out who she really is without the cameras or headlines. But even here, she's already a campus legend.
When she enrolls in an upper-level composition class under Julian Rhodes, Elle is determined to prove she's more than just a pretty face with family connections. Julian, meanwhile, has no patience for rich kids who treat music like a hobby. But Elle's songwriting shows depth, grief, and raw emotion he didn't expect.
Their dynamic begins in tension-he's critical, she pushes back-but soon, stolen glances during office hours and late-night rehearsals blur the line between student and tea