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Boston Globe

In ‘Kill the Lax Bro,' Charlotte Lillie Balogh asks whodunit — and who let it happen

The aftershock of this betrayal was one of several personal heartbreaks that fueled Balogh's debut YA novel, is actor Chris Evans — Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Almost everything in this book really happened in some way,' Balogh tells the Globe. 'There were quite a few Easter eggs of my exes sprinkled throughout.' Advertisement The murder, she assures, is strictly fictional. The mystery is set in the fictional Massachusetts town of Hancock during the 1990s, where star lacrosse player Troy Richards is the target of four students' attempts to ruin his reputation. But when Troy winds up dead during Hancock High's Lock-In Night, Andrew, his former teammate/best friend; Stassi, his straight A ex-girlfriend; Naomi, the shy but observant freshman; and Tatum, the burnout with a secret grudge, must unravel the whodunit before the crime is pinned on them. Advertisement With and commentary on toxic sports culture, status quos, and self-discovery. While Troy is the doomed, titular 'lax bro,' the sometimes-negative impact of student athlete culture and toxic masculinity are Balogh's real targets. She had been a member of her high school's rowing team and later rowed for Syracuse University as an undergrad. As a student athlete, Balogh observed the different coaching approaches for girls vs. boys team sports firsthand. 'I know a coach who told me it's easier to coach boys because they're very competitive,' says Balogh, who coaches a youth team in Los Angeles, where she now resides. '[While], girls are not encouraged to be as ferocious so quickly in life.' She was especially inspired by 'New England life'; in particular, her high school alma mater's boy's lacrosse team — Troy and Andrew are amalgamations of the memories of her classmates and her own. While Balogh describes Andrew as 'the boy next door,' his increasingly volatile actions reveal his more vengeful underbelly. Troy, though (dead and) the antagonist, becomes more sympathetic as his backstory is uncovered. The intention was to 'flip archetypes. 'They both have their own ways in which they're perfect and idolized by their classmates. And it's like, which of them is better?' she says. 'Are either of them better?' Balogh also drew from 'cinematic perfection' that is 'John Tucker Must Die,' the early-2000s teen dramedy about a group of girls who, upon finding out they're dating the same guy, team up for revenge. Advertisement Spoiler: John Tucker does not die — it's more social sabotage than murder — but Balogh, a TV writer by trade, had wondered: But what if they actually killed him? 'Kill the Lax Bro' started as a 50-page TV pilot script in 2020, but eventually caught the eye of Balogh's literary agent, with whom she had previously worked on another manuscript. (That story — about a Boston high school rowing team, ahead of the Head of the Charles Regatta — will be the basis for her second novel, slated for fall 2026.) When the manuscript was put out on submission, an editor at Penguin found a video of a table read of 'She watched this video and was like, 'I want to buy that as a book instead,'" says Balogh. Charlotte Lillie Balogh will celebrate the release of 'Kill the Lax Bro' at the Natick Barnes & Noble, July 12, 6 p.m. 1324 Worcester St., Natick. Marianna Orozco can be reached at