Leyla Brittan’s Ros Demir Is Not the One is a bittersweet retelling of Romeo and Juliet… sort of. Instead of centering on the famous couple, it turns to Rosaline — the girl Romeo loved first, and then forgot. In Brittan’s reimagining, the original Rosaline inspires Rosaline “Ros” Demir, a half-Turkish high schooler whose summer romance and fractured friendships become a modern reflection on love, loyalty, and what it means to be “the one.”
The novel begins with Ros vacationing at Pine Bay, a paradisiacal resort, with her best friend Eleanor Blake and Eleanor’s family. Over the course of her stay, Ros encounters both familiar classmates and new faces, including Franklin Doss, the class jerk and resident troublemaker; Chloe Choi, whose complicated dynamic with Ros adds tension to the trip; and Eleanor’s friend Ben. But most importantly, she meets Aydın Muhtar, the charming boy Ros quickly convinces herself is her one true love.
Ros’s pursuit of Aydin soon complicates everything around her. While trying to get closer to him, she risks her friendship with Eleanor, gets caught up in rivalries, faces the reappearance of her ex-friend Lydia, and struggles with her ambition to be crowned homecoming princess. The result is a summer that challenges her assumptions about love, friendship, and the kind of person she wants to be.
Ros’s story springs from Brittan’s fascination with Rosaline, the forgotten character in Romeo and Juliet who “never actually appears on-stage in the original play, but is the catalyst for Romeo meeting Juliet.”
That interest in minor characters is what connects Ros Demir Is Not the One to other works Brittan admires, like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Madeline Miller’s Circe. As she puts it, she loves when authors “take a minor character’s perspective and make it major.” In Ros, she saw a chance to do the same-to give voice and depth to a character history largely overlooked.
Thematically, the YA novel digs deeper than some may catch. It explores identity, popularity, and friendship, while questioning the cultural weight we place on finding “the one.” Brittan, who is herself half-Turkish, said that she poured emotional truths into the characters, bits of herself in Ros, Eleanor, and even Lydia, making their struggles with belonging and self-image feel grounded and real.
Interestingly, the book began as a college short story. Brittan explained that she “always really loved contemporary retellings of classic stories,” and had this idea about writing “a short story from the perspective of a girl who’s in a seemingly perfect relationship with a great guy, only to realize he might be destined for someone else.” “I loved it, but something was missing… Later, I came back to it and realized it needed to be a book. So, I always knew where it was going to start and end, and the process of writing was a lot of filling in the middle” she recalled. Expanding the idea into a YA novel allowed her to broaden the scope, deepen the friendships, and highlight Ros’s complicated growth.
Unfortunately, no sequel is currently planned, according to Brittan. “I’ve thought about it, and maybe I would one day,” she said. “There are a lot of characters in the book whose stories would be interesting to explore. I really love many of the major characters — not just Ros — but for now, it’s a standalone.”
Overall, Ros Demir is Not The One is a heartwarming yet bittersweet story with characters that readers will root for. It’s a clever weaving together of the world’s most famous love story, the perspective of a forgotten character, and the challenges of modern teenage relationships-leaving readers with plenty to think about and wishing for more.
