Very thoughtful and kind rejection, maybe the kindest I've ever had. I wish her the best and anyone querying her.

Q: 21.10. 25
R: 10.01.26 (81 Days)

Almost 3 months waiting for a lame form rejection.

Query 10/19/25
Personalized rejection: 01/10/26
Contemporary YA romance 79K

First of all, kudos for such a personalized rejection! But sometimes a rejection really hurts, especially when you had high hopes for an agent. In my case, Rachel apparently had high hopes for my story after reading my query letter. She said she really loved my concept and went in with high expectations. But she was put off, as she stated, by the way my main character spoke about his body (he literally says he has a fat ass and also says his suitcases have no diet, just like him). It didn’t sit well with her.

As someone who has had a love/hate relationship with her body her whole life, I specifically wrote a main character who doesn’t care about his body weight and loves food. I even asked a fat friend (they use the word themselves) for their opinion, and they actually thought the lines were funny. Today, we talked about my wording for a while, and I rephrased those lines a bit.

But then Rachel said that, as pages went by, she felt more annoyed by my main character. That part cut deep. I’m not sure if she was already annoyed because of the “fat” thing, or if she really thinks my main character is too whiny. Anyway, time to move forward. I've had quite a few (full) manuscript requests, so keeping my fingers crossed that one of them lands me an agent.

Query: Oct 19
Rejection: Dec 07
YA Dark Fantasy.

Personalised rejection: Hi XXX!!

Thank you for taking the time to query me! While I love the roots of this story and I think it sounds interesting, it runs a little more high fantasy than I am looking for at the current time.

:( While I don't find my trilogy to be high fantasy at all, I feel kinda lost now and will be archiving this project and taking a break from writing in general.
But I am super greatful for her amazing feedback on both my manuscripts :)
Thanks, Rachel!

Q: 10/19/25
R: 12/09/25

Personalized rejection, which I do appreciate. It's unfortunate because she was on my top agents dream list, but I get it. Unfortunately, my book has sibling loss/grief in it, and that was a trigger for her. I felt awful that my query brought up those feelings or upset her, but I triple checked her "do not query me with" list of triggers, and it wasn't listed there. Still, she seems lovely to work with.