Reading, Writing, and Me

I absolutely love getting to share this interview with you as this book is absolutely fascinating! We dive into how she pieced together the perfect twists and turns in her thriller, handled an unreliable narrator, and responsibly handling a toxic friendship story. If you haven't read the book, check out my review first for more (spoiler free) context on the story, and make sure you head to the store to grab a copy of your own. 1. You’ve written a very twisty thriller. It’s timeline is broken up, and we’re given the events in fragmented flashes. Did the book come to you out of order, or did you think of the story linearly and rearrange it later to add suspense? The story came to me linearly, and it wasn't until maybe draft 4 or 5 that I added the frame story of Remy speaking to Detective Ward. The first way I'd envisioned the story didn't work structurally because Remy needed to be examining all of the things that she'd experienced, which wasn't possible wit

The Best Lies  by Sarah Lyu (July 2) TW: physical abuse; emotional manipulation Overview: There's an old revolver that ruins everyone's life. Elise finds it in her deceased grandmother's attic while digging around for fireworks for prank number 1. After that, the gun rarely leaves her thoughts, and, eventually, it never leaves her side. It's the gun that kills Jack. Remi doesn't know what to do. Her boyfriend is dead, and her best friend- more than her best friend- is the one who pulled the trigger of the stupid gun that she tried over and over again to get rid of. How did it happen? How did Jack wind up dead on the floor? How did she lose everyone she cared about at once? Overall: 5 Characters: 5 This is an intense book, and the characters are no exception. Remi does her best, but she's not perfect like her brother Christian. She uses boys to forget about her parent's constant fighting, but she feels stuck. And then she meets Elise after Homecoming.

Screen Queens  by Lori Goldstein TW: Sexual Harassment  Overview: Valley Start takes fewer applicants than any of the Ivy Leagues. Lucy, Delia, and Maddie are three of the 2% who made it. They are also the only female team at the tech incubator. While their personalities originally clash, with mentorship from a female CEO, friendship at a tech camp on the campus, and a new sense of understanding, the girls band together to strive to be the first all female team to win. Along, the way, though, they uncover more sinister layers to the shiny Silicon Valley world they stepped into. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 Lucy is headstrong and independent. While she's great at coding, she's even better at presenting, selling, and stylizing. She's on a mission to redeem herself in the eyes of Stanford to get off the waitlist and in the eyes of her icy tech CEO icon of a mother. Lucy is a touch insecure masked by her overconfidence and the experience actually helps her develop closer con