The Perfect Family by Robyn Harding

A special thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thomas and Viv Adler are the envy of their neighbourhood: attractive, successful, with well-mannered children, and a beautifully restored home. 

Until one morning, when they wake up to find their porch has been pelted with eggs. Thomas insists that it's just a harmless prank from some kids with nothing else to do. But when the pranks get more serious—a smoke bomb and slashed tires—the family begins to worry. Their surveillance cameras prove to be useless, all they can make out are some grainy images of shadowy figures in hoodies, and the police are no help either—they agree with Thomas' initial thought that this is just the work of some bored teenagers. 

With the attacks escalating into violence, and no way to identify the perpetrators, the Adlers are feeling more and more helpless. And each new violation brings with it a growing fear. Because everyone in the Adler family is keeping a secret—not just from the outside world, but from each other. 

And we all know how dangerous secrets be….

Robyn Harding is one of my favourite authors. She is an incredibly gifted storyteller that always comes up with something fresh and different. Told from the perspectives of all of the Adlers, The Perfect Family is expertly plotted and totally binge-worthy. 

Under the guise of the quintessential family, this addictive novel is the right amount of soapy and thrilling to keep the pages turning. Through well-developed, yet flawed characters, Harding deftly explores a complex family dynamic. Each of the Adlers is harbouring a secret that has consequences—all of which not only build tension, but could be the reason behind the attacks. 

By creating the perfect family that turns into the perfect facade, Harding has another hit on her hands. 

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ROBYN HARDING is the author of The Swap, The Party, Her Pretty Face, and The Arrangement. She has written and executive produced an independent film.

Harding lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and two children.

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Q & A with Robyn Harding*

GWR: Describe your ideal writing/reading experience (when, where, what, how).

RH: I love to write in the mornings in my office/spare bedroom with a cup of coffee. In the afternoons, I allow myself some reading time. I sit on my sofa near a picture window that has a view of a huge leafy maple tree. I put a fluffy blanket over me, and my chihuahuas snuggle up under it. It’s heaven. 

GWR: Is there a particular author/work that inspired you to become a writer or the way that you write?

RH: Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie mystery series was really inspirational to me. She combines wit and humour with really dark themes and it’s a winning combination. I could never hope to emulate her, but I do like to write in that style.

GWR: Who is your favourite character in The Perfect Family? 

RH: It’s hard to choose one, but I think teenage Tarryn is my favourite. She has so much sass and attitude, and I always enjoy writing younger characters. They’re impulsive risk-takers and are simultaneously street-wise and naïve. Tarryn is also struggling to fit in and starved for attention. She finds it in an unhealthy but understandable way.  

GWR: What character did you sympathize with the most and did that change while writing the book?

RH: Despite his extreme actions, I think Eli is the most sympathetic character. He’s experienced something so disturbing and traumatic, but he can’t turn to his parents for support. It’s no wonder he makes questionable choices.

GWR: What made you decide to write The Perfect Family from all of the points of view of the Adler family? Was it easier or more challenging to explore the parallel storylines?

RH: I enjoy writing and reading multiple POVs and it was integral to this plot. I wanted each character to have a secret that could be the cause of the nighttime attacks on their home. We needed to be inside each of their heads to be privy to the dark scenarios they’re keeping to themselves.

GWR: Do you build the story around a twist/reveal, or do they happen organically? 

RH: I use screenwriting structure to lay out the biggest plot twists, and then I write toward them. It usually all comes together quite organically—but those big twists are thought out beforehand.

GWR: How do you decide what point to start the narrative at and how much detail you’re going to provide?

RH: There is a saying in many screenwriting books: Get in late, get out early. It means that you only have a few pages to set things up, before you get to the good stuff. I think that is especially important in thrillers. Of course, you need to introduce and develop the characters, and set the scene, but you need to do it expeditiously. Readers are there for the thrills and chills. 

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be?

RH: It would be a dark and stormy (ginger beer, dark rum, lime juice).



GWR: Are you able to share what you’re working on now?

RH: I’m working on a novel about Lee, a woman who lost her restaurant during the pandemic and due to some risky debt, ends up living in her car. Lee’s parked in a wealthy enclave near the beach where she can sleep safely, when she hears a woman trying to drown herself. Instinctively, Lee rescues the wealthy woman who tells her that she’s trapped in an abusive marriage. The rich woman asks Lee to help her escape, and she can’t say no. But the request will change both their lives forever. 

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada. 

Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne

A special thank you to Edelweiss and William Morrow for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ruthie Midona has dedicated her whole adult life to the residents at Providence Retirement Building where she works the front desk, maintains the property, and guards the endangered tortoises that live on the grounds. But somewhere along the way, she's forgotten that she’s young and that there is a world beyond the villa. That is until she meets the son of the property developer who just acquired the retirement centre.

Teddy Prescott has spent the last few years partying, sleeping, and giving himself tattoos. His father wants Teddy to be his his successor and can’t understand his son's inability to take anything seriously. When Teddy needs a place to crash, his father comes up with the idea of having him stay in one of the on-site cottages and work to earn his keep. Teddy agrees—how hard can it be to do a few odd jobs? But Ruthie has plans for Teddy too! You see her two wealthiest and most eccentric residents need a new personal assistant to torment after another one quits. Truth be told, they never last more that a week. It's the perfect plan and will surely get rid of the handsome man that keeps getting under her skin.

What Ruthie doesn't count on is that the the Biddies may have finally met their match. Teddy will do anything for them as well as do repairs around the property all while charming everyone in his path—even Ruthie. But when she finds out that Teddy’s father is only fixing up the retirement home just to sell it, jeopardizing everything she cares about, Ruthie can't help but wonder if Teddy’s magic was all just an act.

I have thoughts… Lots of them. This book was a total seesaw for me between things I loved and things I hated—I felt like I was just going up and down. The good news, it was better than 99 Percent Mine. But the bad news is that it was only marginally better. 

Where Thorne excels is with the ability to completely draw the reader in and not let go until the end—she is incredibly engaging. There is an ease to her writing and she has such an ear for conversation and banter which translates extremely well on the page. 

While this book might not have been everything I had hoped it would be, there are going to be those that love it. I just didn't love it as much as The Hating Game. I mean, Josh Templeman... Enough said. 

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SALLY THORNE believes that romance readers are always searching for intensity in their next favourite book—and it isn't always so easy to find. The Hating Game was her first novel.

Thorne lives in Canberra, Australia. 

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

A special thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Park Row for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you also to Harlequin for the opportunity to be a part of the Blog Tour. 

In eighteenth-century London, there's a hidden apothecary shop that caters to women who need help to deal with the men in their lives. A mysterious figure named Nella sells the well-disguised poisons in secret. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.⁣

Meanwhile in present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone trying to escape her own demons. When she stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London two hundred years ago, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.⁣

The Lost Apothecary is a tale of poison and revenge. Sarah Penner weaves together three women’s stories in two different timelines. This riveting debut will have you under its spell until the very last page. ⁣

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SARAH PENNER graduated from the University of Kansas and has spent the last decade in various corporate finance functions. The Lost Apothecary is her debut novel.

Penner lives in Florida with her husband and dog, Zoe. 

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

A special thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

At the heart of A Town Called Solace is Elizabeth Orchard, an ailing elderly woman who has been hospitalized. She has enlisted the help of her young neighbour, seven-year-old Clara, to feed her cat, Moses, while she is in the hospital. Clara takes her responsibility very serious and it proves to be a welcome distraction from what is going on at home. Rose, her teenage sister, has been missing for almost two weeks and Clara has been keeping a daily vigil at the living room window in the hopes of her return. 

Liam Kane—thirty-something, newly divorced and newly unemployed—has just arrived in Solace, a small northern town in Ontario. Clara watches with rapt interest as he moves his things into Mrs. Orchard's home. As the story unfolds, so does the mystery surrounding the relationship between the stranger and Mrs. Orchard.

Told through three distinct and compelling voices—Clara's, Mrs. Orchard's, and Liam's—A Town Called Solace is more than just a story of a family in crisis. It is an emotionally atmospheric narrative that is layered in grief, remorse, and above all, love.

I've been a huge fan of Mary Lawson's since Crow Lake. Her writing is elegant and understated—her simple yet rich human dramas are perfect choices for book clubs. 

A Town Called Solace is a character-driven story of love, friendship, family, and community. It poses a simple question: how much are we capable of leaving our childhood behind? 

Liam Kane s withdrawn at the best of times, even more so with his looming divorce and walking out on his job. He didn’t have a good upbringing and because of this, his ability to make relationships is compromised. This is also why his marriage didn't work—there was nothing to the relationship. They are both good looking and successful. But that's it. They are actually incapable of caring about others. There are three types of marriages represented: a happy one (Elizabeth & Charles), under stress (Clara’s parents), and one that has ended (Liam’s, they made a mistake).

Although Lawson keeps her characters apart, she expertly draws their threads together in this gripping and emotional story. Elizabeth is written in first person—we are seeing her from the inside, a more intimate portrayal—whereas Liam and Clara are written in the third person. Because she is such a gifted and seasoned writer, the supporting cast are just as strong as the three principle characters.  

Gorgeous, haunting, moving. A Town Called Solace is a must-read that will linger with its reader long after the last page is turned. 

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MARY LAWSON was born and raised in a small farming community in Ontario. She is the author of the nationally and internationally bestselling novels Crow Lake, The Other Side of the Bridge, and Road Ends. Crow Lake was a New York Times bestseller and was chosen as a Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. The Other Side of the Bridge was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 

Lawson lives in England but returns to Canada frequently.

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Q & A with Mary Lawson*

GWR: Are you a pantser/gardener or a plotter/architect?

ML: I’m not sure what a pantser is, but I’m guessing it’s someone who lets things happen, rather than directing them. Yes? If so, that’s what I am. If you’re going to plan things out then you have to know roughly what’s going to happen and I never have a clue. I wish I was a plotter/architect, because letting things evolve results in a lot of trial and error and it’s a very inefficient way to work.

GWR: How many hours a day do you write? What does your writing process look like?

ML: I write about 5 hours a day, and it takes me 5 to 6 years to write a book—that’s what I mean by inefficient!

GWR: What comes first for you – the overall idea or the characters?

ML: The characters, every time. 

GWR: Do you have a favourite character in A Town Called Solace or in any of your other works?

ML: Most of my books have 2 or more characters and my favourite is whichever I’m working on at the time. After the novel is finished though, some stay in my mind more than others (though they are all still with me). If I had to choose a favourite, I think I’d go for Arthur Dunn, in The Other Side of the Bridge. I loved him while I was creating him and I love him still. Either him or Clara in A Town Called Solace. She’s just seven, and she’s in a really difficult situation, but she’s so brave, and so determined.

GWR: How do you decide what point to start the story? Do the details unfold as you write or do you know how things are going to come together?

ML: With one exception I’ve never consciously decided anything, including where to start. I just start with whatever or whoever is in my head and see what happens. The exception was the decision to keep my writing style plain and simple, no fancy writing. I decided that at the beginning of my first book Crow Lake, because it was set in a small farming community during the time of my own childhood (I was born in 1946), and it was a very unsophisticated time and place. I’ve stayed with that style ever since.

GWR: A Town Called Solace takes place in 1972, is there any significance to this year or time period?

To be honest, I don’t remember how it turned out to be 1972 when the action took place. One of the characters was 72 years old, which meant she would have been born in 1900, and I think everything else grew out of that.

GWR: What made you decide to write the book from multiple points of view? Was it easier or more challenging to explore the parallel storylines?

ML: Initially I only had Clara, the little girl, inside my head. But when the story begins, she is standing at the window when a strange man drives into the driveway of the house next door (the house belonging to an elderly lady of whom Clara is very fond), gets out of the car and starts carrying large boxes into the house. Clara is outraged—he shouldn’t be there, he doesn’t belong.

That led me to wonder who the man was, so I decided to make him a separate character. And that led me to wonder what his connection was with the elderly woman who owned the house, and so I wrote about her as well. 

As with everything else, the multiple viewpoints weren’t planned, they just evolved. Yes, it’s more challenging, but it’s also more interesting, and the reader gets a fuller picture.

GWR: The setting becomes a character—what is the inspiration for setting your books in rural small towns in Canada? Are they always fictitious towns or are they real places?

I grew up in a small, quite isolated farming community in Southern Ontario, but my family has had a summer cottage in the Muskoka area since 1917, and all of us considered it (and still consider it) the ‘real’ family home. I’ve lived in England for many years now but we go home a lot, and the landscape of the Canadian Shield remains my favourite landscape. 

All of the towns or communities I’ve set my stories in are fictitious, and are composites of other northern towns. For Crow Lake I set a small farming community like the one I grew up in within a northern landscape. The plot required a sense of isolation though, and Muskoka is no longer isolated, so I moved my fictional community several hundred miles further north, where it is as remote as anyone could wish.

I loved writing that first book; it gave me the opportunity to ‘revisit’ home even though I wasn’t physically there. And so I set the second novel up there too, and then the third, and now the fourth. 

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.  

The Push by Ashley Audrain

A special thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In this shattering portrayal of motherhood, Audrain challenges our belief of motherhood and what it feels like when women are not believed to the point where they don't even trust themselves.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the mother she never had—nurturing, comforting, and confident. But she is not enamoured with her baby daughter like she should be and doesn't feel like there is a connection. She is convinced that there is something wrong with her child—Violet does not behave like most children. 

Her husband, Fox, says that it's all in her head, that nothing is wrong. But the more Fox dismisses her and doesn't listen to her, the more she questions her sanity. 

A few years later their son, Sam, is born. With his arrival comes the bliss she didn't experience as a first-time mother. Everyone is smitten, even Violet. When tragedy strikes, the fallout is greater than Blythe could ever imagine.

The Push is a taut, page-turning, psychological drama that is told through the lens of motherhood. It is about the making and breaking of a family, about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for, and everything she feared. 

Have you ever read a story that stays with you for days? The Push continues to occupy my thoughts—it is a compelling and tense tale about the dark side of motherhood that will consume readers long after the last page is turned. 

Audrain's debut is a study in motherhood and of the expectations that are placed on a woman, that being a mother comes naturally. She explores what could go wrong and how you should always trust your gut, even when you are not believed. Although the men span different time periods, the assumptions of motherhood is still the same. The title is brilliant—it conjures up the literal act of pushing while in labour, pushing through something emotionally, as well as the physical act of a push.

The Push is a multi-generational character study told in a second person hybrid perspective—the "you" is Blythe talking to Fox. Audrain stays within the tight context of their marriage that is an interesting point of view given that Fox knows a lot more than the reader. With tight short chapters, which contain enough breadcrumbs to satiate the reader's knowledge, she cleverly pulls it off. 

Full disclosure: after finishing the book I was feeling unnerved and dare I say, low. And let me explain, I don’t mean that as a criticism at all—there is a pathos that permeates the narrative like a dampness. I was utterly captivated at this character disintegration and given that I can’t stop thinking about it. 

Definitely not for the faint of heart, The Push is tense and captivating psychological drama/thriller. 

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ASHLEY AUDRAIN previously worked as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada. Prior to Penguin, she worked in public relations. She is a graduate of the Media, Information & Technoculture program at Western University. The Push is her debut.

Audrain lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children. 

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Q & A with Ashley Audrain*

GWR: Describe your ideal writing/reading experience (when, where, what, how).

AA: I love to think about this, because it’s certainly not ideal right now in the pandemic! Writing anywhere other than my house is ideal for me. I love to write in public spaces, like coffee shops or libraries or airplanes. I like a bit of white noise and feeling energized by other people around me. I write best early in the day, although sometimes I like to go back and edit or tinker with what I’ve wrote in the evenings, once I’ve had a chance to let things sit. As far as reading, I read every night before I go to sleep—sometimes that’s only a few pages, or sometimes I’ll read for a couple of hours. Before I had kids, I used to love devouring a book in a day, or going on vacation with five novels in my suitcase, knowing I’d get through them all. I haven’t read a book on vacation in six years! But will enjoy doing that again one day.

GWR: How did you come up with the concept for The Push?

AA: It really evolved over time. I started with the main character, Blythe, and her early experience of motherhood. I wanted to write about a woman who was consumed with a lot of the fears and anxieties that are common in motherhood. Will I love the baby? Will I like being a mother? Will I regret the decision of a child? Will this child be a good person? How will my marriage change? I wasn’t always sure where the story was going, and a lot of the elements developed later in the process (the multi-generational storylines, for example). So much of the novel as it is now was made in the revision process.

GWR: The Push is told in second person hybrid narrative which is incredibly effective. Did you always set out to write the story this way? How did you decide on this perspective?

AA: Thank you. It was not really a conscious decision to write the narrative in this way. When I sat down to write Blythe, her voice was just always speaking directly to her husband. She addresses “you” throughout the novel. I think this happened because I wanted to be writing something that felt very intimate. I wanted to be right inside of their marriage, not just observing it. I was interested in the things that Blythe wanted to tell him, not just the things that happened, or a recounting of their life and marriage. The Push is what she wants him to know, and so that gives us a bit of a different lens for the story. I wondered if someone might try to talk me out of this at some point, as it is unusual, but thankfully nobody did!

GWR: What came to you first—the overall idea or the characters? 

AA: Definitely the characters. At one point I realized all I had was a giant document full of scenes about these people, but not much had actually happened yet. I then took a step back and layered in the story and thought more about things like pace and structure. I think that’s why I revised this novel so many times. I’m not sure I would recommend such a loose approach, as it was messy, and challenging, but it did mean that I understood Blythe really well by the end.

GWR: There are some interesting names in the story. How did you choose the names for your characters? Is there any significance or symbolism behind them?

AA: It’s funny, I hadn’t thought of the names as being all that unusual, but a few people have mentioned this. I really just pick names that I like, and don’t think much about the significance of them. I do try to stay away from the names of people I know well or family members. (Although after I had written the book, my son started kindergarten and became friends with a sweet little Jet!)  

GWR: It is interesting to me that although The Push spans different time periods/generations, the expectations placed on women as mothers is still the same. How important were these gender roles to the story and is this how you framed the male characters?

AA: Yes, I think you’re right. There are, of course, many examples of how far we’ve come in terms of changing traditional gender roles, but I don’t think we’ve come very far in terms of motherhood and the expectations we have of women as mothers. We still expect women to sacrifice so much of themselves to the role of raising a child, and to portray motherhood as a joyful, fulfilling experience. But the reality is it doesn’t always feel this way for everyone. These gender roles and expectations are at the centre of the challenges Blythe and her husband face. He wants her to be a certain kind of mother—he feels owed this—and when she can’t fulfill that for him, he loses his attraction to her, and he thinks less of her. Meanwhile, his life and his identity changes very little when he becomes a father. And Blythe, understandably so, resents him for this.

GWR: What character did you sympathize with the most and did that change while writing the book?

AA: I think I had to sympathize with each character to some degree—even Fox, dare I say!—because I had to understand their inner conflicts and their suffering in order for their decisions and actions to make sense. But there are a lot of characters in this novel that readers might struggle to find sympathy for themselves, and I think that’s fair. Personally, I will always hold Blythe the closest, and feel the greatest sympathy and empathy for her, and I hope readers also feel empathetic for her throughout the story. 

GWR: This book takes a deep dive into other issues—mental health, abuse, motherhood—why was it important to include these elements?

AA: I think those elements were part of understanding each of the women in Blythe’s family and their struggles. It felt important to show how certain parts of our past aren’t easy to move away from, as much as we might want to, and how we can carry things forward with us from past generations. I wanted to explore the idea of wanting to be different than the person who birthed us or raised us, but not knowing how. I think those issues—the mental health, and the abuse—are examples of experiences that can feel haunting if they aren’t confronted in a healthy way.

GWR: How do you decide where to start the story at and at what level of detail? 

AA: Good question! I can’t remember when that first scene came to me, with Blythe outside of Fox’s home on Christmas Eve, but it felt important to start this particular story with something that connected us to the end. I wanted the reader to know that things were not going to end well for this family, although they didn’t quite know why. I liked the idea of setting that question up right away. I do remember having to go back and make sure the reader had a better understanding of who Blythe and Fox were before Violet came along, and so the first few chapters try to achieve that, right after we understand where things are heading.

GWR: What are you working on now?

AA: I’m working through the revisions on my second novel, which explores many of the same themes as The Push, although it’s a very different story—motherhood, marriage, and the expectations of women in those roles. I think I’ll always be drawn to those themes in some form or another. I’ve really enjoyed writing the second novel and being in the heads of several characters, as there are multiple perspectives in this one. It’s been a nice reprieve from the day-to-day monotony of pandemic life.

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.  

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

A special thank you to St. Martin's Press and Raincoast Books for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. 

All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret...

Marin and her husband, Derek, are successful and admired in their community—she owns a chain of upscale hair salons and her husband, Derek, runs his own company. They were living the perfect life until their world falls apart when their son, Sebastian, is taken. He let go of his mother's hand in Pike Place Market and was lured away by someone in a Santa Suit with a lollipop. 

A year later, Marin is a mere shell of her former self. The FBI search has gone cold, all of the publicity surrounding the case had dried up, and her and Derek barely speak. Taking matters into her own hands, she hires a private investigator to pick up where the police left off. But instead of finding Sebastian, Marin learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman named Kenzie. She's an enemy that's very real and becomes the target for all of Marin's pent up rage—she's lost her son and is not about to lose her husband too. 

Little Secrets is a perfectly-paced union of domestic suspense and psychological thriller. Hillier ratchets up the tension with themes of obsessions, guilt, and betrayal. She also pens layered and complex characters. Marin's consuming guilt and grief turns into anger which propels the narrative. Her best friend/former boyfriend Sal is an ex-con with his own dark agenda. He encourages Marin to make a decision that will have potentially catastrophic consequences. 

Hillier is an electric writer and gifted storyteller. With all of her stories involving trauma and fear, she plays on her reader's anxieties and sympathies. By having Sebastian missing and not dead, Hillier holds us in a suspended state along with her characters. And what makes this book a stand out in its genre is the added layer of emotion.  

Delightfully distorted, emotionally wrought, and perfectly paced, this book won't be a secret for long!

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JENNIFER HILLIER writes about dark, twisted people who do dark, twisted things. Her novel, Jar of Hearts, was the Winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hardcover Novel. Jennifer is also the author of Freak, The Butcher, Wonderland, and Creep. 

Hillier was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and lived in the Seattle area for years before returning home to Toronto, where she now lives with her family. 

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Q & A with Jennifer Hillier*

GWR: What was the inspiration behind Little Secrets?

JH: Every novel I write starts with a tiny seed of an idea, almost like a snapshot of one scene. Little Secrets actually began as a story about cheating. I could see a woman, about 40 and married, sitting in a diner in the middle of the night, waiting to meet someone. I wanted to know why she was there, and who she was meeting. As I wrote the scene, it went in a much different direction than I thought. Later, I figured out that Marin's son had been kidnapped long before the diner scene ever took place. While Little Secrets is not exactly a "missing child" story, the disappearance of Marin's son (which happens in the first chapter) obviously affects everything she does afterward.

GWR: What comes first for you—the overall idea or the characters? 

JH: It's usually the characters. The plot doesn't develop until I've begun to flesh them out, and I tend not to know the hook of the story until I fully understand what it is the characters really want.          

GWR: Are you a pantser/gardener or a plotter/architect?

JH: Total pantster. And I wish I wasn't. If I could plot and then write, I think I would be so much more efficient, but anytime I've tried that, I've lost total interest in the story. The joy of writing, for me, is being as surprised as my readers with each new revelation and twist. But it unfortunately makes for a very inefficient writing process.  

GWR: How many hours a day do you write? What does your writing process look like?

JH: These days, I write in little chunks over the course of an eight-hour day. Pre-pandemic, when my son was doing school in-person and my husband was at the office and I had a quiet, clean house to myself, I could usually hit my quota within three hours (I try for 2,000 words per day). But now, with my son in virtual school and my husband working from home, everything is noisy and messy and just harder, which I know is the case for everyone. So now I write whenever and however I can. I'm constantly interrupted, so it's twenty minutes here, two hundred words there, whatever I can do.

GWR: Did any minor characters become major characters over the course of the novel?

JH: Sal was meant to be a very minor character, until I figured out how long he and Marin had known each other and how close they were. Their long friendship added layers to her backstory and elements to her personality that wouldn't have otherwise existed. But then other characters that I thought would be major ended up having not as much to say (like Derek). I'm always surprised by how things work out.

GWR: What was the hardest scene to write?

JH: There were a lot of hard scenes in Little Secrets, but if I had to choose one, it would be when Marin learns that one of the people from her support group has finally found their missing child...and it's terrible news. Marin spirals to a pretty dark place, and as a mother myself, it was like putting myself through a nightmare of my own making. I needed a couple of days to recover after writing that scene.

 GWR: What draws you to darker themes? 

JH: I think writing dark stories helps me to make sense of the horrific things that happen in real life. Everything that fiction has ever delved into has actually happened somewhere, to someone, and in many cases, the truth is even worse than the stories we writers create. I recently watched American Murder: The Family Next Door on Netflix, which is the true story of Chris Watts murdering his wife and children. Can I just say, that real-life story was way worse than any thriller I've read, maybe ever. Writing about the dark stuff helps me feel a sense of control over the terrible things that actually happen, especially since I try to end all my stories with a sense of resolution. Which we don't always get in real life.

GWR: Is there a particular author or work that inspired you to become a writer or the way you write? 

JH: There have been many. The first non-picture books I ever read as a child were the Nancy Drew books, which probably encouraged a love of mysteries in general from an early age. I also discovered Stephen King pretty early, and then as a teenager, I loved Sidney Sheldon. King taught me a lot about characters, and how, if a reader truly believes in a character, the reader will also believe anything that happens to that character, no matter how outlandish. And Sheldon taught me the fun of a fast-paced read, and how to move the reader quickly from one scene to another—basically, how to write a page-turner. As I got older, I started reading a lot of thrillers, which seemed to combine what I loved most about King and Sheldon. I read Jeffery Deaver, Jonathan Kellerman, John Grisham, and then eventually discovered Chelsea Cain and her serial killer, Gretchen. Cain's fearlessness in writing Gretchen changed everything for me. 

GWR: If you could tell your younger self something about writing and becoming an author, what would it be?

JH: I'd tell her not to do it and to finish her degree, because writing is hard! Okay, kidding. I would probably just remind her to keep reading a lot, and writing a lot, and to stay true to her own voice. I think everything that happens in our lives brings us to exactly where we need to be to write that first book. I could not have written Creep, my first thriller, in my twenties. I needed to get married, turn 30, work, buy a house, sell a house, and move to Seattle in order to be in the right space both physically and emotionally to write that first novel. (Also, Creep is being re-issued by the publisher in March, ten years after it was first published—I'm excited to see it back out in the world!)

GWR: What are you working on now?

JH: Another psychological thriller, which should be out in Spring 2022-ish. I'm a bit superstitious and I don't like to talk about my books until the first draft is complete, and I'm still a few months away from that happening. But I'm having fun writing it! 

Thank you so much, Erin! You have been so wonderful and supportive of authors, and it was truly a pleasure to do this interview. 

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.  

Our Darkest Night by Jennifer Robson

A special thank you to HarperCollins Canada for a copy of the book and the author, Jennifer Robson, for the interview.

Our Darkest Night is a WWII story about a young Jewish woman, Antonina Mazin, who aspires to be a doctor, just like her father. When the political situation worsens, Antonina's father arranges for her to go into hiding as a farmer's wife in a remote village—she will now be known as Nina, the Catholic wife of Niccolò Gerardi. 

Nico was studying for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the seminary and return home to run his family’s farm. He is a moral and just man who vows to keep Nina safe while keeping secrets of his own.

At first, their relationship is only for show. Nina is struggling with her new life on the farm and especially with Nico's sister, Rosa. While working for the Resistance, they fall in love. But when a Nazi officer discovers Nina's true identity, their lives become fraught with danger. 

Inspired by her inlaw's family history, Our Darkest Night has Jennifer Robson deviating from her usual setting of England to that of the countryside in Italy. 

Through her meticulous research, Robson deftly balances a romance against the historical accuracies of WWII. In spite of the horrors of war, there is a great beauty that can be found in both the setting and the well-developed characters. Nina and Nico are both strong as individuals, but it is their bond that is truly inspirational. This book is proof of the power of love. 

Moving and poignant, Robson is a historical fiction force. Her attention to detail, and the beautiful and lyrical prose, makes these characters leap off the page right into the reader's heart. Our Darkest Night is a story of sacrifice, love, survival, and above all, hope. 

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JENNIFER ROBSON is the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France, After the War Is Over, Moonlight Over Paris, Goodnight from London, and The Gown. She studied French literature and Modern History as an undergraduate at King’s University College at Western University, then attended Saint Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, where she obtained her doctorate in British economic and social history. While at Oxford, she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.

Robson lives in Toronto with her husband and children. 

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Q & A with Jennifer Robson*

GWR: What was the inspiration behind Our Darkest Night?

JR: In 2016 my husband and I learned that his mother’s parents had helped to shelter Jews, most of them fellow Italians, during the Second World War. When I finally got around to digging into this family history—my son had asked me if it was true and I had to admit I wasn’t sure—I unearthed the true story of Father Oddo Stocco, the parish priest in my in-laws’ hometown of San Zenone degli Ezzelini, who was named Righteous Among the Nations for helping to save more than fifty innocent people from arrest, deportation and near-certain death. Although I wasn’t able to definitively prove my husband’s grandparents helped Father Stocco (I believe they did, but in all honesty I cannot prove it), I was inspired to write a novel in which a young Jewish Italian woman is forced into hiding during the war. What must life have been like for the innocent people who were robbed of so much in those years? And how did they manage to survive? Our Darkest Night is my attempt to answer those questions.

GWR: Are you a pantser/gardner or a plotter/architect?

JR: I am a plotter/architect down to my toes! I do a ton of planning, to the point where my detailed outlines are nearly as long as a first draft, but it’s only after working out the structure of my book, and ensuring it accords with the history of its setting, that I can begin to tell my story. 

GWR: I’m always amazed at the level of detail in your books—tell me about the research you did for Our Darkest Night.

JR: Because my area of expertise centres on Britain and France in the two world wars, I had to do a lot of background reading on the history of Italy in the first half of the 20th century—its political history as well as the history of Italy’s Jews, and with it the disheartening rise of antisemitism in those years. I then worked my way through a number of more specialized works—the sort of books that often originate as a scholar’s doctoral thesis—before coming to the really fun part: digging into first-hand accounts of life in Italy in the 1940s. Here I relied on memoirs, diaries, recorded oral history interviews, and mass media from the period such as newspapers and magazines, advertisements, movies, and popular fiction. I also interviewed a number of people who lived through those years, most of them elderly relatives of my husband, in the hopes of unearthing the sort of details you mention. It was from his aunts and uncles that I learned about mattresses stuffed with cornhusks, laundry that was rinsed in the stream, warm polenta and milk for breakfast, mice in the granary, and pinza cake cooked on the hearth. To be honest, I probably have enough material from them to write another entire book!

GWR: How did you balance crafting a good story against historical accuracy in terms of character development?

JR: I always ask two questions when I’m deciding what will happen to my characters. First: is what occurs to them possible? That is, could it have taken place according to what is known about the time and place where the book is set? If it isn’t possible, then I know I have to adjust the action of the book so it aligns with known historical events. Then I ask a second, and possibly more important question: Is it plausible? Is what I am doing to my characters not only possible given the context, but also believable and realistic and understandable? Only if I’m able to answer yes to both questions do I proceed.

GWR: Did any minor characters become major characters over the course of the novel?

JR: Nico’s sister Rosa, in my first outline of the book, was a peripheral character, but she became so much more by the time I was finished writing Our Darkest Night. Now she is one of the figures in the book that readers seem to love the most! I think they’re drawn to her incredible courage and resilience, as well as the core of kindness that she hides so well behind a somewhat crusty exterior.

GWR: What was the hardest scene to write?

JR: I don’t want to introduce any spoilers here, but it’s clear from the description of the book that it involves the Holocaust. And anything that involves the Holocaust is going to be difficult—if it isn’t difficult, then as a writer you are missing some key part of the equation. It is critically important not to minimize or diminish the suffering of the innocent people who were tortured and murdered, but it’s also important, I believe, to do so without fetishizing or in any way glorifying the violence and savagery of the malefactors. The solution was for me to focus exclusively on my protagonists and their point of view. Making their humanity my focus was essential to my understanding of those events, and consequently my fictional interpretation of them.

GWR: If you could tell your younger self something about writing and becoming an author, what would it be?

JR: I think it would be to not doubt myself so much. I spent most of my twenties and a good part of my thirties utterly convinced that I was a failure. What I was actually doing in those years, however, was learning everything that I rely on now: I was discovering how to think like a historian, I was learning the discipline required to be a full-time writer, and I was doing a lot of reading. In essence, I was setting the groundwork for what came next. If only I’d known it at the time!

GWR: What are you reading now?

JR: This year I’ve had the chance to read some early copies of books that will be published over the coming months, and there were a few that really stood out for me. Among them are Courage, My Love by Kristin Beck, which is set in WWII-era Rome and has two incredibly strong women as its central characters; Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan, which is a wonderfully moving dual-timeline book centered on the tragedy of the doomed steamship Pulaski; and The Woman at the Front by Canadian author Lecia Cornwell, which tells the story of a female physician working at the front lines in the Great War.

GWR: What are you working on now?

JR: I’m working on my next book, which has the working title of Coronation Year and is set in a small London hotel in 1953. While the backdrop is the runup to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the focus is on the people who work at and live in the hotel. I have a huge map of the procession route for the coronation pinned to the wall next to my desk, and right now I’m spending a lot of time daydreaming about life in that city and that year.

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.