Every Time We Say Goodby by Natalie Jenner

A special thank you to the author, Natalie Jenner, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. 

The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. 

There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.

As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary. (From HarperCollins.)

Jenner's latest once again brings a vibrant cast of characters to life—including cameos from her previous two novels (The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls) and by classical Hollywood cinema's leading ladies. 

The story takes place in post-war Italy where a group of American and British expatriates become entangled in controversy while making a movie about a female Italian resistance fighter during the occupation called "La Scolaretta," the Schoolgirl assassin. Her story makes up the dual narrative. 

Meticulously researched, this novel demonstrates how impactful art is not only to preserve our history, but as a medium to communicate to the masses as well as entertain. 

Every Time We Say Goodbye is a cinematic novel of love, art, grief, and of confronting the past to face the future.

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

NATALIE JENNER is the author of the instant international bestseller The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls. A Goodreads Choice Award runner-up for historical fiction and finalist for best debut novel, The Jane Austen Society was a USA Today and #1 national bestseller, and has been sold for translation in twenty countries. 

Born in England and raised in Canada, Jenner has been a corporate lawyer, career coach and, most recently, an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.

---

Q & A with Natalie Jenner*

GWR: How long did it take you to write Every Time We Say Goodbye, and how many drafts were there before publication?

NJ: I tend to have a “four seasons” energy when it comes to writing: I start with the hopefulness of spring, finish with the sharpened-pencil mood of fall, buckle down in our Canadian winter to edit, and deliver the final MS at its end. With Every Time We Say Goodbye, it was the same: roughly a year, May to April, and about three substantive drafts in total—but months of line editing in between! 

GWR: What was the genesis of the novel?

NJ: In the spring of 2021, I was rewatching Day For Night, an old Francois Truffaut film about film, and ended up falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole when I learned that Rome’s famous Cinecittà studios had been used as refugee camps during and after WWII, and that some refugees might even have been extras during filming there of the Hollywood epic Quo Vadis. This lit a creative spark in me, and I decided (helped by lack of travel in 2021 due to the pandemic!) to set my next book in Rome, my favourite city.

GWR: What do you have more fun with, character development or plot? 

NJ: I write line by line, without outlining or knowing what is going to happen, so everything—plot and characters—is fun for me. This also means that the characters drive the plot: I feel like I am a tin can tied to their collective bumper, being pulled along in their wake, and only discovering their secrets along the way. The absolute most fun for me is when I finally realize what those secrets are.

GWR: Your books are always meticulously researched and detailed—can you tell us about the process?

NJ: My process is very haphazard, in part because the subject matter of each book drives the research. But basically, I research just enough before I start writing to ensure a sense of time and place, then as I write I research whatever pops up in the plot. I can say that the research for Every Time We Say Goodbye was the most intense, intensive, and harrowing that I have ever done. From war orphans, partisan resisters, religion and censorship, to Italian laws, culture, cinema, and politics: much of this was brand new to me, and I felt a real imperative to get it as right as possible, out of respect for that amazing country and its equally amazing people.

GWR: What made you decide to write a dual timeline? Was it easier or more challenging?

NJ: I never had any intention of writing a dual timeline. In fact, I was halfway through the book, when one morning (and I will never forget this moment) I sat down at my laptop and suddenly the words “The handbag is almost empty inside” just popped onto the page. Right way, I realized I was inside the head of la scolaretta, the fictional “schoolgirl assassin” that many of my 1950s characters had been referencing in the plot. In a way, she made me write her, probably to get her right—or at least better than I had been doing! So again, the story sowed the seeds for that decision. It wasn’t necessarily easier, but I did love finding ways structurally to connect the two timelines, and create echoes between the respective plots, themes, characters, and settings.

GWR: Setting always plays such an important part in your novels. Although this book is largely set in Rome, it begins and ends in England—do you have ties to either country? 

NJ: My love for Italy, and Rome in particular, started in adolescence: I happen to be one of the last high-school Latin graduates in the province of Ontario! For six years I daily parsed the writings of Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus, and saw the intricate connection between that dead language and our own—in fact, it’s one of the few subjects I studied that impacts me still to this day and in a very fun, writerly way. I have since visited Italy several times, and Rome remains my favourite city in the world. 

I only recently realized that all of my books end in England, which makes me appreciate what some call ancestral memory—all I know, is that I have always felt an incredibly strong attachment and affinity to all things British. My father, brother, and I were born in England, and I grew up in a very British-Canadian household: kippers for Christmas morning breakfast, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em on the tv. I continue to visit my paternal family and friends there every chance I get.

GWR: Was it hard to say goodbye to the characters in these books?  

NJ: No, but probably only because I always try to leave my characters in the best place in life that I can, ready to face whatever life throws at them next. I think I purposefully do that in order to feel closure—yet I keep finding ways to revisit many of my characters in subsequent books, so I think perhaps I am just really bad at goodbyes!

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

NJ: An Aperol Spritz: summery and long-lasting, with a refreshing bite. 

GWR: What are you working on now?

NJ: I am putting the finishing touches on Austen at Sea, which is the tale of two daughters of a Massachusetts supreme court justice who start a correspondence with Jane Austen's last surviving sibling, a ninety-one-year-old retired admiral, and travel by mail packet steamship to meet him in the summer of 1865 just as the civil war has ended. In their absence, their widowed father's colleagues on the bench start a judicial reading circle dedicated to Austen as a means of distracting him. Louisa May Alcott also makes an appearance in the plot, leading the other women on board ship in a charity performance of vignettes from A Tale of Two Cities. A literary treasure hunt soon ensues, culminating in climactic court cases on both sides of the Atlantic involving a piece of Austen history and a multitude of characters including theatre impresarios, street waifs, newspapermen, suffragists, gypsy fortune tellers, and many more (my quasi-tribute to Dickens). These is also a very loose connection to my first novel, The Jane Austen Society, which has made the entire writing experience especially gratifying and “full circle” for me as a writer—see my failure at closure, above!

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

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.

For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member's perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?

Gowda's scorching new novel follows an Indian-American family struggling to climb the social ladder and how an incident with the police highlights the systems of prejudice that are still at work. The Shahs are victims of the systemic racism that they thought the gates of their community protected them from. Their differing views further illustrate the generational and cultural divide. 

Told through multiple perspectives, this timely novel represents the separation that immigrant families feel from their adolescent children who were raised in a country different from their own. Gowda wades into the divided climate we live in, deftly handling polarizing views while still leaving much to be discussed—this book would make an excellent book club choice.

A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege, the myth of the model minority and the price of the American dream.

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

SHILPI SOMAYA GOWDA is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four novels: The Golden Son (a Target Book Club Pick, a Costco Buyer’s Pick, and was awarded the French literary prize, Prix des Lyceens Folio), The Shape of Family (an international and American bestseller), A Great Country and Secret Daughter (an IndieNext Great Read, a Target Book Club Pick, a ChaptersIndigo Heather’s Pick, an Amnesty International Book Club Pick, and a finalist for the South African Boeke Literary Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). 

Shilpi was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and now lives in California. 

---

Q & A with Shilpi Somaya Gowda*

GWR: How did you start writing/become a writer?    

SSG: I began writing in 2006, during a transitional period in my business career. I took some university night classes in creative writing after moving to a new city, and slowly began learning how to structure and write a novel. It provided a great framework for someone like me, with little creative writing experience. In that program, I wrote the first draft of my first novel, Secret Daughter. I spent the next two years revising the manuscript, finding a literary agent, and selling it to a publisher. It’s a great lesson that unexpected life changes can lead to exciting new things.

GWR: Are you a pantser/gardener or a plotter/architect? What does your writing process look like and does it differ from book-to-book? 

SSG: My process is a combination of planning and organic exploration. I start with a central character and story premise, and try to roughly outline the plot, but there are invariably large gaps. I often have a sense of the climax or central conflict, but almost never know the ending. I start by writing the pieces I know, which means I don’t write chronologically. As I develop the characters along the way, I find more details, including the secondary characters and sub-plots. The process does vary a bit with each book, since each story presents a new challenge. It seems like it should get easier over time, but not yet!

GWR: What was the genesis of A Great Country?

SSG: I began writing this novel in 2021, to try to make sense of the world around me. It was one year into the worldwide pandemic, in the wake of the George Floyd video, and amidst a rise in violence against Asian-Americans. The discussions I witnessed were fraught and often extreme, and there was a distressing decline in civil discourse. A new conversation was starting to emerge. The minority group often deemed to be “model” in the U.S. was being forced to reconsider its role and comfort level in this country. Should we be seeking common cause with other communities of color? Or protecting ourselves in dangerous times? What did it mean to be American, hyphenated or otherwise? These were the ideas—the social, cultural, political forces in America today—I wanted to explore in A Great Country. 

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

SSG: One of the keys of writing for me is to find a way to empathize with each of the characters. If I can’t put myself in their shoes, I can’t write them with any conviction. I can always find a connection with mothers, because of the universality of that experience. I also find myself rooting for those characters that have a hard time expressing themselves, like Ajay, and I end up working harder to show their perspective. 

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

SSG: I always knew the main character (Priya) would have a good friend throughout the story, but Archana (Archie) grew to have a significant role in the novel. She’s there to provide support, but also to remind Priya who she is/was, to show a contrast with how other friends and acquaintances react, and to offer to her professional guidance as a psychologist. Readers often tell me Archie is their favorite character, and don’t we all deserve a friend like her in our lives? I’m fortunate to have several of them.

GWR: What was the hardest scene to write?

SSG: The hardest scenes for me to write are always the ones where the characters go through a gruelling emotional experience. I have to feel what they’re feeling in order to write it. There were several of those scenes in this novel, but one of the toughest was an argument between Ashok and his eldest daughter, Deepa. There is a wide gulf between their views. They both have legitimate perspectives and are desperate to have the other understand; in that process, they say hurtful things to each other and are each left terribly, perhaps irrevocably, wounded.

GWR: You have many points of view that illustrate the cultural and generational differences—why did you choose to write the novel this way?

SSG: I conceived of this novel as a community story. While it’s centered on the Shah family, it also zooms out to a wider perspective to include four other families, each with a differing background, race, class, immigration status. I thought it was important to show where some of our political differences come from, how each family’s life experience drives how they see the American dream a bit differently. Within each family, generational conflicts arise between parents and children, and these further complicate the community dynamic.

GWR: What do you hope readers will take away from A Great Country?

SSG: I’ve learned that many people long for more civil dialogue as a way to face our society’s problems. It can be hard to approach these hot-button topics, but fiction can offer us a way to step into another person’s shoes. I hope that readers come away with a willingness to spark reflection and to perhaps understand a different perspective. Even better, they could use that as a basis to open respectful dialogue with their book club, neighbour or colleague. 

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

SSG: Masala chai, of course!

GWR: What are you working on now?


SSG: I have a couple of ideas I’ve been simmering on, but haven’t started writing. I’ve been reading, researching and jotting down notes. When an idea really begins to gather steam in my mind, that’s when I know it’s time to start writing.

A Man Downstairs by Nicole Lundrigan

A special thank you to Viking for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What if the childhood you remember isn’t really what happened at all?

Molly Wynters has moved back to her small hometown to care for her father, recently felled by a stroke and no longer able to communicate. She is ready to make a fresh start with her son after her divorce, but is haunted by both old events and new realities in her childhood home.

What Molly recalls of her young life with her father is full of love and care, even though a violent trauma defined her when she was a young girl, she witnessed her mother’s murder, and her testimony—“There was a man downstairs”—sent a teenager to prison. This tragic episode is still very much alive in the culture of the town, and the more Molly remembers, the more she fears that what she said on the stand all those years ago might not have been the whole truth.

After Molly, a trained therapist, volunteers for a local helpline, the threats begin. At first they seem random, but soon Molly realizes that she is a target, and even those closest to her seem suspicious, especially as unsuspected links between them emerge. More than one life was destroyed on that horrific long-ago day, and now someone intends to hold Molly accountable.

Lundigran's latest is a psychological thriller about a woman who is tormented by her memories. The thread that has kept Molly sewn together begins to unravel when she returns home to the small town that is both the keeper of secrets and the scene of her mother's murder.

On the simplest level, this is a page-turner. With short, punchy chapters, Lundrigan deftly shifts between a dual timeline and multiple points of view—Molly's, Gil's, and "His." The beautiful writing is juxtaposed with the grittiness of the novel. It is sublimely atmospheric and wickedly suspenseful.

A Man Downstairs is a compelling examination into the human psyche and the unreliability of memory.

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

NICOLE LUNDRIGAN is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Hideaway, which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, The Substitute, Glass Boys, and An Unthinkable Thing. Her work has appeared on “best of” selections from The Globe and Mail, Amazon.ca, Chatelaine, Now magazine, and others. 

Lundrigan grew up in Newfoundland, and now lives in Toronto.

---

Q & A with Nicole Lundrigan*

GWR: How did you start writing/become a writer?    

NL: When I was young, I never considered becoming a fiction writer. I had my daughter shortly after finishing an MSc, and while I was home with her, I wrote various articles. At some point I opted to continue down that creative path and attempted a book. And then a second book…

GWR: This is your ninth novel—do you approach each the same way? Can you share a little about your writing process?

NL: With my first novel, I had no idea what I was doing. At one point I remember googling ‘rules of writing fiction,’ and quickly closed my laptop. In hindsight, I believe being completely naïve gave me the confidence to try. I have learned a great deal by going through the process, but with each new project there is fresh insecurity. Part of my approach is not focusing on writing a book, but instead a little cluster of words each day. 

GWR: What is your favourite part of the publishing process?  

 NL: I find writing the first draft to be daunting, but once I have something down, the process becomes more enjoyable. When I receive feedback (sometimes in the form of really good questions), and the direction is suddenly illuminated, that’s an amazing feeling.

GWR: Character development or plot—what do you have more fun with?

NL: Definitely character. While I’ve gotten better at developing plotlines, exploring the psychology of the characters is what draws me in. When I’m thinking about writing a book, it usually starts with an emotion.

GWR: What’s the one element of a thriller that is a must?

NL: Sense of tension. That something *might* happen, even if the character is just walking to the fridge to get milk for coffee.

GWR: What was the genesis of A Man Downstairs?

NL: I happened upon a news article about a three-year-old boy testifying in court against his mother’s boyfriend. At the end the judge gave him a bag of chips. That was the spark, and various threads rolled out from there.

GWR: Tell me about the research you did for the novel?

NL: I tend to research in dribs and drabs, usually when I have a question during writing. Occasionally I get lost for a few hours, slipping down various rabbit holes. It’s neat when certain tidbits of information seem to find me, instead of the other way around.

GWR: Did the story end the way you’d initially thought?

NL: With this book, I had a clear(ish) sense of what would happen from the start but didn’t quite know why. During the writing process, I discovered a great deal about my character’s experiences and intentions and by the end, I understood their behaviour much better.

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

NL: Tricky question! Ideally a drink that is intense, involves a combination of distinct flavours, was popular in the seventies, and has come around again. Let’s go with a Sloe Gin Fizz.

GWR: Can you share what you are working on now and if you have any events/appearances coming up?

NL: I’ve been working on my tenth novel, which is currently unnamed. This will be the first time writing an entire book about women who are around my age. Though I’m not sure why, I’ve always resisted that. We will see what happens.

For events, I’m really looking forward to attending Montreal Mystère in May, which is downtown Montreal’s inaugural mystery book festival. I think it’s going to be a fantastic time.

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

A Friend in the Dark by Samantha M. Bailey

A special thank you to the author, Samantha M. Bailey, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Eden Miller’s world is crumbling. Her husband blindsided her with divorce, and her daughter barely speaks to her. In an impulsive decision to escape her present and revisit the past, she sends a friend request to her college crush, Justin Ward. 

One night twenty-three years ago changed the course of her life. It closed the door on Justin and opened the door to her husband, Dave. But what if Eden could have a do-over? 

Eden begins an online relationship with Justin that awakens her in ways she never thought possible, and his voice and words make her take bold risks. But something’s off. He knows too much about her and her family…he’s been following her. 

Eden is forced to awaken from her fantasy and look for answers—who really is the man on the other line? The truth about Justin—and about what happened that fateful night two decades ago—puts her and her family in a fight for their lives. 

Told from first-person Eden and third-person Olivia, this dark, domestic thriller examines the perils of social media. With her well-developed characters, Bailey masterfully manipulates her reader. Eden and Olivia are as compelling as they are complex. 

With its short punchy chapters and jaw-dropping ending, A Friend in the Dark is expertly plotted and perfectly paced. It is sexy, smart, and slick. Congratulations, Sam!

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

SAMANTHA M. BAILEY is the USA TODAY and #1 nationally bestselling author of Woman on the Edge and the instant #1 national bestseller, Watch Out for Her, one of the top ten bestselling Canadian Fiction books of 2022 and one of the Globe & Mail's top 100 books of 2022. Her novels have sold in eleven countries to date. 

Bailey lives in Toronto with her family.

---

Q & A with Samantha M. Bailey*

GWR: Congratulations on publishing your third book! We’ve previously discussed your writing process, but how did you start writing/become a writer?    

SMB: Thank you! I grew up surrounded by books and read all the time. Even when I was walking down the street, my head would be in a book, and I’d bang into poles. Writers were and are my rock stars. I wrote my first story when I was ten, and it was my first rejection from a publisher. But it wasn’t until I was twenty-nine that I wrote a full-length novel. And I wasn’t published until I was forty-five. But the moment I sat down to write that first book, an indescribable joy came over me and a compulsion to type any time I could. That was when I knew I was a writer to the depths of my soul.

GWR: How long did it take you to write A Friend in the Dark, and how many drafts were there before publication? Do you have a favourite part of the publishing process? 

SMB: An author’s debut is usually the longest process, because it’s before contracts and deadlines, so there’s time to draft and rewrite over and over. With my third book, I wrote the first draft in four months, then my extraordinary editors and I did three big rounds and a few smaller ones, for copy edits and proofreads. All told, it was about nine months from start to finish. 

I love being edited and revising. For me, that first draft is to create the groundwork, a skeleton. The most intoxicating and exciting part is when I get to tear that skeleton limb from limb, rebuild it, and transform it from bones to a fully fleshed out world.

GWR: What was the genesis of the novel?

SMB: I think the pandemic sparked a lot of artistic inspiration and many deep online bonds that formed quickly because we were all so desperate for connection. That was the initial kernel of an idea for me. I message with a lot of author friends, and we develop very close relationships very rapidly because we understand each other. But often, we haven’t even met in person or seen each other face to face. That was the first lightbulb moment. From that idea, Eden came to me, a woman who’s done everything right only for it all to go so horribly wrong. Everything is out of her control. She loses her husband and daughter in the same day, and as someone who’s lived her life by the rules, the supposed tos, she’s lost, hurt, lonely, and yearning for someone to want her. She reaches out to the one person who made her want to be reckless, lose her inhibition, feel everything, do everything she’s scared of. That risk and fear is exhilarating and addictive. It’s that exhilaration, when you follow your desire instead of instinct, do whatever you want regardless of the consequences, was also something I wanted to explore. And how middle age is such a turning point for women. All the physical and emotional changes, our needs and wants, and how we can finally focus on ourselves after decades of taking care of everyone else.

GWR: Give us your best Hollywood pitch.

SMB: What happens when a good girl decides to be bad? 

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

SMB: This is such a good question! No, the major players are who they were when I initially started planning the novel. All the minor characters have a purpose, which is to drive the main characters’ motivations and actions.

GWR: I love the exploration of the pitfalls of social media—why was this topic compelling enough for you to write about?

SMB: For so many reasons. As an author, I’m on social media all the time. I’m careful what I post and share publicly, because I’m very protective of my private life. Information is so accessible, and sometimes to the wrong people. And because it feels like an insular world, where we connect with like-minded people who have the same interests, dreams, and goals, we often miss how much we’re putting out there about ourselves. I have two teenagers. When I was a teen in the 80s and 90s, I didn’t worry about strangers seeing photos, reading my innermost thoughts, having access to my personal life. Now everything is out there in posts, videos, reels, stories. As much as it connects us, provides comfort and communication, it’s also very frightening. We have to be so cognizant of who we trust and who we truly don’t know much about at all, but it’s also so easy to lose ourselves in that heady feeling of connection.

GWR: What’s the one element of a thriller that is a must?

SMB: Genre is tricky because it places a work of art in a box. And that box doesn’t always fit. I describe my books as domestic thrillers and domestic suspense because they’re about relationships as much as they’re about murder and mayhem. When I read thrillers, I want an escape, to feel frightened, surprised, yet also emotionally invested. I don’t have to like the characters or want to be like them. I actually prefer complicated, flawed characters who possess and portray all the different sides of humanity. I aim to do this when I write, as well. But I do think an element of danger is a must.

GWR: Did the story end the way you’d initially thought?

SMB: In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. I make very detailed outlines before I write so I know the lay of the land. But I definitely veer from that map, organically following my characters, who they are and what they want, even when they make terrible mistakes. 

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

SMB: I’m going to go with a Canadian favourite, which I didn’t realize was Canadian until I tried to order it at a bar in New York City. A Bloody Caesar, which is celery salt to rim the glass, vodka, Clamato juice, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, and garnished with a celery stalk. It’s bold, savory, spicy, and smooth. At first, it tastes comforting then hits you with a kick.

GWR: Can you share what you are working on now? 

SMB: I’d love to! My fourth domestic suspense will be published by Thomas & Mercer in March 2025. For my entire life, I’ve wanted to write a story about Hollywood and celebrity. Finally, I’ve gotten that chance, and it’s so exciting for me. I even recently spent five days in LA for research, which was a dream. I’m drafting the book now, so I can’t share too much, but the working title is Hello, Juliet, and it’s up on Goodreads if you’d like to add it to your TBR!

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