Latest news with #AndreaMara
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Nothing will stop this Psychological Thriller becoming a runaway bestseller: Count My Lies by Sophie Stava, It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara, The Palazzo by Kayte Nunn
Count My Lies by Sophie Stava (Century £16.99, 336pp) The author nails it with this book from the first sentence. A young woman in a trendy New York neighbourhood claims to be a nurse as she helps a very handsome father tend to his little girl who's been stung by a bee. But Sloane Caraway is actually a nail technician and compulsive liar who manages to inveigle her way into the lives of the glamorous father Jay Lockhart and his wife Violet. The ensuing original and twisty plot lines provide a very convincing psychological study of why people actually tell lies. It's not long before Sloane realises that the Lockharts are not what they seem either. Meanwhile, Sloane becomes obsessed with growing more and more like Violet. Events then lead to an explosive, if not entirely satisfactory, ending. With its punchy, chatty, writing style, nothing will stop this from becoming a runaway bestseller. It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara (Bantam £16.99, 400pp) This plot plays expertly into one of our worst nightmares. Susan, a sleep deprived teacher on maternity leave, feels affronted by a WhatsApp message from a neighbour named Celeste and decides to vent to her sister about Celeste's awful children and her philandering husband. Too late to delete, she realises she has sent the message to the whole neighbourhood. At first she thinks the fuss will pass but then people start to be murdered. One of the victims is a woman who has the same address as her, but in a different part of town. The tension is very well maintained throughout and the author resists the temptation to be overly dramatic. The convincing storyline maintains real dread in a world of everyday domestic detail. Very enjoyable. The Palazzo by Kayte Nunn (No Exit Press £9.99, 304pp) The perfect remote setting for this crafty thriller is a renovated former convent in the Italian Alps. The Palazzo Stellina has been hired by a beauty entrepreneur to celebrate her 40th birthday with her family and friends. A luxury swimming pool and handsome chef are all part of the package. When a murder occurs, the scene is expertly set for a locked-room mystery as all the guests have their own reasons to be suspects or maybe victims. The cleverly constructed plot keeps us guessing while we enjoy the well-drawn luxurious backdrop of the Palazzo.
Irish Examiner
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
From daydreaming about bank heists to TV adaptations: Andrea Mara on her writing career
When she worked in financial services, Andrea Mara would often find herself daydreaming in conference calls. She wasn't daydreaming about lying in a hammock on a beach. Mara was more likely to be thinking about what would happen if masked gunmen entered her bank's Luxembourg office while the video call was going on. 'I would start to think, imagine if we were just watching this video conference on screen, and masked gunmen came into the Luxembourg office right in front of our eyes,' she says. 'So it's only a few feet away on the video screen, but actually hundreds of miles away in real life. And that weird thing where we would be seeing it unfolding, but there's nothing we can do. And, you know, what should we do — should we call the Irish police or the Luxembourg police. How would we call them?' With daydreams like that, it's no surprise that Mara has gone on to become a bestselling thriller author, writing in the domestic noir or suburban thriller genre. And with books, All Her Fault, Hide and Seek, No One Saw a Thing and Someone in the Attic all featuring in the Irish top 10 bestseller lists, she appears to have hit a sweet spot. This week, Mara released her eighth novel, It Should Have Been You. The plot centres around new mom Susan who mistakenly sends a message intended for her sisters to an entire WhatsApp Group. The message, which exposes some truths about a neighbour and her family, kickstarts a series of events starting with the murder of a woman — which Susan suspects should have been her. The book touches on the aforementioned WhatsApp Groups, cyber bullying, cheating spouses, dealing with teenage children, and linking it all together are the familial relationships. Within these themes lies an intricate, twisty plot. Andrea Mara: A bestselling thriller author writing in the domestic noir or suburban thriller genre. Picture: Gareth Chaney For Mara, her books are about taking what might seem innocuous — a text sent in error, a playdate, a game of hide and seek — and asking 'what if?'. She's famed for her twists; a review of her latest book calls her book 'so twisty, even the twists have twists'. 'That's really my favourite part, the plotting and the twists are what I enjoy the most,' she says. 'When I start out, I'll have an outline so I know the premise and I know the ending, and I know a very rough path of how we're going to get there. So, I'm thinking great, I've got this four-page outline, and then I get to chapter five, and I'm like, I don't know what happens next. But then I think okay, well, what if the next thing that happens is not what it looks like to the reader, maybe posting the reader in one direction, but really, in the background, we're going in a different direction, and that's the part that's really, really fun. 'And dropping little clues along the way that might be real clues that will point you towards the answer, because in crime writing, you have to give the reader a good chance to guess the answer. Otherwise, it's not fair. You have to give them clues, but then there are other clues that are pointing in the wrong direction altogether, and that's also really, really good fun.' Mara has always loved crime books. She's read every Agatha Christie book, and loves Jeffrey Deaver and Patricia Cornwell. But when she started reading Barbara Vine books (who is Ruth Rendall writing as Vine), which were crime thrillers without a detective, she could see a niche. She says: 'The Barbara Vine books were very much domestic noir style stories, psychological suspense without detectives and police and I think it was maybe the Barbara Vine books that steered me in the direction I went, the more domestic noir psychological suspense side, where it's regular people living in regular houses, and then something extraordinary happens and turns their lives upside down.' Andrea Mara has always loved crime books. Picture: Gareth Chaney Mara began her writing career later in life; she was 42 when she wrote her first book. In the years of working in financial services, despite regularly daydreaming about high-octane thriller plots, writing a book wasn't on her radar: 'Writing a book sounded like something other people might be able to do. I didn't think I could make a whole book out of just one idea. But I enjoyed writing, so I got into blogging.' In Mara's blog, 'Office Mom', she wrote about the trials and challenges of parenting while working full time. She recalls getting a message from Kildare author Margaret Scott who read her blog and suggested she should write a book. 'Literally, the next morning, I started writing the first chapter of what became my first book,' she says. 'I think I needed to be pushed. When [Margaret] said, 'you should write a book', I was happy to just go ahead and give it a go. Maybe being a rules and procedure-driven person, I'm also a permission-driven person.' Shortly afterwards, after taking redundancy from her financial services job, Mara began writing features for newspapers and magazines. 'I loved doing that, and decided I would give it a go for six months, and then if it didn't work out, I would go back and try and find another job in financial services. But after six months, I was busy with loads of work all the time, so I just kept going with that, and then the same author, Margaret Scott, contacted me and said her publisher was looking for a novel in the domestic suspense genre, and I should send her my draft. And that was the start.' Now, 10 years later, Mara has eight books under her belt, and her book All Her Fault is currently being made into a TV series by US streamer Peacock. Mara remembers getting the call from her agent telling her about the deal. Andrea Mara has eight books under her belt, and her book All Her Fault is currently being made into a TV series. Picture: Gareth Chaney 'It was 10 o'clock at night. My agent told me to check my email, and there was a link to an article announcing that Peacock had given the green light to All Her Fault to go straight to series,' she says. 'I didn't even know what that meant at the time, but normally, the streamers and commissioners would ask for a pilot episode first, and then once they've seen the pilot episode, that's when they would decide whether or not to go ahead. So my gosh, even the idea that there are just thousands of pilot episodes out there that never go anywhere. We were really, really lucky. I was on cloud nine for months and months with that excitement.' Then came the news about the casting, which Mara remembers as another pinch-me moment. 'When you write a book, most authors are not really writing a book with TV in mind,' she says. 'It's hard enough to write a book in its own right without thinking about TV, but if you're lucky enough to sell an option and then have the green light for it to go into production, it's, it's huge, and it's rare, and it's fabulous. And then to have actors like Sarah Snook, Dakota Fanning, and Abby Elliott, it's just incredible. 'I went over to see the filming in Melbourne, and I went to visit the set, so I've seen some of the filming. Knowing how good it looks from just that one week there, I can absolutely relax and just wait with excitement to see it.' But first, it's her new novel. Mara says she always feels excitement mixed with nerves when she's releasing a new book. 'There's always that excitement, but absolutely tinged with anxiety, because you just don't know until the book comes out, you don't know if it's going to go well or not. Of course I trust my editor and all the people who are involved in the editing and production process that they'll always get the book to be the best it can be before it goes out, but you still don't know. Any book can take off or just fly under the radar. And there's no way to know in advance how that's going to go. 'You've no control over how many people buy your books or what other big books are going to come out at the same time. And as each book achieves a new milestone, there is a self imposed pressure to improve on that the next time around so it never ends.' 'It Should Have Been You' by Andrea Mara, published by Bantam, is out now.
Irish Independent
09-05-2025
- Irish Independent
When WhatsApp groups go horribly wrong in Andrea Mara's brilliant thriller It Should Have Been You
'Ten days, four deaths, one teenager in hospital, one in police custody, my family destroyed. And all because of a text.' This is the shocking introduction to Irish crime author Andrea Mara's new thriller.
Irish Examiner
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
10 new books for May: Rachel Gillig, Vogue Williams, and more...
Julie Chan is Dead, by Liann Zhang (May 1) A young woman steps into her deceased twin's influencer life, only to discover dark secrets in this debut novel. Zhang, a second-generation Chinese Canadian spent time as a skincare content creator before graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in psychology and criminology. The Names, by Florence Knapp (May 6) What's in a name? Florence Knapp takes an ordinary question and turns it into a meditation on identity, fate, and family. This 'sliding doors' novel set between Ireland and the UK tackles the ripple effects of domestic abuse and the messy ties of family, and has been tipped as one of the biggest novels of the year. The Tenant, by Frieda McFadden (May 6) Bestselling author Freida McFadden returns with a gripping story of revenge, privilege, and secrets turned sour. In her latest chilling thriller, Blake's new tenant seems perfect—until everything starts to go horribly wrong. It Should Have Been You, by Andrea Mara (May 8) We all know the fear of sending a message about someone to that person by mistake. That's what happens in crime writer Andrea Mara's new book, but when a text about the neighbours goes to the community WhatsApp, its sender receives death threats – and a person living in the same address in a different part of town is murdered. The Knight and the Moth, by Rachel Gillig (May 20) A BookTok sensation, Rachel Gillig's duology The Shepherd King went viral on TikTok. Her latest book, the first in a new romantasy series, has a different atmosphere. It follows a prophetess who is forced on an impossible quest with a handsome knight whose future she cannot see. The Aftertaste, by Daria Lavelle (May 22) This is a ghost story worth devouring. When spirits are near, Kostya can taste their favourite food. He opens a restaurant so he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones — at least for the length of their favourite meal. It has already received rave reviews from the likes of chef Nigella Lawson and author Louise Kennedy. Ripeness, by Sarah Moss (May 22) Sarah Moss, the Scottish-born bestselling author of Summerwater and assistant professor of creative writing at UCD, explores love and belonging in her latest novel, which moves from Italy in the 1960s to Ireland in the 2020s and touches upon migration and new beginnings. Big Mouth, by Vogue Williams (May 22) TV presenter and podcaster Vogue Williams's memoir promises to share what you don't see on social media: a deep dive into her stories of divorce, anxiety, family, immortality and showbiz. Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way, by Elaine Feeney (May 29) Booker Prize-longlisted Galway author and poet Elaine Feeney publishes her third fiction book in May. Claire, back living in her childhood home, is thrown back into a love she thought she'd left behind. It is a story of love and resilience, rich with the legacies of violence and redemption. Long Story, by Vicki Notaro (May 29) Reality Check author Vicki Notaro writes about two best friends torn apart by a celebrity memoir in her sophomore novel. Movie star Tara and podcast host Alex find their friendship tested when rockstar Sean Sweeney's memoir is published, revealing his past relationships with them both. Read More John Patrick McHugh: 10 of the books that have influenced me through the years
