Boreal Book Club: She Didn’t See it Coming by Shari Lapena

When a beloved wife and mother disappears, a luxurious condo building transforms into a potential crime scene, and the investigation begins: can the detectives find her before it’s too late?

Bryden and Sam have it all: thriving careers, a smart apartment in a luxury condominium, supportive friends and a cherished daughter. The perfect life for the perfect couple.

Then Sam receives a call at his office. Bryden—working from home that day—has failed to collect their daughter from daycare. Arriving home with their little girl, he finds his wife’s car in the underground garage. Upstairs in their apartment her laptop is open on the table, her cell phone nearby, her keys in their usual place in the hall.

Except Bryden is nowhere to be seen. It’s as if she just walked out.

The queen of domestic suspense, Shari Lapena, is back with a gripping and claustrophobic tale of deception, revenge, and jealousy.

She Didn’t See it Coming is union of a suburban thriller and police procedural. Told from multiple points of view, this cast of unreliable and unlikable characters are full of secrets, lies, and in some cases motivation—everyone is a suspect for Detective Jayne Salter.

Expertly plotted and full of red herrings and twists, this is Lapena is at her finest. Strong recommend.

SHARI LAPENA is is the internationally bestselling author of nine thrillers—including The Couple Next Door—which have all been New York Times, Sunday Times, and Globe and Mail bestsellers. Her books have been sold in forty territories around the world.

Lapena lives on a farm outside Toronto with her husband.

Scroll to read Girl Well Read’s exclusive interview with Shari Lapena about She Didn’t See it Coming.

Photo credit: @vikingbooks and @sharilapena via Instagram

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

SL: There’s no one book or author who inspired me to become a writer exactly, but I do remember being nine years old and reading Nancy Drew books and thinking that I’d like to grow up and write Nancy Drew books one day. As far as the way I write, I take inspiration from Patricia Highsmith, who was so good at getting into the deep, dark psychology of her characters.

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

SL: That’s interesting—I haven’t heard the gardner/architect labels before. I’m definitely a pantser/gardener. I’ve tried planning but I just can’t think of anything that might happen unless I’m actually writing inside a character in a scene and seeing what happens next. I’m definitely an organic writer—one thing leads to another for me. I start with a couple of characters and a situation or conflict and see what they do and go from there.

GWR: As a seasoned author, what is your favourite part of the publishing process? Is there anything that you still find difficult?

SL: I still love writing the first draft. I love to see where the story is going. And I love touring and going to festivals. I still find edits a slog after a while, but they’re a necessary part of the process. There’s also a lot of administrative work that goes along with being an author, but it must be done.

Photo credit: @sharilapena via Instagram

GWR: What sparked the idea for She Didn’t See It Coming?

SL: I’ve always been interested in stories about people who go out to the corner store to get a loaf of bread for example and are never seen again. I always want to know what happened. I came up with the idea of a woman working from home one day in a condominium building who appears to have just stepped out for a moment, leaving her purse, keys and phone behind. No signs of a struggle. And no clues as to what happened to her. Of course, the people left behind are going mad not knowing what happened to her. The police investigation is extra interesting because there is no evidence that she ever actually left the building—but they can’t find her.

GWR: Detective Jayne Salter and her partner, Dr. Michael Fraser, are persuasive and compelling characters—will either/both be featured in any upcoming works, or for a series perhaps? 

SL: That’s a good question! I’ve always written stand alones, but I’m actually starting to consider doing a series. And I like Jayne and Michael too—her struggles with being a homicide detective, and the extra colour he provides as a psychologist. I might come back to them. People are already asking for a sequel to She Didn’t See It Coming.

GWR: Why do you prefer to write from a third-person point of view? 

SL: I love third person point of view, but even more, I love multiple points of view. Third person is great because you can get as shallow or as deep as you like into a character—and I like to get deep into their emotions and complexities. And I love multiple viewpoints because I find it really helps to keep the pacing fast and sets up lots of opportunities to engage and mislead the reader.

Photo credit: @vikingbooks and @sharilapena via Instagram

GWR: How do you write such effective red herrings when you are so close to the material?

SL: I don’t even have to think about red herrings—they just occur naturally as I write. I think of every character, or most characters, as a suspect, so I’m imagining why they might have done the crime and how and why. So the red herrings are there naturally for each suspect.

GWR: As the queen of domestic suspense, do you build your stories around a twist/reveal, or does this happen organically?

SL: It’s all organic for me. I don’t plan any of it, and that includes plot, character, twists, reveals, and the ending. I start with an incident—for example, in She Didn’t See It Coming, I knew Bryden would disappear from her condo and not pick her child up from daycare. I knew she would have a husband. But that’s it. After I’d written that, I went back and added a prologue about a minor car accident she’d had. And then I started adding in other characters as they occurred to me in the story.

GWR: What draws you to darker themes? 

SL: That is such a good question, and do we ever really know? I just find that I’m curious about them. It’s curiosity that drives me to write, and I think it’s curiosity that drives us to read. We want to know what happens next. People have a built-in love for story. I think it’s how we learn.

Photo credit: @penguinbooks and @sharilapena via Instagram

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

SL: Tension. You can’t have a thriller without tension. You can have a thriller without a dead body, but you must have tension.

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

SL: Oh, no one’s ever asked me that before. Maybe a black coffee with a shot of gin. I wonder what that tastes like?

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

SL: Yes, I’ve just finished my tenth crime novel, called Getting Away With Murder. It will be out next summer. It just might be my best yet.