December 23, 2025 • 43 mins
Hello, our book loving besties! We're taking a break this week to enjoy some time with our friends and family, but to keep your ears cozy we’re re-releasing an episode you loved! Don’t worry -- we’ll be back next week with a new episode. Happy holidays!
It may be the middle of summer, but this week, we’re getting chills with the queen of the psychological thriller, Ruth Ware. Her latest book, The Woman in Suite 11, hit shelves on July 3rd, and is her first ever sequel. Ruth talks with our host, Danielle Robay, about what inspired her to revisit a beloved character, how to craft the perfect thriller and the wildest thing she’s ever Googled for a plot twist.
Like what you heard? Subscribe to the Bookmarked newsletter HERE for more buzzy book talk, and be sure to follow us @reesesbookclub for more.
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Books Mentioned
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware - find it HERE
The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware - find it HERE
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware - find it HERE
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware - find it HERE
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware - find it HERE
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - find it HERE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello to my book loving besties. I want to wish
you all happy holidays. We're taking a little break this
week to enjoy some time with our friends and family,
but to keep your ears cozy, we're re releasing an
episode that you loved. It was from the start of
the season with thriller writer and Reese's book Club author Ruthware.
(00:21):
And don't worry, we'll be back next week with a
new episode. Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by
Apple Books. Hi. I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked
by Reese's book Club. Today we're talking with the clean
of the modern thriller, Ruthware, And I've got a little question.
(00:42):
If you made your living telling stories about committing the
perfect crime, what would you be googling?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I mean, if I ever get investigation, I am absolutely
going to prison, like forty years, right, It's all how
long would it take a bodding to decompose under these circumstances,
and what dastage of insulin would prove fatal in more?
You know, it's just appalling.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
There's something about a murder mystery that stirs something deep
in us. I mean, how many of us were glued
to our screens each week, dissecting every glance and clue
in the white lotus or big little lies, whether it's
glamorous vacation gone wrong or a shadowy figure in a
locked room. The mystery genre taps into our obsession with
(01:29):
secrets and power and the thrill of not knowing who
to trust. And when it comes to building that kind
of tension on the page, no one does it quite
like Ruth Ware. Ruth is the modern day master of
the mystery thriller, loved by millennials say that three times fast.
A New York Times bestseller, She's been called the Agatha
(01:51):
Christie of our generation, but she's truly in a league
of her own. Her psychological thrillers are so immersive that
you'll forget it's the middle of the day and you're
safe on the couch and nothing can hurt you. Right.
Her latest book, The Woman in Sweet Eleven, just hit
shelves last week, and it's the long awaited sequel to
The Woman in Cabin Ten, which, by the way, is
(02:13):
headed to Netflix soon. Here's the rundown on the pair
of novels. Laura Lowe Blacklock has been through it like
through it a decade ago, her home was broken into,
and then her travel assignment aboard a luxury cruise ship
turned into a murder mystery. Wrapped in a near death experience,
she fights and claws her way to the truth behind
(02:34):
the disappearance of the woman from Cabin ten, and when
we meet Miss Low and Sweet eleven, she's turned her
trauma into a best selling book. Kind of meta, and
what do you know, another luxury journalism trip falls right
into her lap, but instead of the open seas, she's
now surrounded by opulence in a glittering Swiss chateau with
(02:55):
very very dark secrets and maybe even a ghost from
her past. In today's episode, we're diving into the magic
of what it takes to craft the perfect murder mystery.
And for someone who traffics in crime, Ruth is the
loveliest person in real life. She's so charming and playful
(03:16):
it's hard to imagine that she's responsible for some of
the most wicked crime stories of our generation. We're finding
out what convinced Ruth to write her first ever sequel,
how her character evolved across time and trauma, and why
the scariest people aren't the ones lurking in the shadows,
but the ones signing the checks get ready to unlock
(03:37):
the mystery and maybe how to commit the perfect crime.
Let's turn the page with Ruth Ware. Ruth, welcome to Bookmarked.
I'm so happy to have you here. You are the
queen of thrillers, and specifically psychological thrillers, and the psychological
(03:59):
thriller that has me in a choke hold recently is
a specific celebrity scandal. I don't want to name any names,
but if you were to make a modern day thriller
out of a real life scandal, which one would you
want to rate?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
In all of my books, I'm kind of obsessed with
the idea of the super rich, and I'm totally fascinated
by the phenomenon of billionaires building these bunkers to get
away from the rest of us. And I was recently
in Hawaii, and of course Mark Zuckerberg's bunker over there
is like massive local gossip. So I would love to
set a thriller in a celebrities bunker, either after the
(04:38):
end of the world has actually come, or maybe just
when they think it's come. It'll be so much juicy
material of you know, the billionaires and all their entourage
kind of quietly melting down in this post apocalyptic world.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
That is such a fabulous answer. I feel like one
of the thriller tropes that people love rich people behaving badly.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Absolutely. Yeah, there's just something really fascinating about just having
the level of wealth that means that you're completely untouchable.
And I think, however normal people start out, you can
sort of see them getting weirder and weirder and weirder
the longer and the richer they are, And it just
seems to be this kind of human condition that happens
to you and suddenly you're you know, pumping yourself full
(05:24):
of rejuvenating serums and drinking your son's blood and you know,
going to Mars or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That's hilarious. You know, sometimes they end up on end
of the world TikTok, and I did yesterday. They must
have been overhearing me, and I saw that at Costco
you can buy for sixty five dollars like enough food
to last you for two months, oh like literally just
a pack. Yes, do you do any end of the
world prepping?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I don't do it end of the world prepping, but
I am a little bit of a prepper by nature.
One of the things that I loved about our house
when we bought it was had a pantry, and this
was the thing I was most excited about out of
the whole house. Didn't care about anything else. I was
just like, it's got a pantry, and I love having
a really well stocked pantry with like, you know, gleaming
jars of preserved fruit. And I would say, at minimum,
(06:15):
I probably have twenty four cans of tomatoes at any
one time. So I don't think of it in terms
of the end of the world, but I do. I
like to think of myself as a sort of a
good hostess and nurturing person.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I asked you an unhinged question and you had such
a normal answer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh no, I think my arts was quite unhinged as well.
We went down quite a deep psychological rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
There a pinterest perfect pantry from Ruth Ware. I'm going
to need a photo.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Do you watch any thrillers on TV or film? Are
there any movies that you would consider a masterclass in suspense?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Oh? What a good question. I'm a TV addict. There's
absolutely no point in being snobbish about where your stories
come from. Whatever the media if you are immersed in
a gripping, moving story that I don't care where that
comes from. At the moment, I'm watching Department Q on Netflix,
which is really interesting and very thriller ish. It's got
(07:13):
a little bit of a kind of slow Horses vibe.
But in terms of film, Gon Girl I thought was
a really good film adaptation of a book that was
incredibly difficult to adapt, and they did an incredible job
of it.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
It's funny because we just had Emily Henry on the
show and she was obsessed with that book too.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
It would just changed the game so much for thrillers,
and you know, it's so playful and it's so meta,
and it opened up so many possibilities of, you know,
ways to tell a story. It just felt really fun
and adventurous.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I don't know if Weight Lotus is as popular in
the UK as it is in America, but everybody that
watches White Lotus is trying to figure out who's going
to die at the end, like who will be murdered.
And as I was prepping for this interview, I was
just thinking, Ruth must know who's going to die at
the end of all of these TV shows. Is there
a tell for you.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I don't know. I actually I don't always get it right.
I get it right more often in books, I think,
because I'm a novelist myself, and so I see the
tricks that the other writers are doing more I see
how they're misdirecting. I think I find it easier to
sort of put myself in the shoes of a book writer.
(08:25):
But actually film and TV I'm more often surprised because
I think it's not a medium that I ever work in,
So I'm sort of much more just a regular punter
turning up and being like, Wow, this is cool premise.
What's going on? Yeah? No, we're pretty addicted to White
lots over here as well, but I have not watched
the fourth season, so please no spoilers.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I won't say a thing, but it does sort of
fall into your category of rich people behaving badly.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Absolutely. One of the things I love about White Lotus,
and which I often return to in my books, is
the idea of a kind of a super luck setting
that is also slightly nightmarish, and I kind of very
much sort of pulled out from Agatha Christie and all
of her you know, like Death on the Nile and
Murder on the orent Express settings where she creates these
what seemed to be incredibly luxurious settings and then sort
(09:12):
of turns them into a kind of gradually tightening nightmare.
And I think White Lotus does that really well as well,
where you go to these incredibly enviable places and they're
chils filled with awful people and encroaching dead bodies.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'm so glad you mentioned Agatha Christie because I heard
in another interview that you said you always sort of
wondered if she wrote Death on the Nile as an
excuse to take a little trip down the Nile River.
And I'm curious if you've done the same for any
of your books. Have you ever followed any of your
personal curiosities towards an exotic place or an outlandish place.
(09:51):
Have you ever just walked in somewhere and thought, yeah,
someone should die here.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I would say I more often do it the other
way around, unfortunately, which is that I write books about
places that I'm intensely curious about but have never been.
And of course, my you know, ambition when I start
writing is that I will go, and then it hardly
ever seems to happen. So like the Woman in Cabin ten,
which is set on a luxurious cruise. I have still,
(10:16):
you know, almost ten years on from that book, never
been on a cruise. And my intention while I was
writing it was one hundred percent to take a cruise
and write it off as a tax deduction. And One
Perfect Couple was sort of similar. It's set on this
sort of Maldivian island, and I'd never been on a
holiday like that. And I got to go to the Maldives,
(10:37):
and I was so worried that i'd written this book
and that I would have ended up making some awful
mistake or something wouldn't be right. And in actual fact,
almost I changed almost nothing. Almost everything was exactly as
I had imagined it. But I did do exactly or
you were describing in everybody else was on this beautiful island,
having this incredible time, and so I sort of walked
(10:59):
around this island all week thinking, you know, if we
were cut off for a few days, who would crack first?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
So you just said that the Maldives were exactly how
you imagined it, which is wild to me, because like,
what does your search history look like? How do you
even imagine a place you haven't been? When you're researching
for these books.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I mean, my search history is an absolute like bloody
battleground or I mean, if I ever get investigated, I
am absolutely going to prison, like forty years straight. It's
all how long would it take a body to decompose
under these circumstances, and what dosage of insulin would prove fatal?
(11:41):
In what you know, it's just appalling. But I do
try to intersperse it with you know, tax for writers
and things, just in case someone from the government is watching.
But no, I mean I watched documentaries and you know,
read things and leaved through travel brochures. I don't I
find it's super hard to imagine myself somewhere else. Lots
(12:04):
of the details that I put in were correct, but
there were two that I one that I didn't think
of and one that I just got wrong. And the
one that I didn't think of was I didn't realize
how warm the sea was going to be. You know,
where I live in Sussex, in the UK, even in
the height of summer, the sea is freezing. You walk
in and you gasp it's so cold. And I knew
(12:27):
that it would be warmer in the Indian Ocean, but
I wasn't prepared for how warm it was, and I
do really vividly remember that shock of walking into the
sea and just thinking it's like a hot top. It's like,
it's really really warm. So that went into the book,
that moment where my character wades into the sea and
has this shock that it's kind of it's really warm.
(12:48):
But the thing that I got flat out wrong was
I put monkeys into the book because I wanted that
kind of screech, you know that they make in the night,
that sort of atmospheric sound, And of course monkeys don't
really swim. So it turns out there aren't any monkeys
on those little islands. But what there are, which is
even more atmospheric, is bats, these enormous fruit bats. So
(13:09):
the monkeys had to go, but the bats came in
to be spooky in their place.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I'm sort of in our hearing you talk about the
specifics and the details that you're researching, like, I can
only imagine writing a page could take so long when
you're researching all these details in it. One of the
reasons I've always loved books is I feel like they're
a portal to a place I've never been. But I've
never considered that they're also a portal for the writer,
(13:36):
and now I'm hearing that from you.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
It's always the smallest things that the hardest to research
as well. It's never the big things, the things that
you think you know when you start writing, or you know,
I'll need to consult somebody about that. It's always the
tiny little details, like how long would it take to
get from A to B? Or would this really small
plot point be plausible? And there's the stuff that you
just don't know. And until I went to the Moldies,
(14:00):
it didn't occur to me that there wouldn't be monkeys,
And I would never have googled that. It hadn't occurred
to me to google do them all deeds have monkeys?
But researching is also a huge source of inspiration. You know,
I will get completely lost down Google rabbit holes and
Wikipedia rabbit holes and find out just fascinating stuff that
it never occurred to me to put in a book.
(14:21):
Not even always while I'm researching. Often I would just be,
you know, listening to a podcast or going about my
day to day chatting to a friend, and they'll say
something that will make me think that could be a
plot point, And I always think if I'm fascinated by something,
it's hopefully a good indication that the reader might find
it intriguing as well.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And getting sort of I don't know what the word is,
but almost like sparkly. Thinking about your imagination. I've always
heard that as we get older, like our imagination could decrease,
But it sounds like yours has just grown. Is there
anything that you do to practice it or it just
comes naturally to you?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh, I don't know. That's an awful idea that it
might decrease. Wow, now I'm going to feel like is
my imagination as strong as it used to be? I
think I have a super visual imagination, which is interesting
because I have a number of writer friends who have
that thing, which I can't remember what it's called, but
it's basically where you have no visual imagination at all,
Like if someone says the word apple to you, you
(15:19):
know the concept of an apple, but you don't picture
an apple in your head, Whereas when I picture an apple,
I see an apple. So I think that really helps
when I'm writing. I literally see the scenes kind of
playing out in my mind's eye, and in a way
that makes it much easier to write them because you know,
you just you're describing in a way what your imagination
(15:41):
is providing. It also means that I quite rarely have
continuity errors and things in my books, so there's copy
Editors often spend a lot of time saying, she was
actually on the left of the room and now she's
on the right, and she seems to have teleported, and
that mostly doesn't happen for me because I'm sort of
seeing it in my head.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
There's something called synesthesia, which Pharrell has, where you can
see colors. I feel like we need to coin a
term for whatever this gift is that you have.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I think it's just a really vivid imagination. And that's
all my teachers used to say on my parents' evenings
whenever my mom came in, they'd be like, well, she
certainly has a very vivid imagination in a way that
maybe didn't sound like it was a complete compliment. But
I love having a vivid imagination, and I think, you know,
it's part of what makes reading so pleasurable, is just
(16:32):
entering another world and it's so rich and exciting, and
it's why I love writing as well. You know, writing
is like reading on steroids.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Well, your new book, The Woman in Sweet eleven has
been out for a week now, and you've called it
a love letter to everyone who wanted more, which I love.
You said you didn't plan to write a sequel, but
your fans convinced you. I'm curious why you were so
hesitant to continue those stories because that book was such
a hit.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I think I've always been slightly kind of hesitant of
writing sequels to any of my books. And it's I
suppose it's for two reasons. One, it's sort of one's
a kind of technical reason, which is, you know, I
always write about just regular ordinary people. I don't write
about police officers or you know, forensic experts or whatever,
(17:28):
and so it's quite hard to explain why a regular
ordinary person would keep encountering crimes. You know, you sort
of get that murder she wrote effect where every time
Jessica Fletcher opens her front door, there's a corpse. So
part of it is just a kind of plausibility angle.
But part of it is because my characters go through
so much in my books. You know, their physical danger
(17:52):
gets absolutely beaten to a pulp, you know, frozen, half drowned,
gas lit, psychologically destroyed, so I sort of feel at
the end of it like they basically deserve a break.
And I know with most of my characters, that is
exactly what would happen. They would finish the book, they
would go back to their regular, ordinary lives with an
(18:14):
enormous sigh of relief, and nothing ever happened to them again.
And I feel like I kind of ought to respect that.
But there are characters in my books who I don't
feel that is true of, who would probably might not
avoid danger so much as kind of run towards it.
I've written a few characters like that, people who would
(18:36):
seek out trouble.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
That's like every boyfriend I've ever had.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
See. I keep those characters fairly in my fiction. But yeah,
that was the genesis really of Sweet eleven. Was a
character and it's not low who would not be able
or willing to stay out of trouble, but it wasn't.
It's interesting because you said my fans convinced me to
write a sequel, and I don't think that was true
(19:02):
because people have been begging for sequels for lots of
my books over the years, and I'm very selfish. I
write exactly what I want to write. I think it
was more they're wondering about what would happen next and what,
you know, what all the characters would be up to.
Made me start to wonder and made me selfishly want
to find out. I'd say they didn't convince me at
(19:24):
so much as they lit us. Fuck.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
That's cool to hear, and I don't find it selfish.
There's actually this music producer named Rick Rubin who wrote
a book called The Creative Act that I love. He
says that in order to have great success, you have
to do exactly what you are inspired and creative about.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I love that. I'm going to type that out and
put it above my desk.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
You would love the book. Yeah, it's a great book.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Ruth.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You said something that I was so inspired by. I
have to ask you to expound on it. You said
that children are often seen as the death of creativity,
but motherhood gave you bravery and you actually don't think
you would have been published, especially your first book, had
you not had kids. That is not something we hear
very often. What did you mean by that, Well.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I think it comes back to the idea of selfishness. Really,
I'd written for years, ever since I was a teenager,
I'd written burke after burke after book, and just I
wrote them for me and I just ended up putting
them under the bed at the end of the day
because I kind of I couldn't bear to be rejected.
I didn't think they were good enough. And in my twenties,
(20:36):
I went to work in the book industry, which was
incredible because I got to work with all these amazing writers,
but it made my kind of stage fright about writing
even worse. And then I had my second baby and
I was on maternity leave, and I, you know, I
was a bit more confident as a second time mom,
and I just had this idea for a book that
I really wanted to write, and I felt excited about
(20:58):
getting home and writing this book. And then I suddenly thought,
as soon as I got back to work, I'm not
going to have time to do this. And I thought,
the only way I'm going to be able to keep
this thing that I love in my life is if
I put my big girl pants on and write a
book that I sub to agents and try to get
a publishing deal for and if I can earn enough
(21:19):
money from this book to pay for a bit of
extra childcare, I can keep doing this maybe one morning
a week while they're in nursery. And that's exactly what
I did. And I sent it out to agents and
it got rejected all around the houses. And if that had
happened five years ago, I would have crawled back into
my shell and gone, well, you know, I'm clearly not
(21:40):
good enough. But it was that kind of use it
or lose it thing where I thought, if I don't
find a way to keep this thing in my life,
I'm going to lose it. And I carried on and
eventually found the woman who is still my amazing agent today.
So yeah, absolutely, if I hadn't had my kids, I
think it would have taken me probably much longer if
(22:02):
it hadn't been for that little selfish spark inside me
saying no, I want to keep doing this and I
have to find a way to make that happen.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Wow. I just keep thinking necessity as the mother of invention.
That's a pretty inspiring story.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I think that's the thing. Parenthood really pairs your life
back to the bare bones of things that are important,
particularly when your kids are small and it's so all consuming.
And it was that moment when I was about to
throw out my writing, and I thought, no, this is essential,
This is essential to who I am, and I have
to keep it.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
What do your kids think of what you do for
a living. Do they know that mom writes about murder?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yes, yeah, they do. I grew up in a family
where being a writer was such a weird, exotic thing,
and they've grown up with the complete opposite. It's just,
of course, it's the thing that mom does, you know,
every day while they're at school, and of course when
we go into bookshops on holiday, I'm always peering around
the corner looking to see if they've got a translation
(23:04):
of one of my books. That's just what you do
when you're in Venice or wherever. So I think they just, yeah,
they find it completely normal and frankly, very boring, as
most of us find up parents.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
If you were to tell an aspiring thriller author a
piece of advice of like the secret sauce of a
great thriller, what would you say? What makes it amazing?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
The one lesson that I took from when I was
working in the book industry was that I read so
many books and they were you know, beautifully written, amazing descriptions, lyrical, poetic,
but very often when I put them down, I felt
no compulsion to pick them up. And I think suspense
(23:50):
is the opposite of that. It's giving your readers a
reason to turn the page. It's kind of hooking them
through the page with questions. And I do an exercise
where I look at the beginning of a thriller novel
or a psychological thriller, and I ask the readers to
look at how many questions the writer is asking and
how many questions they are answering. And a good novel
(24:12):
will have a kind of an overlapping rhythm of questions
and answers. There isn't just the sort of big who
done it question that's sort of pulling you through the novel.
There'll be lots of little mysteries, intriguing things, dropped breadcrumbs
of information that make you want to, you know, find
out what's happening. And there's a really good example of
this in Gong Girl. I think it's about sort of
(24:33):
two three chapters in and Nick is being interviewed by
the police about the disappearance of his wife, and he
says at the end of a chapter, almost as this
complete throwaway line, he says, that was the fourth lie
I had told to the police.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I remember that line.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It's an electrifying moment as a reader because you're like, Okay,
what are the four lies? Why is he lying about
something so trivial? And why is he lying to the
police at all? Has he got something to do with
his wife? So it's a really an example of a
sort of a question that you're suddenly And as soon
as I read that, I was like, I'm not putting
this book down until I know the answer to every
(25:08):
one of those. Just a really good basic tip for
any thriller writer is to just check it. Has your
reader got a reason to want to read the next chapter?
Is there something that you've given them that they must
simply find out before they close the book that night?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And should people be writing more questions than answers?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
I think you need both. For a writer, a cool
thing around the corner is the most delicious feeling in
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
For the reader, they don't know that something amazing is
around the corner. They just know that you've bugged a
lot of questions at them that they don't know the
answer to, and it can get very confusing and feel
very withholding. So I think it has to be a
bit of both. There has to be some really big
questions that kind of pull you through the whole novel.
But a good writer won't keep people in suspense about everything.
(25:57):
They'll do a kind of a question and answer and
a question and an answer, and there'll be a little
sort of, yeah, a little rhythm going on.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I like the idea of a rhythm. When I think
about an interview, I actually picture it as a song.
I think it has to crescendo and have a rhythm
as well. And so it's very cool to hear that
your book feels like it has rhythm.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
I love that. I don't know if I think if
it is a song, but I do have a sort
of mental graph in my head of the sort of
fash troughs of how I want the book to feel,
and I want it to get up at the end,
and I want there to be a real sort of
flow in the middle. And yeah, every book's got a
different shape, but I yeah, it's so interesting to hear
you talk about it from a kind of completely sort
of nonfiction point of view.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, that's how I feel hearing you talk about it
from a fiction point of view. You know, one of
the things I noticed about your books is that it
seems like there's a lot of girls' weekends gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Also about nightmarish work retreats. I think I just like
putting people in horrible situations.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I'm curious what it is about these tight female friendships
and suspicion that kind of makes it a fertile ground
for thriller.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah. No, it's a great question. Often in my books,
i'm kind of writing against my earlier books, if that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
So I wrote in Adult dot Wood, which was my
first thriller and does center around what we call a
hen party, what you guys call a bachelorette party.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It'll make a hen party that's fun.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah. Hen party is such a weird, very much a
girl's weekend away gone wrong. And then the Woman in
caviin ten was a completely different book. Low is on
a professional trip. It's sort of it's not that kind
of toxic female dynamics sort of thing. But I felt
really guilty when the press started to come out about
in Adult dut Wood and talk about, you know, this
dissection of toxic female friendship that is not my experience
(27:43):
of female friendship. You know, Yes, we've all had a
mean girl in our lives, but by and large, my
female friends are incredible that as some of the most
important people in my life. I have friends that I've
been friends with since primary school, and I felt incredibly
guilty though I saw have done female friendship dirty in
my first book, and so with the Lion Game, which
(28:06):
was the reason with the Spoon Books Club, I kind
of revisited the topic in a way to try and
redeem what I'd said earlier. So I created a group
of incredibly close knit friends and made them, you know,
the kind of ride or die friends who would give
up anything for their in fact, which is the kind
(28:26):
of the core of the book is that they have
done this. They've done a terrible thing that they can't
talk about, and it has colored the rest of their lives.
But what it hasn't spoiled is their friendship. And of
course it's a thriller, so it all goes very dark.
But I think in a lot of ways that book
is my love letter to my female friends to say,
(28:47):
you know, I'm not necessarily going to bury a body
for you at midnight, but I would, you know, I
would go to the ends of the earth for.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You, you know, I was thinking about what you said earlier. Actually,
my first question about the billionaires. I think oftentimes in
thriller or horror movies and books, the villain mirrors the
(29:14):
social and political anxieties of the time. During the Cold War,
you get these mutated creatures, you get mass slashers in
the seventies, And for you, both of the villains in
these books are billionaires. Was that a conscious choice about
the time we're in or are your bad guys? Or
reflection in something.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I think all of my books are a reflection of
kind of my personal anxieties and sort of things that
I see in the world.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The Turn of the Key, for example, which is a
novel set in this sort of nightmarish smart house where
my main character is a nanny and she's being kind
of constantly tormented by this tech that is just kind
of get out of control. That was inspired by reading
newspaper articles about this new phenomenon of digital abuse, where
you know, one partner typically has control of all of
(30:04):
the sort of household devices, and when the relationship starts
to break down, they packing into their ex's home harb,
listening to their conversations, spying on them through the cameras
or whatever it is. And I'm also, you know, as
someone who spends a lot of time on social media.
Several of my books have revolved around kind of social
media and sort of you know, the role that that
plays in our lives. Yeah, the amount of information that
(30:26):
we're happy giving to tech companies kind of in exchange
for a free service. But I think, you know, wealth
inequality is one of the most pressing topics of our age, right,
you know, what does it do to people to have
that much money and that little accountability. It's a really
interesting question.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It is a really interesting question. Are you ever inspired
by people in your own life? Like is there a
teacher from your kids' school that sort of secretly made
it into one of your novels that we wouldn't know about.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I try very hard not to ever put real people
who I'm close to in my novels. I'm not above,
you know, sitting in a restaurant and eavesdropping on the
couple next to me and thinking, wow, that is a
weird dynamic that's going straight into a book in a
coll of years.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So, Ruth, we've been talking about the woman in Sweet eleven,
but the book that started at all was The Woman
in Cabin ten, and it is getting a film adaptation,
and Kiera Knightley is playing low. So I know earlier
in our conversation you said you don't have a lot
of experience with film or TV, but I don't know
that that's so true because this is happening and it's
(31:43):
an amazing casting. I'm sure you're gonna have tons of
fans flocking to see this. How are you keeping it
fresh for people who already know the ending from reading
your book and sort of the easter eggs and spoilers throughout.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
The answer is, I haven't had to do that someone
else's problem. It feels great to be able to sort
of hand my baby over and say this is your problem,
now you deal with it. No, I mean, oh my gosh,
it's been a real dream come true. The cast is
absolutely beyond my wildest dreams. When I think they announced
(32:18):
Kiera Knightly, first I must say to my agent, what
the Kiera Knightley? And she was like, yeah, Ruther, there's
only one Kiera Knightley. And then as more and more
names came out, I was just like, these people are
all incredible. So yeah, the cast is absolutely just beyond
what I ever would have expected. And the director, Simon Stone,
(32:38):
is incredible. He did the dig which I absolutely adored.
It's if you have seen it, it's a really beautiful film.
So I think it's going to be incredible. I think
it doesn't matter if you've read the book, to be honest,
I think it's just really interesting seeing someone else's perspective.
And I know as a reader, you know, when you
(32:59):
go and see a film of a book that you love,
it's fascinating seeing how two people can read the same
book and come up with such different interpretations. So I
think that would be really fascinating people. I spent like
two days on set and it was incredible but also
a real kind of snapshot. But I just hadn't realized
like how much work goes into a film. And I
(33:22):
know that sounds hopelessly naive when I say it, but
you know, a novel, of course, there's a lot of
people who help with a novel. There's your editor, there's
your designer, there's a person who makes it look beautiful.
In production, there's a sales team who get it out there.
But a film is just a whole other level. It
is literally an entire vilege of people working to make
something as beautiful and as brilliant as they possibly can,
(33:44):
and to have that thing be your book just feels
like the most incredible privilege.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So yeah, I'm excited for you.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
I have to tell you, when I was reading Sweet Eleven,
I was casting in my own mind. If you could
cast that adaptation tomorrow, I just need to know one thing,
who would you cast as Marcus Leadman.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It's funny because I don't. I don't dreamcast my books
at all. Never, No, I really really don't. And I
think a big part of that is because I have
a really visual imagination. To me, the characters are so
clearly who they are, I find it very difficult to
map them onto real life people. It's funny. The one
(34:28):
character who I did think about when I was writing
was Marcus, and I think I mentioned in the book
at one point that he has a kind of Donald
Southern look to him, so that he was in my mind,
and I think a big part of that was having
seen him in the Hunger Games playing presidents No, and
he looks very much how i'd imagine Marcus, very kind of,
(34:52):
very charming, but also very ruthless with that sort of slight,
unknowable edge of cruelty. But yes, unfortun he is not available.
So if anyone has any suggestions for who.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
They were done key for, Sutherland is available.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
His son, Oh so true, Yeah exactly. Maybe he's probably
not quite old enough. Maybe you could wear a gray wig.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Yeah, you know you've spent your life writing these twisty
turney endings for books. I am looking at you. You
have so many of your books on your shelves. What
has been the biggest twisty turn in your life?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Oh, one hundred percent writing in a dart dart wood. Yeah. Absolutely.
You know, when I wrote that book, I don't really
know what I expected, but I think I thought I
was writing this kind of weird little British book, like
who on earth has ever heard of a Hen party
outside of the UK? Nobody? And I thought, you know,
I was writing this weird little thriller that you know,
(35:54):
my friends would read and my mother in law would buy,
because she's incredibly supportive and she all of my books.
I just had no expectations whatsoever. Like, obviously I hoped
it would do well, but I just thought, you know,
we'll sell a few copies, We'll have some fun and
I'll tell a twisty story and then it just blew
up beyond my wildest dreams. And ironically, as I was
(36:18):
writing The Woman in Cabin ten, which made that book
incredibly hard to write, because you know, the more I
was sort of struggling with this kind of twisty plot
that wouldn't quite pin down and these characters that wouldn't
quite behave the way I wanted them to. In adult
dut Wood was just you know, it was getting amazing reviews.
It was getting you know, picked up on social media.
(36:38):
People were saying lovely things about it. It was hitting
the best seller list, and yeah, all of that made
Cabin ten so hard to write. It was like blood
out of a stone. But yeah, that book changed my
life in so many ways, and I've ended up going
places I could never have dreamed of in my wild imagination, which,
(37:01):
as we have established, is pretty.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Well for anybody listening. I'm smiling very big. You can't
see my smile, but that's really wonderful, Ruth. I love
asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week. It's the
title of our show, but it could be a weird
fact the fun quote, something that you've saved on Instagram
or texted your best friend about for you. I was
thinking even maybe a luxury hotel or destination, because so
(37:26):
many of those are in your books. Is there anything
that you've bookmarked this week?
Speaker 2 (37:30):
My kind of well, not guilty pleasure, because I don't
believe in guilty pleasures. I think if it's giving you
pleasure that are not hurting anyone else, that's great. So
let's not say guilty pleasure. My pleasure is going to Spas.
I absolutely adore going to Spas. And actually there's a
spooky Spa scene in The Woman in Cabin Ten, which
I won't spoiler for anybody. So that was the last
text I sent to my sister was this Spa hotel,
(37:52):
saying we should go.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Okay, I have something bookmarked this week too. In celebration
of the launch of Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, we're
teaming up with Little Free Library to do a book
drop for our July Pick Spectacular Things. Check out Little
Free Libraries in your area and tag us on Instagram
if you find one. Plus if you do find one
of our books, we snuck in a fun little treat
(38:16):
just for you. Okay. Now we're coming up on one
of my favorite parts of the conversation. It is time
for speed read. So here's how it works. I'm putting
sixty seconds on the clock and I'm going to ask
you a series of rapid fire questions, so you have
to say the first thing that comes to your mind,
which I have a feeling you're going to be very
good at. So are you ready? Are you locked in? No?
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I'm not ready, but I'll do my best.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Three?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Two one. A famous murder case that could have been
a Ruthware novel.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh my gosh, the mushrooms in the beef Wellington.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
You hear a scream at the end of a darkened hallway,
Run away or inspect it?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Oh, run towards it. It might be somebody in trouble.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Favorite thriller novel to recommend to people.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Oh this is hard, too too too many. I'm gonna
have to say, gone girl again. We've already discussed it.
But it's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So you've killed a lot of characters, Ruth, do you
ever regret killing off the wrong one?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
No, bye and large. If I had any regrets, it's
probably not. Killing more of them.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Is there a book that you'd wish you'd written.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Louise Candlish's book Our House. I read that and I thought,
I want to write an ending that makes the reader
feel the way I just felt, and I think I
did it. I won't say which book, though, I'll keep
that a secret.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Do you believe that everybody is capable of murder under
the right circumstances?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yes, I think anybody could kill if they really truly
had to. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Okay. My last one is what character are you most like?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
This is a tough one. I guess there's quite a
lot of me in low black clot if I'm being honest.
There's a bit of me in all of my characters,
even the baddies. I think they're like little voodoo dolls,
little zombies that I still together, and the thing that
brings them to life is a bit of me.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Ruth. Thank you. You have been absolutely charming and marvelous.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I have had the best time. Thank you for your questions,
which I feel have given me an intellectual workout. And yeah,
that'd so much fun.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Okay, friends, before you go, I have a little announcement
that I think you're going to want to hear. Our
partners at Apple Books are running a special program with
Reese's book Club. Every month, Apple Books is giving away
up to one thousand e books of that month's Reese's
book Club Pick. They've already done this with Wild Dark
Shore by Charlotte McConaughey and The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage,
(40:43):
and they're doing it again for the January Pick. Of course,
we don't know what book and lucky author that is yet,
but we'll all find out on Tuesday, January sixth, and
I cannot wait. So if you want to be among
the one thousand people to get a code and redeem
a free ebook, all you have to do is follow
at Reese's book Club and at Apple Books on Instagram
(41:05):
for updates. They'll start releasing those codes the same day
the book is announced, so be ready to pounce on
the offer once it goes live, and then we can
get busy diving into the January pick together. Stay tuned
for a teaser interview with the author on January sixth
right here on Bookmarked. And until then, happy holidays and
happy reading. And if you want a little bit more
(41:29):
from us, come hang with us on socials. We're at
Reese's book Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes and
behind the scenes magic and I'm Danielle Robe, rob Ay,
come say hi and DM me And if you want
to go nineties on us, you can call us. Okay,
so our phone line is open, So call us now
at five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
(41:51):
That's five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
Share your literary hot takes, your book recommendations, oh, please
share those, and questions about the monthly pick, or just
let us know what you think about the episode you
just heard. And who knows, you might just hear yourself
in our next episode, So don't be shy. Give us
a ring, and of course, make sure to follow Bookmarked
(42:12):
by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your shows. Until then, see you
in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello,
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon
and me Danielle Robe. Production is by Acast Creative Studios.
(42:32):
Our producers are Matty Foley, Britney Martinez, and Sarah Schleid.
Our production assistant is Avery loftis Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for Acast Creative Studios. Maureene
Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello,
Sunshine Oga Cominoa. Sarah Kernerman, Kristin Perla, and Ashley Rappaport
(42:52):
are associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry and
Lauren Hanson are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts. He
ten ten
Hello to my book loving besties. I want to wish
you all happy holidays. We're taking a little break this
week to enjoy some time with our friends and family,
but to keep your ears cozy, we're re releasing an
episode that you loved. It was from the start of
the season with thriller writer and Reese's book Club author Ruthware.
(00:21):
And don't worry, we'll be back next week with a
new episode. Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by
Apple Books. Hi. I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked
by Reese's book Club. Today we're talking with the clean
of the modern thriller, Ruthware, And I've got a little question.
(00:42):
If you made your living telling stories about committing the
perfect crime, what would you be googling?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I mean, if I ever get investigation, I am absolutely
going to prison, like forty years, right, It's all how
long would it take a bodding to decompose under these circumstances,
and what dastage of insulin would prove fatal in more?
You know, it's just appalling.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
There's something about a murder mystery that stirs something deep
in us. I mean, how many of us were glued
to our screens each week, dissecting every glance and clue
in the white lotus or big little lies, whether it's
glamorous vacation gone wrong or a shadowy figure in a
locked room. The mystery genre taps into our obsession with
(01:29):
secrets and power and the thrill of not knowing who
to trust. And when it comes to building that kind
of tension on the page, no one does it quite
like Ruth Ware. Ruth is the modern day master of
the mystery thriller, loved by millennials say that three times fast.
A New York Times bestseller, She's been called the Agatha
(01:51):
Christie of our generation, but she's truly in a league
of her own. Her psychological thrillers are so immersive that
you'll forget it's the middle of the day and you're
safe on the couch and nothing can hurt you. Right.
Her latest book, The Woman in Sweet Eleven, just hit
shelves last week, and it's the long awaited sequel to
The Woman in Cabin Ten, which, by the way, is
(02:13):
headed to Netflix soon. Here's the rundown on the pair
of novels. Laura Lowe Blacklock has been through it like
through it a decade ago, her home was broken into,
and then her travel assignment aboard a luxury cruise ship
turned into a murder mystery. Wrapped in a near death experience,
she fights and claws her way to the truth behind
(02:34):
the disappearance of the woman from Cabin ten, and when
we meet Miss Low and Sweet eleven, she's turned her
trauma into a best selling book. Kind of meta, and
what do you know, another luxury journalism trip falls right
into her lap, but instead of the open seas, she's
now surrounded by opulence in a glittering Swiss chateau with
(02:55):
very very dark secrets and maybe even a ghost from
her past. In today's episode, we're diving into the magic
of what it takes to craft the perfect murder mystery.
And for someone who traffics in crime, Ruth is the
loveliest person in real life. She's so charming and playful
(03:16):
it's hard to imagine that she's responsible for some of
the most wicked crime stories of our generation. We're finding
out what convinced Ruth to write her first ever sequel,
how her character evolved across time and trauma, and why
the scariest people aren't the ones lurking in the shadows,
but the ones signing the checks get ready to unlock
(03:37):
the mystery and maybe how to commit the perfect crime.
Let's turn the page with Ruth Ware. Ruth, welcome to Bookmarked.
I'm so happy to have you here. You are the
queen of thrillers, and specifically psychological thrillers, and the psychological
(03:59):
thriller that has me in a choke hold recently is
a specific celebrity scandal. I don't want to name any names,
but if you were to make a modern day thriller
out of a real life scandal, which one would you
want to rate?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
In all of my books, I'm kind of obsessed with
the idea of the super rich, and I'm totally fascinated
by the phenomenon of billionaires building these bunkers to get
away from the rest of us. And I was recently
in Hawaii, and of course Mark Zuckerberg's bunker over there
is like massive local gossip. So I would love to
set a thriller in a celebrities bunker, either after the
(04:38):
end of the world has actually come, or maybe just
when they think it's come. It'll be so much juicy
material of you know, the billionaires and all their entourage
kind of quietly melting down in this post apocalyptic world.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
That is such a fabulous answer. I feel like one
of the thriller tropes that people love rich people behaving badly.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Absolutely. Yeah, there's just something really fascinating about just having
the level of wealth that means that you're completely untouchable.
And I think, however normal people start out, you can
sort of see them getting weirder and weirder and weirder
the longer and the richer they are, And it just
seems to be this kind of human condition that happens
to you and suddenly you're you know, pumping yourself full
(05:24):
of rejuvenating serums and drinking your son's blood and you know,
going to Mars or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That's hilarious. You know, sometimes they end up on end
of the world TikTok, and I did yesterday. They must
have been overhearing me, and I saw that at Costco
you can buy for sixty five dollars like enough food
to last you for two months, oh like literally just
a pack. Yes, do you do any end of the
world prepping?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I don't do it end of the world prepping, but
I am a little bit of a prepper by nature.
One of the things that I loved about our house
when we bought it was had a pantry, and this
was the thing I was most excited about out of
the whole house. Didn't care about anything else. I was
just like, it's got a pantry, and I love having
a really well stocked pantry with like, you know, gleaming
jars of preserved fruit. And I would say, at minimum,
(06:15):
I probably have twenty four cans of tomatoes at any
one time. So I don't think of it in terms
of the end of the world, but I do. I
like to think of myself as a sort of a
good hostess and nurturing person.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I asked you an unhinged question and you had such
a normal answer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh no, I think my arts was quite unhinged as well.
We went down quite a deep psychological rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
There a pinterest perfect pantry from Ruth Ware. I'm going
to need a photo.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Do you watch any thrillers on TV or film? Are
there any movies that you would consider a masterclass in suspense?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Oh? What a good question. I'm a TV addict. There's
absolutely no point in being snobbish about where your stories
come from. Whatever the media if you are immersed in
a gripping, moving story that I don't care where that
comes from. At the moment, I'm watching Department Q on Netflix,
which is really interesting and very thriller ish. It's got
(07:13):
a little bit of a kind of slow Horses vibe.
But in terms of film, Gon Girl I thought was
a really good film adaptation of a book that was
incredibly difficult to adapt, and they did an incredible job
of it.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
It's funny because we just had Emily Henry on the
show and she was obsessed with that book too.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
It would just changed the game so much for thrillers,
and you know, it's so playful and it's so meta,
and it opened up so many possibilities of, you know,
ways to tell a story. It just felt really fun
and adventurous.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I don't know if Weight Lotus is as popular in
the UK as it is in America, but everybody that
watches White Lotus is trying to figure out who's going
to die at the end, like who will be murdered.
And as I was prepping for this interview, I was
just thinking, Ruth must know who's going to die at
the end of all of these TV shows. Is there
a tell for you.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I don't know. I actually I don't always get it right.
I get it right more often in books, I think,
because I'm a novelist myself, and so I see the
tricks that the other writers are doing more I see
how they're misdirecting. I think I find it easier to
sort of put myself in the shoes of a book writer.
(08:25):
But actually film and TV I'm more often surprised because
I think it's not a medium that I ever work in,
So I'm sort of much more just a regular punter
turning up and being like, Wow, this is cool premise.
What's going on? Yeah? No, we're pretty addicted to White
lots over here as well, but I have not watched
the fourth season, so please no spoilers.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I won't say a thing, but it does sort of
fall into your category of rich people behaving badly.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Absolutely. One of the things I love about White Lotus,
and which I often return to in my books, is
the idea of a kind of a super luck setting
that is also slightly nightmarish, and I kind of very
much sort of pulled out from Agatha Christie and all
of her you know, like Death on the Nile and
Murder on the orent Express settings where she creates these
what seemed to be incredibly luxurious settings and then sort
(09:12):
of turns them into a kind of gradually tightening nightmare.
And I think White Lotus does that really well as well,
where you go to these incredibly enviable places and they're
chils filled with awful people and encroaching dead bodies.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'm so glad you mentioned Agatha Christie because I heard
in another interview that you said you always sort of
wondered if she wrote Death on the Nile as an
excuse to take a little trip down the Nile River.
And I'm curious if you've done the same for any
of your books. Have you ever followed any of your
personal curiosities towards an exotic place or an outlandish place.
(09:51):
Have you ever just walked in somewhere and thought, yeah,
someone should die here.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I would say I more often do it the other
way around, unfortunately, which is that I write books about
places that I'm intensely curious about but have never been.
And of course, my you know, ambition when I start
writing is that I will go, and then it hardly
ever seems to happen. So like the Woman in Cabin ten,
which is set on a luxurious cruise. I have still,
(10:16):
you know, almost ten years on from that book, never
been on a cruise. And my intention while I was
writing it was one hundred percent to take a cruise
and write it off as a tax deduction. And One
Perfect Couple was sort of similar. It's set on this
sort of Maldivian island, and I'd never been on a
holiday like that. And I got to go to the Maldives,
(10:37):
and I was so worried that i'd written this book
and that I would have ended up making some awful
mistake or something wouldn't be right. And in actual fact,
almost I changed almost nothing. Almost everything was exactly as
I had imagined it. But I did do exactly or
you were describing in everybody else was on this beautiful island,
having this incredible time, and so I sort of walked
(10:59):
around this island all week thinking, you know, if we
were cut off for a few days, who would crack first?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
So you just said that the Maldives were exactly how
you imagined it, which is wild to me, because like,
what does your search history look like? How do you
even imagine a place you haven't been? When you're researching
for these books.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I mean, my search history is an absolute like bloody
battleground or I mean, if I ever get investigated, I
am absolutely going to prison, like forty years straight. It's
all how long would it take a body to decompose
under these circumstances, and what dosage of insulin would prove fatal?
(11:41):
In what you know, it's just appalling. But I do
try to intersperse it with you know, tax for writers
and things, just in case someone from the government is watching.
But no, I mean I watched documentaries and you know,
read things and leaved through travel brochures. I don't I
find it's super hard to imagine myself somewhere else. Lots
(12:04):
of the details that I put in were correct, but
there were two that I one that I didn't think
of and one that I just got wrong. And the
one that I didn't think of was I didn't realize
how warm the sea was going to be. You know,
where I live in Sussex, in the UK, even in
the height of summer, the sea is freezing. You walk
in and you gasp it's so cold. And I knew
(12:27):
that it would be warmer in the Indian Ocean, but
I wasn't prepared for how warm it was, and I
do really vividly remember that shock of walking into the
sea and just thinking it's like a hot top. It's like,
it's really really warm. So that went into the book,
that moment where my character wades into the sea and
has this shock that it's kind of it's really warm.
(12:48):
But the thing that I got flat out wrong was
I put monkeys into the book because I wanted that
kind of screech, you know that they make in the night,
that sort of atmospheric sound, And of course monkeys don't
really swim. So it turns out there aren't any monkeys
on those little islands. But what there are, which is
even more atmospheric, is bats, these enormous fruit bats. So
(13:09):
the monkeys had to go, but the bats came in
to be spooky in their place.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I'm sort of in our hearing you talk about the
specifics and the details that you're researching, like, I can
only imagine writing a page could take so long when
you're researching all these details in it. One of the
reasons I've always loved books is I feel like they're
a portal to a place I've never been. But I've
never considered that they're also a portal for the writer,
(13:36):
and now I'm hearing that from you.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
It's always the smallest things that the hardest to research
as well. It's never the big things, the things that
you think you know when you start writing, or you know,
I'll need to consult somebody about that. It's always the
tiny little details, like how long would it take to
get from A to B? Or would this really small
plot point be plausible? And there's the stuff that you
just don't know. And until I went to the Moldies,
(14:00):
it didn't occur to me that there wouldn't be monkeys,
And I would never have googled that. It hadn't occurred
to me to google do them all deeds have monkeys?
But researching is also a huge source of inspiration. You know,
I will get completely lost down Google rabbit holes and
Wikipedia rabbit holes and find out just fascinating stuff that
it never occurred to me to put in a book.
(14:21):
Not even always while I'm researching. Often I would just be,
you know, listening to a podcast or going about my
day to day chatting to a friend, and they'll say
something that will make me think that could be a
plot point, And I always think if I'm fascinated by something,
it's hopefully a good indication that the reader might find
it intriguing as well.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And getting sort of I don't know what the word is,
but almost like sparkly. Thinking about your imagination. I've always
heard that as we get older, like our imagination could decrease,
But it sounds like yours has just grown. Is there
anything that you do to practice it or it just
comes naturally to you?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh, I don't know. That's an awful idea that it
might decrease. Wow, now I'm going to feel like is
my imagination as strong as it used to be? I
think I have a super visual imagination, which is interesting
because I have a number of writer friends who have
that thing, which I can't remember what it's called, but
it's basically where you have no visual imagination at all,
Like if someone says the word apple to you, you
(15:19):
know the concept of an apple, but you don't picture
an apple in your head, Whereas when I picture an apple,
I see an apple. So I think that really helps
when I'm writing. I literally see the scenes kind of
playing out in my mind's eye, and in a way
that makes it much easier to write them because you know,
you just you're describing in a way what your imagination
(15:41):
is providing. It also means that I quite rarely have
continuity errors and things in my books, so there's copy
Editors often spend a lot of time saying, she was
actually on the left of the room and now she's
on the right, and she seems to have teleported, and
that mostly doesn't happen for me because I'm sort of
seeing it in my head.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
There's something called synesthesia, which Pharrell has, where you can
see colors. I feel like we need to coin a
term for whatever this gift is that you have.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I think it's just a really vivid imagination. And that's
all my teachers used to say on my parents' evenings
whenever my mom came in, they'd be like, well, she
certainly has a very vivid imagination in a way that
maybe didn't sound like it was a complete compliment. But
I love having a vivid imagination, and I think, you know,
it's part of what makes reading so pleasurable, is just
(16:32):
entering another world and it's so rich and exciting, and
it's why I love writing as well. You know, writing
is like reading on steroids.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Well, your new book, The Woman in Sweet eleven has
been out for a week now, and you've called it
a love letter to everyone who wanted more, which I love.
You said you didn't plan to write a sequel, but
your fans convinced you. I'm curious why you were so
hesitant to continue those stories because that book was such
a hit.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I think I've always been slightly kind of hesitant of
writing sequels to any of my books. And it's I
suppose it's for two reasons. One, it's sort of one's
a kind of technical reason, which is, you know, I
always write about just regular ordinary people. I don't write
about police officers or you know, forensic experts or whatever,
(17:28):
and so it's quite hard to explain why a regular
ordinary person would keep encountering crimes. You know, you sort
of get that murder she wrote effect where every time
Jessica Fletcher opens her front door, there's a corpse. So
part of it is just a kind of plausibility angle.
But part of it is because my characters go through
so much in my books. You know, their physical danger
(17:52):
gets absolutely beaten to a pulp, you know, frozen, half drowned,
gas lit, psychologically destroyed, so I sort of feel at
the end of it like they basically deserve a break.
And I know with most of my characters, that is
exactly what would happen. They would finish the book, they
would go back to their regular, ordinary lives with an
(18:14):
enormous sigh of relief, and nothing ever happened to them again.
And I feel like I kind of ought to respect that.
But there are characters in my books who I don't
feel that is true of, who would probably might not
avoid danger so much as kind of run towards it.
I've written a few characters like that, people who would
(18:36):
seek out trouble.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
That's like every boyfriend I've ever had.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
See. I keep those characters fairly in my fiction. But yeah,
that was the genesis really of Sweet eleven. Was a
character and it's not low who would not be able
or willing to stay out of trouble, but it wasn't.
It's interesting because you said my fans convinced me to
write a sequel, and I don't think that was true
(19:02):
because people have been begging for sequels for lots of
my books over the years, and I'm very selfish. I
write exactly what I want to write. I think it
was more they're wondering about what would happen next and what,
you know, what all the characters would be up to.
Made me start to wonder and made me selfishly want
to find out. I'd say they didn't convince me at
(19:24):
so much as they lit us. Fuck.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
That's cool to hear, and I don't find it selfish.
There's actually this music producer named Rick Rubin who wrote
a book called The Creative Act that I love. He
says that in order to have great success, you have
to do exactly what you are inspired and creative about.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I love that. I'm going to type that out and
put it above my desk.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
You would love the book. Yeah, it's a great book.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Ruth.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You said something that I was so inspired by. I
have to ask you to expound on it. You said
that children are often seen as the death of creativity,
but motherhood gave you bravery and you actually don't think
you would have been published, especially your first book, had
you not had kids. That is not something we hear
very often. What did you mean by that, Well.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I think it comes back to the idea of selfishness. Really,
I'd written for years, ever since I was a teenager,
I'd written burke after burke after book, and just I
wrote them for me and I just ended up putting
them under the bed at the end of the day
because I kind of I couldn't bear to be rejected.
I didn't think they were good enough. And in my twenties,
(20:36):
I went to work in the book industry, which was
incredible because I got to work with all these amazing writers,
but it made my kind of stage fright about writing
even worse. And then I had my second baby and
I was on maternity leave, and I, you know, I
was a bit more confident as a second time mom,
and I just had this idea for a book that
I really wanted to write, and I felt excited about
(20:58):
getting home and writing this book. And then I suddenly thought,
as soon as I got back to work, I'm not
going to have time to do this. And I thought,
the only way I'm going to be able to keep
this thing that I love in my life is if
I put my big girl pants on and write a
book that I sub to agents and try to get
a publishing deal for and if I can earn enough
(21:19):
money from this book to pay for a bit of
extra childcare, I can keep doing this maybe one morning
a week while they're in nursery. And that's exactly what
I did. And I sent it out to agents and
it got rejected all around the houses. And if that had
happened five years ago, I would have crawled back into
my shell and gone, well, you know, I'm clearly not
(21:40):
good enough. But it was that kind of use it
or lose it thing where I thought, if I don't
find a way to keep this thing in my life,
I'm going to lose it. And I carried on and
eventually found the woman who is still my amazing agent today.
So yeah, absolutely, if I hadn't had my kids, I
think it would have taken me probably much longer if
(22:02):
it hadn't been for that little selfish spark inside me
saying no, I want to keep doing this and I
have to find a way to make that happen.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Wow. I just keep thinking necessity as the mother of invention.
That's a pretty inspiring story.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I think that's the thing. Parenthood really pairs your life
back to the bare bones of things that are important,
particularly when your kids are small and it's so all consuming.
And it was that moment when I was about to
throw out my writing, and I thought, no, this is essential,
This is essential to who I am, and I have
to keep it.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
What do your kids think of what you do for
a living. Do they know that mom writes about murder?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yes, yeah, they do. I grew up in a family
where being a writer was such a weird, exotic thing,
and they've grown up with the complete opposite. It's just,
of course, it's the thing that mom does, you know,
every day while they're at school, and of course when
we go into bookshops on holiday, I'm always peering around
the corner looking to see if they've got a translation
(23:04):
of one of my books. That's just what you do
when you're in Venice or wherever. So I think they just, yeah,
they find it completely normal and frankly, very boring, as
most of us find up parents.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
If you were to tell an aspiring thriller author a
piece of advice of like the secret sauce of a
great thriller, what would you say? What makes it amazing?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
The one lesson that I took from when I was
working in the book industry was that I read so
many books and they were you know, beautifully written, amazing descriptions, lyrical, poetic,
but very often when I put them down, I felt
no compulsion to pick them up. And I think suspense
(23:50):
is the opposite of that. It's giving your readers a
reason to turn the page. It's kind of hooking them
through the page with questions. And I do an exercise
where I look at the beginning of a thriller novel
or a psychological thriller, and I ask the readers to
look at how many questions the writer is asking and
how many questions they are answering. And a good novel
(24:12):
will have a kind of an overlapping rhythm of questions
and answers. There isn't just the sort of big who
done it question that's sort of pulling you through the novel.
There'll be lots of little mysteries, intriguing things, dropped breadcrumbs
of information that make you want to, you know, find
out what's happening. And there's a really good example of
this in Gong Girl. I think it's about sort of
(24:33):
two three chapters in and Nick is being interviewed by
the police about the disappearance of his wife, and he
says at the end of a chapter, almost as this
complete throwaway line, he says, that was the fourth lie
I had told to the police.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I remember that line.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It's an electrifying moment as a reader because you're like, Okay,
what are the four lies? Why is he lying about
something so trivial? And why is he lying to the
police at all? Has he got something to do with
his wife? So it's a really an example of a
sort of a question that you're suddenly And as soon
as I read that, I was like, I'm not putting
this book down until I know the answer to every
(25:08):
one of those. Just a really good basic tip for
any thriller writer is to just check it. Has your
reader got a reason to want to read the next chapter?
Is there something that you've given them that they must
simply find out before they close the book that night?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And should people be writing more questions than answers?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
I think you need both. For a writer, a cool
thing around the corner is the most delicious feeling in
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
For the reader, they don't know that something amazing is
around the corner. They just know that you've bugged a
lot of questions at them that they don't know the
answer to, and it can get very confusing and feel
very withholding. So I think it has to be a
bit of both. There has to be some really big
questions that kind of pull you through the whole novel.
But a good writer won't keep people in suspense about everything.
(25:57):
They'll do a kind of a question and answer and
a question and an answer, and there'll be a little
sort of, yeah, a little rhythm going on.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I like the idea of a rhythm. When I think
about an interview, I actually picture it as a song.
I think it has to crescendo and have a rhythm
as well. And so it's very cool to hear that
your book feels like it has rhythm.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
I love that. I don't know if I think if
it is a song, but I do have a sort
of mental graph in my head of the sort of
fash troughs of how I want the book to feel,
and I want it to get up at the end,
and I want there to be a real sort of
flow in the middle. And yeah, every book's got a
different shape, but I yeah, it's so interesting to hear
you talk about it from a kind of completely sort
of nonfiction point of view.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, that's how I feel hearing you talk about it
from a fiction point of view. You know, one of
the things I noticed about your books is that it
seems like there's a lot of girls' weekends gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Also about nightmarish work retreats. I think I just like
putting people in horrible situations.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I'm curious what it is about these tight female friendships
and suspicion that kind of makes it a fertile ground
for thriller.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah. No, it's a great question. Often in my books,
i'm kind of writing against my earlier books, if that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
So I wrote in Adult dot Wood, which was my
first thriller and does center around what we call a
hen party, what you guys call a bachelorette party.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It'll make a hen party that's fun.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah. Hen party is such a weird, very much a
girl's weekend away gone wrong. And then the Woman in
caviin ten was a completely different book. Low is on
a professional trip. It's sort of it's not that kind
of toxic female dynamics sort of thing. But I felt
really guilty when the press started to come out about
in Adult dut Wood and talk about, you know, this
dissection of toxic female friendship that is not my experience
(27:43):
of female friendship. You know, Yes, we've all had a
mean girl in our lives, but by and large, my
female friends are incredible that as some of the most
important people in my life. I have friends that I've
been friends with since primary school, and I felt incredibly
guilty though I saw have done female friendship dirty in
my first book, and so with the Lion Game, which
(28:06):
was the reason with the Spoon Books Club, I kind
of revisited the topic in a way to try and
redeem what I'd said earlier. So I created a group
of incredibly close knit friends and made them, you know,
the kind of ride or die friends who would give
up anything for their in fact, which is the kind
(28:26):
of the core of the book is that they have
done this. They've done a terrible thing that they can't
talk about, and it has colored the rest of their lives.
But what it hasn't spoiled is their friendship. And of
course it's a thriller, so it all goes very dark.
But I think in a lot of ways that book
is my love letter to my female friends to say,
(28:47):
you know, I'm not necessarily going to bury a body
for you at midnight, but I would, you know, I
would go to the ends of the earth for.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You, you know, I was thinking about what you said earlier. Actually,
my first question about the billionaires. I think oftentimes in
thriller or horror movies and books, the villain mirrors the
(29:14):
social and political anxieties of the time. During the Cold War,
you get these mutated creatures, you get mass slashers in
the seventies, And for you, both of the villains in
these books are billionaires. Was that a conscious choice about
the time we're in or are your bad guys? Or
reflection in something.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I think all of my books are a reflection of
kind of my personal anxieties and sort of things that
I see in the world.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The Turn of the Key, for example, which is a
novel set in this sort of nightmarish smart house where
my main character is a nanny and she's being kind
of constantly tormented by this tech that is just kind
of get out of control. That was inspired by reading
newspaper articles about this new phenomenon of digital abuse, where
you know, one partner typically has control of all of
(30:04):
the sort of household devices, and when the relationship starts
to break down, they packing into their ex's home harb,
listening to their conversations, spying on them through the cameras
or whatever it is. And I'm also, you know, as
someone who spends a lot of time on social media.
Several of my books have revolved around kind of social
media and sort of you know, the role that that
plays in our lives. Yeah, the amount of information that
(30:26):
we're happy giving to tech companies kind of in exchange
for a free service. But I think, you know, wealth
inequality is one of the most pressing topics of our age, right,
you know, what does it do to people to have
that much money and that little accountability. It's a really
interesting question.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It is a really interesting question. Are you ever inspired
by people in your own life? Like is there a
teacher from your kids' school that sort of secretly made
it into one of your novels that we wouldn't know about.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I try very hard not to ever put real people
who I'm close to in my novels. I'm not above,
you know, sitting in a restaurant and eavesdropping on the
couple next to me and thinking, wow, that is a
weird dynamic that's going straight into a book in a
coll of years.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So, Ruth, we've been talking about the woman in Sweet eleven,
but the book that started at all was The Woman
in Cabin ten, and it is getting a film adaptation,
and Kiera Knightley is playing low. So I know earlier
in our conversation you said you don't have a lot
of experience with film or TV, but I don't know
that that's so true because this is happening and it's
(31:43):
an amazing casting. I'm sure you're gonna have tons of
fans flocking to see this. How are you keeping it
fresh for people who already know the ending from reading
your book and sort of the easter eggs and spoilers throughout.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
The answer is, I haven't had to do that someone
else's problem. It feels great to be able to sort
of hand my baby over and say this is your problem,
now you deal with it. No, I mean, oh my gosh,
it's been a real dream come true. The cast is
absolutely beyond my wildest dreams. When I think they announced
(32:18):
Kiera Knightly, first I must say to my agent, what
the Kiera Knightley? And she was like, yeah, Ruther, there's
only one Kiera Knightley. And then as more and more
names came out, I was just like, these people are
all incredible. So yeah, the cast is absolutely just beyond
what I ever would have expected. And the director, Simon Stone,
(32:38):
is incredible. He did the dig which I absolutely adored.
It's if you have seen it, it's a really beautiful film.
So I think it's going to be incredible. I think
it doesn't matter if you've read the book, to be honest,
I think it's just really interesting seeing someone else's perspective.
And I know as a reader, you know, when you
(32:59):
go and see a film of a book that you love,
it's fascinating seeing how two people can read the same
book and come up with such different interpretations. So I
think that would be really fascinating people. I spent like
two days on set and it was incredible but also
a real kind of snapshot. But I just hadn't realized
like how much work goes into a film. And I
(33:22):
know that sounds hopelessly naive when I say it, but
you know, a novel, of course, there's a lot of
people who help with a novel. There's your editor, there's
your designer, there's a person who makes it look beautiful.
In production, there's a sales team who get it out there.
But a film is just a whole other level. It
is literally an entire vilege of people working to make
something as beautiful and as brilliant as they possibly can,
(33:44):
and to have that thing be your book just feels
like the most incredible privilege.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So yeah, I'm excited for you.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
I have to tell you, when I was reading Sweet Eleven,
I was casting in my own mind. If you could
cast that adaptation tomorrow, I just need to know one thing,
who would you cast as Marcus Leadman.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It's funny because I don't. I don't dreamcast my books
at all. Never, No, I really really don't. And I
think a big part of that is because I have
a really visual imagination. To me, the characters are so
clearly who they are, I find it very difficult to
map them onto real life people. It's funny. The one
(34:28):
character who I did think about when I was writing
was Marcus, and I think I mentioned in the book
at one point that he has a kind of Donald
Southern look to him, so that he was in my mind,
and I think a big part of that was having
seen him in the Hunger Games playing presidents No, and
he looks very much how i'd imagine Marcus, very kind of,
(34:52):
very charming, but also very ruthless with that sort of slight,
unknowable edge of cruelty. But yes, unfortun he is not available.
So if anyone has any suggestions for who.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
They were done key for, Sutherland is available.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
His son, Oh so true, Yeah exactly. Maybe he's probably
not quite old enough. Maybe you could wear a gray wig.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Yeah, you know you've spent your life writing these twisty
turney endings for books. I am looking at you. You
have so many of your books on your shelves. What
has been the biggest twisty turn in your life?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Oh, one hundred percent writing in a dart dart wood. Yeah. Absolutely.
You know, when I wrote that book, I don't really
know what I expected, but I think I thought I
was writing this kind of weird little British book, like
who on earth has ever heard of a Hen party
outside of the UK? Nobody? And I thought, you know,
I was writing this weird little thriller that you know,
(35:54):
my friends would read and my mother in law would buy,
because she's incredibly supportive and she all of my books.
I just had no expectations whatsoever. Like, obviously I hoped
it would do well, but I just thought, you know,
we'll sell a few copies, We'll have some fun and
I'll tell a twisty story and then it just blew
up beyond my wildest dreams. And ironically, as I was
(36:18):
writing The Woman in Cabin ten, which made that book
incredibly hard to write, because you know, the more I
was sort of struggling with this kind of twisty plot
that wouldn't quite pin down and these characters that wouldn't
quite behave the way I wanted them to. In adult
dut Wood was just you know, it was getting amazing reviews.
It was getting you know, picked up on social media.
(36:38):
People were saying lovely things about it. It was hitting
the best seller list, and yeah, all of that made
Cabin ten so hard to write. It was like blood
out of a stone. But yeah, that book changed my
life in so many ways, and I've ended up going
places I could never have dreamed of in my wild imagination, which,
(37:01):
as we have established, is pretty.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Well for anybody listening. I'm smiling very big. You can't
see my smile, but that's really wonderful, Ruth. I love
asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week. It's the
title of our show, but it could be a weird
fact the fun quote, something that you've saved on Instagram
or texted your best friend about for you. I was
thinking even maybe a luxury hotel or destination, because so
(37:26):
many of those are in your books. Is there anything
that you've bookmarked this week?
Speaker 2 (37:30):
My kind of well, not guilty pleasure, because I don't
believe in guilty pleasures. I think if it's giving you
pleasure that are not hurting anyone else, that's great. So
let's not say guilty pleasure. My pleasure is going to Spas.
I absolutely adore going to Spas. And actually there's a
spooky Spa scene in The Woman in Cabin Ten, which
I won't spoiler for anybody. So that was the last
text I sent to my sister was this Spa hotel,
(37:52):
saying we should go.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Okay, I have something bookmarked this week too. In celebration
of the launch of Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, we're
teaming up with Little Free Library to do a book
drop for our July Pick Spectacular Things. Check out Little
Free Libraries in your area and tag us on Instagram
if you find one. Plus if you do find one
of our books, we snuck in a fun little treat
(38:16):
just for you. Okay. Now we're coming up on one
of my favorite parts of the conversation. It is time
for speed read. So here's how it works. I'm putting
sixty seconds on the clock and I'm going to ask
you a series of rapid fire questions, so you have
to say the first thing that comes to your mind,
which I have a feeling you're going to be very
good at. So are you ready? Are you locked in? No?
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I'm not ready, but I'll do my best.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Three?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Two one. A famous murder case that could have been
a Ruthware novel.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh my gosh, the mushrooms in the beef Wellington.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
You hear a scream at the end of a darkened hallway,
Run away or inspect it?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Oh, run towards it. It might be somebody in trouble.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Favorite thriller novel to recommend to people.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Oh this is hard, too too too many. I'm gonna
have to say, gone girl again. We've already discussed it.
But it's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So you've killed a lot of characters, Ruth, do you
ever regret killing off the wrong one?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
No, bye and large. If I had any regrets, it's
probably not. Killing more of them.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Is there a book that you'd wish you'd written.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Louise Candlish's book Our House. I read that and I thought,
I want to write an ending that makes the reader
feel the way I just felt, and I think I
did it. I won't say which book, though, I'll keep
that a secret.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Do you believe that everybody is capable of murder under
the right circumstances?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yes, I think anybody could kill if they really truly
had to. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Okay. My last one is what character are you most like?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
This is a tough one. I guess there's quite a
lot of me in low black clot if I'm being honest.
There's a bit of me in all of my characters,
even the baddies. I think they're like little voodoo dolls,
little zombies that I still together, and the thing that
brings them to life is a bit of me.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Ruth. Thank you. You have been absolutely charming and marvelous.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I have had the best time. Thank you for your questions,
which I feel have given me an intellectual workout. And yeah,
that'd so much fun.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Okay, friends, before you go, I have a little announcement
that I think you're going to want to hear. Our
partners at Apple Books are running a special program with
Reese's book Club. Every month, Apple Books is giving away
up to one thousand e books of that month's Reese's
book Club Pick. They've already done this with Wild Dark
Shore by Charlotte McConaughey and The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage,
(40:43):
and they're doing it again for the January Pick. Of course,
we don't know what book and lucky author that is yet,
but we'll all find out on Tuesday, January sixth, and
I cannot wait. So if you want to be among
the one thousand people to get a code and redeem
a free ebook, all you have to do is follow
at Reese's book Club and at Apple Books on Instagram
(41:05):
for updates. They'll start releasing those codes the same day
the book is announced, so be ready to pounce on
the offer once it goes live, and then we can
get busy diving into the January pick together. Stay tuned
for a teaser interview with the author on January sixth
right here on Bookmarked. And until then, happy holidays and
happy reading. And if you want a little bit more
(41:29):
from us, come hang with us on socials. We're at
Reese's book Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes and
behind the scenes magic and I'm Danielle Robe, rob Ay,
come say hi and DM me And if you want
to go nineties on us, you can call us. Okay,
so our phone line is open, So call us now
at five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
(41:51):
That's five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
Share your literary hot takes, your book recommendations, oh, please
share those, and questions about the monthly pick, or just
let us know what you think about the episode you
just heard. And who knows, you might just hear yourself
in our next episode, So don't be shy. Give us
a ring, and of course, make sure to follow Bookmarked
(42:12):
by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your shows. Until then, see you
in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello,
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon
and me Danielle Robe. Production is by Acast Creative Studios.
(42:32):
Our producers are Matty Foley, Britney Martinez, and Sarah Schleid.
Our production assistant is Avery loftis Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for Acast Creative Studios. Maureene
Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello,
Sunshine Oga Cominoa. Sarah Kernerman, Kristin Perla, and Ashley Rappaport
(42:52):
are associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry and
Lauren Hanson are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts. He
ten ten
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