From the bestselling author of One Small Sacrifice comes a suspenseful thriller about a dead woman who predicted her own murder―and the sister who won’t let the truth be buried. We had the pleasure of chatting with author Hilary Davidson about her new release, Her Last Breath, along with writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Hilary! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Thanks for having me here! I’m the author of seven crime novels and dozens of short stories that I warn people they shouldn’t read before bed. I say that because my father-in-law read the first one I published and had nightmares for weeks. In real life, I’m all about kittens and cocktails and sunsets, but I do like my fiction dark.
How is your 2021 going in comparison to that other year?
2020 was brutal, and it’s still hard because I haven’t seen my family and friends in Toronto—my hometown—for sixteen months and counting. I’m vaccinated and hopeful about visiting them this summer. My book tour for Her Last Breath is entirely virtual and I’m excited about that, because you reach so many more readers than you do with in-person events. Next year, hopefully I’ll be doing both.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
My parents gave me a picture book about ancient Egypt when I was three, and I was obsessed with it for years. Reading the Nancy Drew series made me fall in love with mysteries and want to be a writer. I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies for the first time when I was 11 or 12 and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
When I was eight, I won a Scholastic short-story contest with a tale about an archaeologist and a cursed Egyptian tomb. I’ve always loved the dark side!
Your latest novel, Her Last Breath, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Fierce. Suspenseful. Dramatic. Emotional. Thrilling!
What can readers expect?
Her Last Breath is about a woman named Deirdre who gets a message from her sister, Caroline, while she’s at her sister’s funeral. Caroline died suddenly—and accidentally—so when Deirdre reads that Caroline felt she was in danger from her husband, it turns her life upside down. Caroline also reveals that her wealthy husband killed his first wife, which makes Deirdre question everything about her sister, because what kind of person would marry a man like that? The book explores emotional and physical abuse in generations of two families and how it has warped their relationships.
Where did the inspiration for Her Last Breath come from?
A few years back, several of my friends split up from their long-time partners and started talking about what had really been going on in their relationships. You know how you sometimes think you don’t know anyone who’s stuck in a violent situation? Wrong. You do, even if you aren’t hearing about it. My initial reaction was to write some short stories where abusers come to a terrible end. But the more the issue wound around my brain, the more I wanted to write about the terrible secrets we learn to keep in families. Because as a society, we have a warped mindset about loyalty that tells us to protect the abusers.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
I started writing Her Last Breath in the fall of 2019 and was about halfway through when the pandemic hit. The book is supposed to be contemporary, so I struggled with how much of the pandemic to include. Part of my brain didn’t want to address it, but it was such I seismic event that I knew I had to. I don’t normally try to predict the future, but for this book, I did, because I was trying to imagine what life would be like as we start to come out of the pandemic. It’s weirdly accurate about New York City right now, where you still need a mask for the subway but you can have big mask-free indoor gatherings, like the funeral that starts off the book. Even in the spring of 2020 it was clear that poorer neighborhoods were being hit much harder than wealthy ones. My editor thought I was being too optimistic about there being a vaccine, and we took that out during editing, only to put it back in during the copyedit stage!
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I started studying karate when I was eight, and I literally moved my dojo from Toronto to Queens, New York, in Her Last Breath. The Higashi School of Karate is now Deirdre’s dojo! It’s even next door to a shady pool hall, like the real one was. I loved writing about karate because people think it’s all about kickass moves, but more than anything it teaches patience and diligence and endurance. Not that those kickass moves don’t come in handy for Deirdre, too.
What do you love about thrillers and crime fiction?
Do you ever read news stories and think, “How could a person do such an awful thing?” Crime fiction is the opposite: it takes you inside the minds of people who might do terrible things but believe they have good reasons for doing them. It’s easy to judge other people when you’re in wildly different circumstances. The best thrillers and suspense novels remove that barrier and make you think about how a single bad choice could lead you down a dark path.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
I’ll start with the worst, which is that you need a writers’ group to workshop material while you’re writing. I tried this with my first novel, The Damage Done, and it was a disaster. I rewrote chapter one at least 18 times! I need momentum when I’m writing a first draft, and part of that is having a clear voice in my head. That can get muddied from feedback. Now, no one sees my book until I’m a couple of drafts in.
The best advice I’ve ever been given is to write about your obsessions. Don’t think about what’s popular — focus on what intrigues you. Readers will always connect with genuine passion.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on another standalone thriller right now, about a woman who’s made a lot of bad life choices and wants to make things right… of course, nothing’s every that simple. I’ve got some short stories coming out soon, including one in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I started working on re-releasing my first four novels late in 2020 and I’m almost done with that. I’m very excited to say that my Anthony Award-winning debut, The Damage Done, is back in print!
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Two that immediately come to mind: Susan Elia MacNeal’s The Hollywood Spy, and Alyssa Cole’s Edgar Award-winning When No One Is Watching. There are also a lot of books I’m looking forward to this summer, including Megan Abbott’s The Turnout, Tracy Clark’s Runner, and Jeff Abbott’s An Ambush of Widows.
This is a great interview! I really enjoyed reading about the writer’s motivations behind her writing her book!