USA TODAY bestselling author Kimberly Belle returns with The Personal Assistant, a deeply addictive thriller exploring the dark side of the digital world when a mommy-blogger’s assistant goes missing.
Hi, Kimberly! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Of course, and thank you for having me! I am a wife, a mother, and author of nine novels and counting. My third book, The Marriage Lie, was a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for Best Mystery & Thriller, and I also co-authored a #1 Audible Original, Young Rich Widows—currently working on the second in the series! My husband is Dutch, which means half of my life (including one of my kids) is in Amsterdam; the rest of the year I spend in Atlanta, where most of my books are set.
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!
- First book I remember reading (and being obsessed with): Charlotte’s Web
- Book that made me want to become an author: is it weird that I don’t know? I’ve just always loved books and it felt like a natural step to want to write one.
- Book I can’t stop thinking about: the latest – because there are so many – is The Last Housewife by Ashley Winstead. I absolutely LOVED it.
Your latest novel, The Personal Assistant, is out November 29th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
When online threats turn real
What can readers expect?
The Personal Assistant is a story about Alex, an Instagram influencer with a huge following—one that is impossible to manage without her sharp-as-a-tack personal assistant, AC.
But all the good-will of her followers turns toxic when one controversial post goes viral in the worst possible way. Alex reaches out to AC for damage control, but her assistant has gone silent. This young woman Alex trusted with all her secrets, who had access to her personal information and front row seats to the pressure points in her marriage and family life, is now missing, and the police are looking to Alex and her husband for answers. As Alex digs into AC’s identity – and a woman is found murdered – she’ll find the greatest threat isn’t online, but in her own living room.
Where did the inspiration for The Personal Assistant come from?
It’s an idea that developed out of my own life as author. One of the job requirements is to put myself out there on social media, which means I’m constantly walking a fine line between sharing snippets of my life and holding back on personal, private moments. Sometimes that line can become a little fuzzy. And you’re not always in control of how posts land, or what people think of the photographs and captions after you hit Share. One wrong word can blow up in ways you don’t always anticipate, which got me thinking… What if the people on the receiving end of these posts don’t have the best of intentions? What if the animosity on Instagram and Facebook turns all too real? These questions and more were the basis for the Personal Assistant.
Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
I wrote this story in 2021, well into the second year of the pandemic. By then, we’d stopped washing our groceries, but life still felt so much smaller than before. No travel. No parties. No fun. Whereas I pounded out my first pandemic book, My Darling Husband, in four short months, with The Personal Assistant, I had to fight for every word. I know everyone was struggling back then, but I had a tough time focusing on a story about an Instagram influencer while a pandemic raged outside my doors.
But then I realized maybe that was the whole point of the story. When Alex’s world becomes a dumpster fire, it puts things for her into perspective. It forces her to stop and adjust, to reassess her priorities. People. Her family. As Alex learned in her story—as we learned in ours—the rest is just noise and fluff.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I grew up in a small town in Tennessee, so as much as I love to write about big-city gals like The Personal Assistant’s Alex, the voices that come the easiest to me are always a little bit (okay, a lot) country. In this book that voice belonged to Anna Claire, a young maid who falls for an older, wealthier man who doesn’t have her best interests at heart. While Anna Claire’s story is tragic, her chapters were easiest—and so much fun—to write.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on two projects: Desperate Deadly Widows, an Audible original and second book in the Widows series I coauthor with the uber-talented Vanessa Lillie, Layne Fargo and Cate Holahan. My next solo book is The Paris Widow, a thriller about a couple vacationing in Paris when the husband is killed, the victim of what looks to be a freak accident—but when the gendarmerie point to him as the target of the explosion, she begins to wonder what kind of man she married…and worse, if his killers might be after her next. No publication date yet but I suspect it will be in 2024.
Lastly, what have been some of your favourite 2022 reads? Any 2023 releases our readers should look out for?
Hmm, I already mentioned The Last Housewife, but I also loved The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth and Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr. If you’re looking for more recommendations, make sure to tune into my Instagram page on the last Wednesday of every month, where I announce my five favorite new releases from that month. I also talk about tons of books on the Killer Author Club, a bi-weekly interview series I host with fellow authors Kaira Rouda and Heather Gudenkauf. For links to past and future shows as well as our recently launched killer book club, surf to killerauthorclub.com.
