Alex Cojocaru asked Caroline Kepnes:

This question contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

Caroline Kepnes Thank you, Alex! Yes, I definitely knew the ending when I started writing and I wanted that to be part of the feeling in the book, where you do sense what's coming. I love the idea of someone doing something as incidental as walking into a random shop and....

And that sliver of hope, exactly! This book is inspired by those moments in life when you are clinging to that sliver, trying to keep you eye on it, your grasp on it.

I had gone through a terrible, painful time in my life. I lost my father to cancer, and then it was a situation where basically everything was just a mess. Like, the spectrum was a mess. There is something like the loss of someone you love that dwarfs it all, but then when "all" is awful too...for me it was a fight or flight situation. This book was my fight to laugh, to stay in it, to move forward. Once I felt I had a handle on Joe, it was such a great simultaneous pressure and relief, the drive to keep going, to tell his story.

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