Katie Cotugno has been a powerful force in the romantic young adult fiction world, with many of her books featuring feminist themes and strong characters. YA books with political and realistic themes, like Cotugno’s You Say It First and 99 Days, feature relatable characters and enjoyable plots that have achieved her status as an instant New York Times bestselling author.
While Cotugno succeeds with her work in the YA genre, she has also tackled the world of adult books, including the recently released Birds of California. Now, she has turned her attention towards mystery in her latest book, Liar’s Beach, which follows the murder of a student at a wealthy prep school that changes their friends’ lives forever.
We chatted with Katie about tackling new genres and age groups, how Agatha Christie inspires her, and her upcoming Pride and Prejudice retelling.
Tell us about your latest book, Liar’s Beach.
Liar’s Beach is a gender-flipped retelling of Agatha Christie’s first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, so we’ve swapped out the iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot for a bash, brilliant teenage girl named Holiday Proctor. The novel is narrated by Holiday’s ex-best friend Michael Linden, a lacrosse player and scholarship kid who’s visiting his rich friends from boarding school at their summer house on Martha’s Vineyard when everyone’s least favorite party guest is discovered floating face-down in the pool.
Everybody seems to think it was an accident, but Linden suspects otherwise, and he enlists Holiday for a little amateur detective work that winds up having consequences far beyond what either one of them could have ever imagined. Not only is Liar’s Beach my first mystery, but it’s also my first YA novel since 2020 and my first book with an incredible new publishing team.
What inspired you to write this murder mystery?
I’ve always been a big Agatha Christie nerd — I grew up watching Mystery! on PBS with my mom — and early in the pandemic I was out walking my dog and listening to The Mysterious Affair at Styles on the Phoebe Reads a Mystery podcast when it suddenly occurred to me how much fun it would be if Hercule Poirot was a teenage girl.
Liar’s Beach is your transition from contemporary romance to thriller. Why did you decide to tackle a new genre?
Love stories are always going to be my bread and. butter, but I was definitely feeling ready to stretch my legs a little bit and try something new. I’m lucky enough to have been publishing books for a full decade, and I feel strongly that it’s my responsibility both to my readers and to myself to keep growing and trying new things.
I always say that I write messy, complicated, feminist love stories, and this book —though it’s also a murder mystery — is no exception.
Eerie and suspenseful moments require special attention to setting and pacing. How was the process of crafting the pacing of the story?
Knowing how to properly pace a novel is the sort of craft skill you kind of have to build over time through trial and error, and it felt like I was learning how to do it all over again with Liar’s Beach. For me, successful pacing is about building tension with a combination of big, dramatic scenes juxtaposed with quieter moments that give you more of a sense of who characters are when nobody’s watching.
What character surprised you the most as you were writing the story?
I loved Holiday from the very beginning, but I was surprised by how much I came to care about Linden — hot, often clueless Linden! — as I was working on the first draft. I think of him as kind of a male Molly Barlow (the heroine from my book 99 Days) — usually misguided, always well-intentioned.
How do you set the mood to write and get immersed in creating your novels?
Music is super important to me when I’m trying to build the world of a novel — particularly something as stylized as the upscale, weirdly timeless setting of Liar’s Beach. I listened to a lot of super old-timey stuff while I was writing — Blossom Dearie, Benny Goodman — and a lot of jazz as well.
Why is reading books important to you?
Reading, more than anything else you can do at home by yourself — and almost anything else you can do, period — builds empathy for people whose life experiences are different from yours. I feel like, especially in this alarming era of book banning, we often disregard what an enormous gift that is.
What’s up next for you in the bookish world?
My next book for adults, Meet the Benedettos, is out in December. It’s a loose retelling of Pride and Prejudice about a washed-up, Kardashian-esque former reality show family living in a falling-down McMansion in Calabasas.
About Katie Cotugno:
Katie Cotugno is the New York Times bestselling author of seven messy, complicated feminist YA love stories, as well as the adult novel Birds of California (Harper Perennial, 2022). She is also the co-author, with Candace Bushnell, of Rules for Being a Girl. Her books have been honored by the Junior Library Guild, the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee, and the Kentucky Association of School Librarians, among others, and translated into more than fifteen languages. Katie is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, and Argestes, as well as many other literary magazines. She studied Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in Fiction at Lesley University. She lives in Boston with her family.
(Photo Credit: Katie Goodall)
