Rachel Hawkins is the author of Rebel Belle and the New York Times bestselling series Hex Hall. Born in Virginia and raised in Alabama, Rachel taught high school English for three years before becoming a full-time writer.

Q.  Reckless Girls (January 2022, St. Martin’s Press) is the suspenseful story of a vacation-gone-wrong in a deserted island in the South Pacific. For readers who haven’t picked this one up yet, what’s the premise?

Rachel: A young woman and her boyfriend agree to take a pair of friends to a deserted—and fairly creepy—island where they meet another pair of vacationers. What initially seems to be a dream getaway turns dark when an interloper shows up, and we gradually realize no one is quite what they seem.

Q. Reckless Girls is your second gothic thriller, following on the success of The Wife Upstairs, notably inspired by Bronte’s JANE EYRE. Was  Reckless Girls similarly inspired by the classics?

Rachel: There are definitely elements of And Then There Were None in there—the island, obviously, the locked room nature of it, the strangers with secrets. I was also inspired by a true crime classic, And The Sea Will Tell, that deals with a murder on an island in the South Pacific, and how those remote locations can bring really disparate people together.

Q. Is it true you’ve always wanted to write an “island” book?

Rachel: I’ve always loved boats and the ocean, and I think there’s such good stuff to be mined from these kinds of stories where people are off the grid. There’s a lot of freedom to be found in the open water, but there’s also isolation and a kind of lawlessness that lends itself to telling a really tense and scary story. Plus I’m always fascinated by that idea of, “Who do you become when everything else gets stripped away?” and an island is good for that!

Q. You started your career as a writer of young adult fiction. What inspired you to move to adult genre fiction?

Rachel: I spent ten years writing YA, and am so grateful for that decade, but it just felt like it was time to try something new. I always want to listen to my guy when it comes to writing, and when I stopped coming up with YA ideas—when it was clear all the stories that really excited me would work best as adult fiction—I knew I needed to pursue that path. And that’s also a big part of what drives me to the next book! When there’s some idea that I just can’t let go of, when I keep turning elements of it over and over in my head, I know that there’s probably a book in there.

Q. Speaking of the next one, what are you working on now?

Rachel: My next thriller comes out in 2023, and also deals with a Vacation Gone Wrong, but it’s in Italy this time, and involves two best friends who know (or think) they know everything about each other as they spend the summer in a villa that was the scene of a famous murder back in the 70s. It’s a wild ride, and I can’t wait for people to read it!