Friday Feature: After We Fall by Emma Kavanagh

What made Cecilia difficult to write?

Cecilia was a tough character to write. She has been described by readers as a tough character to like. I get that. I really do. She makes some crappy decisions. She doesn’t conform to our expectations of what a mother or a wife should be. She doesn’t, in short, endear herself by behaving as we feel she should.

I won’t lie – I kind of like that about her.

I couldn’t honestly say that until I had finished writing the novel and had come to a resolution with her. But the truth is, looking back on it, Cecilia is a very badly scarred character. She is someone who has suffered through a series of traumatic events and her reactions have pushed away those close to her.

That doesn’t mean that, when writing her, I didn’t sometimes want to slap her. But once I overcame those urges, I started to see a character who was fighting with herself and her own fear in order to make things better. She doesn’t always succeed. But the fact that she tries makes me think of her fondly.

Emma Kavanagh is a former police and military psychologist, and author of After We Fall: A Novel (Sourcebooks). Twitter: @EmmaLK


after weTitle: After We Fall by Emma Kavanagh
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller
Length: 336 pages

Summary:

Blood stains the carpet of an empty house. A front door slams behind a mother with a suitcase full of secrets. Someone screams. A plane falls out of the sky.

Cecilia made the hardest decision of her life moments before she stepped onto the plane that would bring her world crashing down. Her marriage was failing before even getting off the ground, and her desperate need to start over has driven her to abandon her family. Now, as her plane plummets toward the ground, she wishes she had given her son one last kiss good-bye. As tragedy meets mystery, Cecilia and three others, each struggling with their own secrets, become connected on one fateful night when lives are lost in the sky and on the ground.

Read my review HERE.

Purchase Links: Amazon * B&N

1 Comment

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One Response to Friday Feature: After We Fall by Emma Kavanagh

  1. Timitra

    This sounds really good!