What do you think prompted the author to write this story?

What do you think prompted the author to write this story?

I'm not sure, and I hope she will come on at some point while the discussion is open and tell us. But if I had o make an educated guess, I would say she was prompted by the ever-evolving definition of "family" in today's society and the growing number of unconventional and blended families. She wanted to explore the structure and inner dynamics of one such blended family and allow their story to evolve and revolve around the pivot point who was Maya.

I think anyone who has been through a divorce hopes that everyone can get along for the sake of the kids but typically blames one or the other for being unreasonable. Adrian was completely reasonable, they vacationed together, acted like one big family without tension but it was just an illusion. I think perhaps the point is that even what appears to be an ideal situation may have its layers of pain, complication, and "poison" that can manifest itself as something very ugly.

I think two main themes of this story was Maya settling on being second-rate in a family. She married somebody else's husband, had a family of somebody else's kids, went on vacation with somebody else's family, and had to live in a tiny unappealing apartment because the other wives had the nice houses. She was pretty much being snuffed out and smothered in her own life. When she finally, finally got the nerve to re-assert herself (since the first attempt was completely ignored) she died. I think it's a testament to how voiceless she felt in her own life.

The second theme is the blended family and how it works and doesn't work. We always hear that there's a 50% divorce rate nowadays, so of course there are families of every shape and size. It's interesting to see an "inside" picture of how that might look, versus how it's portrayed. Everybody always wants to believe others' lives are as perfect as they portray, but this let us know that it's not always as it seems.

a wild dream in the middle of the night, a rowdy table next to her at a cafe, the "renters" in the house down the lane from her...endless possibilities

This is a hard question for me because it´s the first book that I read of this author so I really dont know her. But I did read in an interview that she ¨had gotten married young and that it was the worse experience of her life¨. Maybe this drove her to want to write a book about marriage and try to make a positive out of a negative.
So, writing a nice psychological thriller by using a combination of Gone Girl, The Husband´s Secret and The Girl on the Train with questions about the nature of love, marriage and family, should be a very attractive read for fans of this genre.

"Everything is not as it seems"....a familiar quote to us all but a basis for a wonderful psychological thriller. Perhaps something in the course of the writer's life brought that to mind and stimulated an exploration into an event and/or an experience. How many of us still see someone or something as perfect and later find out it is or was not perfect....and still we are suprised by such a revelation!
I too would be interested in hearing from the author as to what prompted the author to write this story.