Author Interview: Jeneva Rose

When I first picked up One of Us Is Dead by Jeneva Rose, I was hoping for something suspenseful, something escapist, and a good heap of drama—and it sure delivered. Told from the perspective of four women of Buckhead and rich in luxury, sex, and betrayal, this thrilling read will walk you through these women’s tenuous relationships before you discover who is the victim. Because here’s the clincher: you don’t find out exactly who died—and why—until the very end.

I chatted with Jeneva about One of Us Is Dead, plus her 2020 bestseller, The Perfect Marriage, and her tips for writing suspenseful reads, honing multi-POV narratives, and book marketing on TikTok.

One of Us Is Dead hits shelves April 26. Preorder here. Connect with Jeneva on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter, and sign up for her mailing list on her website.

Hi Jeneva! Thanks so much for joining me. One of Us Is Dead features multiple characters’ points of view as they navigate life and, eventually, death in Buckhead. What are the challenges and advantages of writing multiple perspectives?

Thanks so much for having me! The challenges of writing multiple perspectives is ensuring that each point of view is unique and that readers will be able to easily differentiate between them without having to flip back to the start of the chapter to see which point of view it belongs to. I spent a lot of time finessing each character to make them easily distinguishable, giving them quirks, differences in dialect and how they describe the world around them or one another. Each character also essentially has a ‘title.’ You have the scorned ex-wife, the young new wife, the social climber, the mother hen, and the salon owner caught in the middle of it all. 

The advantage of writing multiple perspectives is the reader gets a peek into each character’s head, and this works especially well for a novel about gossip, betrayal, scandals, secrets, and murder. So, just when you think you know what’s going on—the point of view switches and you’re given new insight from another character.

Your bestselling thriller The Perfect Marriage also explores themes of psychological and domestic suspense. What tips do you have for authors looking to heighten suspense in their novels? How do you approach writing twists and shock endings?

My thrillers, like most, hinge on major twists, surprising reveals, and shocking endings. Readers expect to be surprised when they pick up a thriller, so I have to deliver. When I start writing a book, I almost always know what the major twist is going to be. With the exception of One of Us is Dead, because I ended up changing it several times, because I felt it wasn’t good enough, and I needed to live up to the shocking twists that so many loved in The Perfect Marriage.

The reveals and twists that happen throughout one of my books usually come about during writing sprints, when I set a timer for fifteen minutes and write as many words as possible. I think when you combine the path you’ve set out for the reader which includes red herrings, clues, unanswered questions, and a writing sprint, you’re bound to let the story take you where it’s going to take you and, in my experience, it usually adds some fun twists and reveals.

What I especially loved about One of Us Is Dead is its story structure—true to the title, the reader doesn’t find out who actually is dead until the very end of the book, and instead has to understand the complex relationships between the women in Buckhead before getting to the final reveal. How did you approach writing this twisty story?

I’ve written six books and this one was by far the most challenging because of how it’s structured. There are five points of view, and it switches between past and present—with the present that of the salon owner explaining to a detective what transpired between her elite clients. The past is from all five points of view (the clients and the salon owner) detailing what happened in the weeks leading up to the murder. So the reader doesn’t know who’s dead, who killed them, nor why.

I did a lot of plotting with this novel to ensure the story moved forward swiftly without repeating what happened in a scene from a different point of view. My pantry and cupboards were covered in post-it notes for a few weeks while I worked through the plot and chapter alignment. I love short chapters that end on cliff hangers, so there are eighty-four in this book and the cliff hangers make it a ‘one-more page’ type of read. I also gave each ‘housewife’ equal page time, so the reader could get to know them as individuals and understand where they were coming from and what their struggles and goals were.

I always like to ask authors, whether traditionally or independently published, about their marketing efforts. You have a strong platform and are especially active on TikTok (with over 400k followers!)—can you speak a bit about your TikTok strategy? What do you like about the app, and how do you use it to promote your writing?

When I got the offer of publication for The Perfect Marriage from a small digital-first UK publisher, I knew it would be on me to market the book. I have ten years of social media and digital marketing experience with five of them working on major household brands at a Fortune 500 company, so I knew I could do it. I also knew if my debut wasn’t a success, I’d most likely be pigeonholed and not be able to achieve my goals of signing with a larger publisher.

I had a lot of success on Instagram early-on creating fun content and working with bookstagrammers. Even the film/tv deal was a result of me being very engaging on the platform. But I knew I had to set my sights on something else because the algorithm on Instagram can be quite challenging.

As an author, I was an early adopter on TikTok (back when it was considered “low brow” to be on that platform) and I saw a huge opportunity there to create book content. What blew up The Perfect Marriage was a trend I started on TikTok where you tell a story as if it were your own but at the end you hold up your book, explaining that it’s actually the plot of your novel. In January of 2021, I posted that video and it amassed 4.5 million views. Over 11 thousand copies of The Perfect Marriage sold in just the four days after. That TikTok made me an Amazon Charts, Publisher’s Weekly, and Barnes & Noble bestseller, and it literally made my career. The Perfect Marriage has gone on to sell several hundred thousand copies across formats and has been translated into a dozen languages.

I’ve continued to actively use TikTok ever since with a lot of success, and I switch it up between book content and humorous, everyday life content, which includes my hilarious husband and my stubborn English bulldog.

Lastly, what can readers expect from you in the future? Do you plan to continue with thriller/suspense, or do you have other genres in mind? (Future books you can talk about, perhaps?)

I can’t say too much about it yet because it hasn’t been announced, but readers can expect a lot more thrillers and suspense novels from me. My next thriller, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, centers around an Airbnb and a fast romance that’ll surely have an outcome worse than heartbreak. It’s told from dual points of view of the guest and the host, and it’s a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when you open up your heart and your home to a total stranger. It’ll release sometime in Spring/Summer 2023. 

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Thanks so much to Jeneva for the interview. Sleuths, I hope you enjoyed it! If you aren’t already subscribed, please be sure to sign up for the Cluesletter and get author features like this alongside other mystery goodies, delivered to your inbox every other Tuesday.