Getting old is hard. The loss of loved ones, freedom, memory, and dreams can lead to a swirling depression unlike anything felt in youth. So much is waning and fading. So much seems to be falling apart.
And then there are the regrets. A life lived without regrets isn’t really a life lived, or so they say. However, some of us get to the end of life with bigger regrets than others. What if, alone and abandoned, you realized that your whole life was a disastrous mistake? What if your golden years were tarnished by the reality that everything that fell apart in life was actually your fault? These were the questions that drove me in writing The Widow Next Door. I wanted to write about the complexities of aging coupled with intense regret. I wanted to showcase the loneliness, the bleak reality that we sometimes face. Our golden years aren’t always golden--sometimes they’re rusted, worn, and even tinged with the blood of sins past. To me, this book is about more than regrets and secrets, though. It’s about how our upbringing can forever impact the way we perceive the world around us. It’s about the fact that some people do horrible things without a real reason. It’s about the idea that the hero can also be the villain, even in his or her own story. Monsters are real, and life isn’t always beautiful. This book is deeply depressed at times. It deals with some of our darkest fears: loneliness, guilt, regret, and abandonment. It is a dramatic exploration of emotion with chilling twists and turns along the way. If you’re ready for a book that starts as as slow-burn and then twists into a glowing fire of horror, I hope you’ll pick up The Widow Next Door. I hope that the widow’s story will speak to you and remind you that life isn’t always what it seems. Perhaps for me the scariest thing of this entire journey has been the fact that for many of us, when we look into the character of the widow, we may see glimpses of our own selves… and there is nothing more terrifying than that, especially when you get to the twisted end.
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L.A. DetwilerUSA TODAY Bestselling Thriller author with Avon Books (HarperCollins), The Widow Next Door, The Diary of a Serial Killer's Daughter, and other creepy thriller books Categories
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