[ written august '22 after finishing the book ]

If you've read this far, I cannot thank you enough.

I wrote this book in less than twenty days. It was so spontaneous, I hadn't planned it to be the main thing I worked on this month but here we are. I wrote the intro on August 4th, started writing about a week later and posting at the same time and now it's over. It's insane that I wrote it all so quickly, but I'm so very glad I did.

I got this idea while I was in a PE lesson. I was avoiding playing tennis with a girl in my class. We were friendly, but not close at all. So it surprised me when we actually had a really deep conversation about something on the sidelines of the tennis court while dodging balls. The thing is I forgot about this conversation but she brought it up again about a week later. And my murderous little mind went hey add some murder, you've got yourself a book.

So here we are.

Writing this book was scarily easy. I'd sit down, tell myself to write a chapter and I'd write a chapter. And after months of writing books I didn't enjoy anymore where chapters took days to churn out, this was a welcome break. Eve's story became my obsession, I have spreads in my notebooks just dedicated to her story as I figured out who the killer was.

Eve and her friends are entirely fictional (though Erin's vibes & aesthetic is based on someone I knew a while ago) but the setting isn't. Birmingham is a very real city in England and it's not mentioned in fiction a lot unless you're talking about Peaky Blinders. It's not the nicest city, some of the suburbs are dodgy as hell and the accents aren't always pleasing and the city centre chavs are a species of their own but it's vibrant and diverse and fun.

In every book I write, I have a favourite character. In this book it was Josh. At first, his storyline wasn't as nice as it turned out. He was kind of a cheater, hooking up with Laura after a fight with Eve that he took as a breakup but she didn't. But when I saw how much you loved him, I had to change it. Josh isn't perfect, but I think that's what makes him more real. The flashback chapters where Eve reminisced on their time together were my favourite to write and my favourite was definitely the last time because the title finally came into play and also it was just so cute and lovely to write.

I was actually planning for their to be another major suspect who was making Eve suspicious and that was going to be either Laura or Ravi or both of them. But I wrote a bunch of chapters at 2am, forgetting to include them (which is why Ravi disappears after part 2, sorry about that) so just know that Ravi and Josh were never supposed to meet up and Eve suspected that he texted her and Jenny to cover his tracks, maybe helping Eden? I don't know, I just had to get that off my chest.

So now here's some facts about where the characters ended up because I love doing them.

#1 | While Josh might've been the love of Eve's life, she did eventually find her soulmate and while it took a while for them both to fall for each other, when they did there was no looking back.

#2 | The 2056 trip to Atlantic City was a huge success though Edie would've preferred to go camping in Yorkshire.

#3 | Erin was very happy in life. She fell in love with a girl named Natasha and the parents who adopted her baby (whose name was Lola Erin) were very open to her visiting.

#4 | Granger had in fact been kicked out of his house by his wife that day and after the news of his multiple affairs with young women came out, hardly anyone attended his funeral. We don't stan guys who prey on younger, vulnerable people.

#5 | Eve never made a murder deal again.

Thank you so much for reading and to all the silent readers, votes make my heart sing so maybe go back and vote? I appreciate each and every comment so much and once again thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed!