Such Charming Liars became our favorite book this summer! We sat down to talk with the author Karen M. McManus about her process of creating the book, building the characters, their emotional conflicts, and what’s coming next. Ready?
Here we go!
At the beginning of our interview, Karen M. McManus, known for her successful young adult mystery novels, reveals that the inspiration for her book Such Charming Liars came from an unexpected source. “I was watching The Parent Trap, the Lindsay Lohan’s version, and I thought, what if the parents were con artists?, and I didn’t really do anything more with it. But I did jot it down in my little log of ideas that I keep as A Con Artist Parent Trap, maybe there’s something there,” she shared.
It wasn’t until years later, after turning in her seventh book, that Karen revisited that file and came across the note. And she thought, “Oh, yeah, that could be interesting. In the end, it’s almost nothing like The Parent Trap. There are con artists. There is a relationship between the two main characters. They were step-siblings very briefly for 24 hours when their parents did a quickie marriage and divorce in Las Vegas. And then they haven’t seen each other, that little kernel remains there, but other than that, it’s nothing like that. But that’s where the idea came from,” she pointed out.
Developing these characters, Kat and Liam, was an especially gratifying experience for McManus. Kat, described by the author as “a little con artist in training,” lives with her single mother, and the two refer to themselves as “the grifter Gilmore Girls.” McManus greatly enjoyed writing Kat, “a fiercely loyal young woman who does everything she can to protect her mother, even when she makes bad decisions.” For McManus, Kat is a character “who stays true to herself, making her a delight to write.”
As Karen M. McManus said, “on the other side, we had Liam who is grieving. His mom passed away. He’s living with his con artist dad who he doesn’t like. And he is very different because he doesn’t know what to do. He’s trying all these different things just to feel something, to feel like himself again. And the only time that works is when he is with his former step-sibling, Kat. So the dynamic between those two was really fun to write.”
The duality between truth and lies is a central theme in the novel. McManus explores how the characters struggle not only to discover whom they can trust but also to be trustworthy themselves.
In Karen M.McManus’ words “Kat and Liam, though motivated by good intentions, tend to withhold crucial information from the people they care about, justifying their actions in the moment but internally recognizing that they are wrong. A lot of their journey throughout the book is figuring out why am I doing this? And how can I be like a better friend, boyfriend, or daughter? They’re trying to do right by the people they care about but they’re going about it the wrong way so it’s not just figuring out who to trust, it’s figuring out how to be trustworthy.”
Regarding her writing process, McManus acknowledges that Such Charming Liars was one of the most complicated books she has written, particularly due to the difficulty of integrating “the elements of a heist with a murder mystery.” The author “had never written a heist before. There’s a lot of just mechanics pieces that you have to put in place and integrating that with the murder mystery in a way that it’s clear they’re connected, but not clear how was really challenging.”
There were moments when she thought “the book simply wouldn’t work.” However, after much effort and collaboration with her editor, “they managed to make everything fit,” leaving her satisfied with the final result.
It’s not unusual for successful female writers to collaborate on a project together but in the case of Karen M. McManus, she doesn’t think that she would just because she’s “such a control freak.” She feels like “I would be so annoying [she laughs] They would hate me.” But if she could eliminate that aspect of her work process and go purely on vibes, she “would love to work with Courtney Summers. I adore her work. And she’s also just a phenomenal person. So it’d be really fun to work with her,” she confessed.
In terms of her evolution as a writer, McManus has learned a lot since she wrote her first book, One of Us is Lying. She describes that book as a “bolt of lightning” book that came to her quickly and was written just as fast. However, not all her projects have been so fluid. Her second book, for example, was a “seedling book” that needed much more time and care to develop.
Over the years, she has learned to “become a lot more disciplined in terms of how I approach an idea because I don’t know what kind of idea it is. And that upfront planning helps me a lot when I have those difficult moments, like with Such Charming Liars, when the plus just not coming together, there’s a much stronger foundation to build from because of all that upfront work,” she shared.
Although Karen M. McManus is not currently working on a new project, McManus plans to “take a well-deserved break after having published one book per year for the last eight years.” This frenetic pace “it was awesome and I was really happy to do it, but it did burn me out a little so I am refilling.”
Finally, McManus offers advice to aspiring writers: although writing may be “the best job in the world, it’s also one of the most difficult. It’s a dream job. You almost don’t ever want to acknowledge the hard parts because you feel so fortunate to be able to do what you love. But going to that creative space over and over again, kind of putting your heart out there, getting judged constantly, being on social media, not having any control over your book does that,” she comments.
“That part is hard for all of us. So you need to be in good company. But the wonderful thing about it is that, at the end of the day, your book is going to reach somebody who it becomes their favorite book and that book is going to change something for them. You did that. There are not many jobs where you can say that so I think authors should be very very proud of putting themselves out there,” she pointed out.
Such Charming Liars is available now here.
