"I kept waiting for it to all fall apart but it never really did."

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order ’s sharp and witty new thriller, out now.

Me: Hello!!!

Anne-Sophie: Hi!

How are you?

I’m doing well, and you?

I’m doing okay! Still a headless chicken, BUT I loved your book and am so excited to chat with you about it.

Thank you, Andi! So excited to chat with you.

Let’s get right into it—can you share a little about WE WOULD NEVER TELL?

I’d love to!

We Would Never Tell is about three ambitious young women who are desperately trying to climb up from the bottom of the Hollywood ladder. They arrive at the Cannes Film Festival thinking this will be their big career break, but instead get tangled up in a murder and the theft of a multimillion dollar necklace.

This book has SO many fun elements and comes together in such a satisfying, puzzle-box way. What was the inspiration for it?

Thank you! I’m always drawn to extra glamorous settings and love to write messy (some call them “unhinged”) women. I was thinking about glitzy settings when my mind went to Ocean’s Eight. It was one of those movies that felt made for me. It’s the Met Gala and diamonds abound but the characters are total badasses and use their skills for nefarious purposes.

I’m a big fan of movies in general and I thought maybe I could write a story set at the Oscars.

Oh interesting!

But the Cannes Film Festival felt like an even better setting. It’s this gorgeous town on the French Riviera, and the most famous people in the world descend on it for 12 days.

That’s a good amount of time to get into proper trouble

That IS a long time! Not to mention that you’re French and bring a certain Francophile finesse to your books, no?

Ha, yes. Actually I really DIDN’T want to write another book set in France. I felt like that would pigeonhole me too much. But here we are.

My characters are mostly American and I did use the opportunity to poke a little fun at my people.

Ha! It’s like the idea found YOU.

Yes!

How’d you go about shaping a narrative around the idea of a heist thriller set at Cannes?

So this is a little weird, but the structure came to me with the idea. I felt strongly from the start that it should be a bonanza of POVs and narrative formats. I could really picture it in my mind but it seemed SO hard to write so I parked the idea aside for three years.

Ah, yes. The ol’ “someone should do that but maybe not me!”

Totally!

And I knew from day one that the story would be about the little people as I called them in my head. The people behind the celebrities, the nobodies

Why is that?

I just couldn’t picture the A-listers attending Cannes in all their glory to have as interesting a story as the 20-somethings who are sleeping on someone’s floor or staying at a shitty hotel during one of the most glamorous events you can think of.

Totally! This is reminding me of red flats girl from the Met Gala, lol

I’m always thinking about contrasts. Super glitzy setting = struggling people barely scraping by

Yes! A friend sent me that video and said I should write about her. I might!

The unsung heroes, the ghosts in the shadows making everything run

Exactly. There are a lot more of them at Cannes than A-listers.

And from there, you’re an outliner? How’d you figure out your three main characters and their journeys?

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