We caught up with ELIZABETH AGYEMANG to discuss her novel Heart-Shaped Lies, a tongue-in-cheek mystery about three feuding exes who are forced to work together to uncover the truth behind his death.
When did you discover your love of writing?
Like many writers, I think I found my love of writing through a love of reading. I’ve been passionate about books since my early childhood. When my family immigrated to the USA from Ghana, my siblings and I spent most of our time in the library: from the moment school ended until the library closed, every day during the week and sometimes on weekends too. That’s a lot of time to be spending around books! But reading helped me understand this new culture and community I’d found myself in. Whether it was a contemporary story to a fantasy one where a character was discovering the new world around them, reading those stories was an accessible way for me to to learn about other perspectives, be entertained, and imagine new worlds.
What sparked the idea for Heart-Shaped Lies?
The story for Heart-shaped Lies had a pretty non-linear journey. I had actually written a completely different book, a time traveling story set between present and 1920s Pittsburgh. At the time, I was on submission to publishers with that book, and the editor who would later acquire Heart-shaped Lies, had really liked my voice, but wondered if I’d be interested in writing a thriller (now mystery) book. I loved that idea and immediately started coming up with stories that could fit the concept she’d pitched me and I also started brainstorming characters and what the plot of the book would be. I also really wanted to think of a setting where the story could take place – and then I was brought back to my high school senior trip to Florida.
For a lot of teens, a senior trip to a different state can be the first time you are traveling without parents and also find yourself surrounded by your friends and peers. I know it was for me. That sense of being old enough to travel with friends and be on you own, but also not quite old enough to be able to handle if anything went wrong was something I wanted to tap into. And then, there was the influencer piece. I grew up right at the dawn of the Internet, and got to witness the early influencers in various stages, from the blogging world, to ‘vlogging’, to whatever new app or website suddenly became popular. In our era of social media, everyone has a brand and is in a way a ‘micro’ influencer, whether you only post your life for your small circle of friends or to the whole world. When the Internet comes together there’s so much good that can happen – but there’s also a lot of harm. It’s this seesaw of community, accountability and weaponisation and I thought it would be interesting to write a mystery where just as the reader is trying to piece together what is happening, so too is social media. The Internet in a way is the detective trying to solve the crime of what happened during the senior trip, but it’s also the police looking for suspects, and the court room deciding who is seen as innocent and who is seen as guilty. A lot of conflicting interests! Things also get even more complicated knowing the line between perceptions and reality can blur and invert—which to me made the idea of writing a mystery that plays with these approaches alluring.
What can you tell us about Kiara, Priscilla and Nevaeh?
Kiara, Priscilla, and Nevaeh are the three main characters of Heart-shaped Lies. Kiara is an academic rising star, Priscilla is a charming beauty influencer, and Neveah wants to be the perfect church girl. The only thing they have in common is that they discovered they’re all dating the same Internet prankster, Tommy Harding. All three girls had reasons for wanting Tommy gone, and when his body is discovered during their senior trip to a Florida Theme Park and Resort, they’re forced to work together to solve the case – even as his deactivated account resurfaces online claiming one of the three girls is the killer.
As they uncover the sinister truth behind Tommy’s death and race against time to expose the killer, they find themselves pit against each other by the Internet and Tommy’s account, and they have to grapple with how their internal insecurities impact their choices, how they treat each other, and how they see themselves. They’re also coming to terms with the fact that their relationship with Tommy was toxic, abusive and painful, but now that he’s dead and they’re the suspects, the role of who is seen as the victim and the villain is at the hands of the Internet and the mysterious force behind Tommy’s reactivated account.
How did you develop the mystery surrounding Tommy’s death?
The mystery surrounding Tommy’s death had many iterations. I went through a very long process with a lot of really helpful feedback from my editors to really weave in all of a narrative arc that felt both juicy and twisty, but also spoke to the circumstance and the role each character played in what happened in the story. I wrote a lot of outlines to get the structure of the mystery down. I also had to make sure that I was seeding in clues about who the killer might be throughout the story. Not only that though, but since Kiara, Priscilla, and Nevaeh have very strong and different voices, sometimes the same clue could be perceived differently by each of them. So, as the girls try to solve the mystery of Tommy’s death, the reader too has to navigate just how reliable what they are being told is and whether or not their own observations in reading all three girls perspectives can help them get closer to solving the whodunit mystery. I’ve always love mystery films and cinema noire, and in some of my favourite films the idea of having multiple characters recount different contradictory versions of the same event has always fascinated me. In Heart-shaped Lies, I play with that technique but in a more linear way. There are no flashbacks, it’s just the story unfolding before you. Yet as this is happening, the question of perspective and subjectivity plays a key role in the mystery and solving what happened.
What are some of your favourite mystery novels?
I absolutely love Tiffany D Jackson. Her novels Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming are so, so good and absolutely devastated me. One of Us is Lying by Karen M McManus is also a favourite. I also really love classics like The Hound of The Baskervilles. My hot take though, is that I would also consider works like Gossip Girl to be mysteries, and similarly, I consider Heart-shaped Lies to be like a ‘jukebox’ mystery in that way, because it mashes up the juicy teen soapy drama with a whodunit and the social media spectacle of it all.
Who are some authors you admire?
I think there are so many incredible authors writing so many thrilling, and heartfelt, and thoughtful books that are out in the world. When I think back to my favourites growing up and as I got older, it’d have to be Octavia E Butler, Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Gail Carson Levine, Masami Tsuda, Natsuki Takaya, Holly Black, Natalie Babbitt, and Meg Cabot to name a few.
What did you find most challenging or rewarding about writing this novel?
I think the mystery elements were the most challenging and rewarding piece of writing Heart-shaped Lies. And if I had to speak to what I find to be the most challenging thing about writing a novel, it’s that from the moment you finish it, it can only capture the ideas, and concepts and characters you were grappling with at the time that you wrote it. All art is a reflection of the time place, and context in which it’s created. In a way, knowing that is challenging because it means it’s stagnant in some way to be a ‘reflection of a time period’, but it’s also rewarding because even as I reread Heart-shaped Lies or hear readers responses to it, I uncover new things about the story. In that way, the story keeps evolving as new perspectives encounter it. The most rewarding thing about writing Heart-shaped Lies was being able to explore, adventure, challenge, question in all within the blank pages of the story I was creating.
Yes, Heart-shaped Lies is entertainment and spectacle and drama. But it also tackles themes about how female unity has to be cultivated and earned, not simply claimed for aesthetics, and it also looks at how society makes excuses for toxic men because they often misconstrue the violence they inflict on others as these men expressing vulnerability. I set out to write a thriller that became a mystery and in the process, I found myself along with the girls grappling with these meaty things. To me, that was incredibly rewarding and constructive. Lastly, I love thinking of characters and their lives unfolding, and I truly feel grateful to be able to write stories, to get to talk about these fictional characters and their experiences. Like even now, being able to talk to you and your readers about my book is such a joy. Thank you for your time, and I’m also so grateful to anyone who picks up Heart-shaped Lies and gives Kiara, Priscilla, and Neveah a chance to tell their side of the story!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Agyemang is an illustrator, printmaker, and storyteller. She writes about history, folklore, romance, and fairy tales and draws from elements of her African heritage. Heart-Shaped Lies is her debut young adult novel.
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