And so that was really nice because, normally, my event is in Boston, and it's just local people, maybe a friend or two will fly in. It was with Porter Square Books, and they had that chat window open, and people were saying where they were coming from Mexico and Panama and California and New York. I did my launch event for The Cousins with Stephanie Garber.

Smaller releases and less well-known authors are given opportunities they might not have had otherwise, and more people are getting access to events they might never have been able to attend. But I also feel like, in a weird way, there's been this democratization of these author events. $19 at Bookshop Credit: Delacorte Press/Shondaland But I'm pretty happy to close out 2020 and look forward to a better year next year. And I think we all just miss getting together and seeing our friends.

And we're seeing events continue to be virtual.

I think most of us in the book community were hoping it would be 2021. But I think, like everybody, it just kind of wears on you, not knowing when we'll return to some semblance of normal. I was already working from home, so that didn't change too much. My community is taking the virus seriously.

SCOTT NEUMYER: How are you doing? It's kind of a crazy time we're living in right now. To celebrate the recent release of The Cousins, and with McManus’s most well-known novel, One of Us Is Lying (which spent more than 130 weeks on the prestigious New York Times Best Seller list) currently in development at NBC/Peacock, Shondaland spoke with the author about her new novel, her journey to becoming a writer, secret keeping, and so much more. Following three cousins who find themselves searching for long-buried secrets among the lush oceanfront views of Gull Cove Island, The Cousins is a masterwork of familial angst and multi-perspective storytelling all wrapped up in a thrilling young adult mystery. But what sets this book apart as, perhaps, the author’s very best work is the way McManus also weaves a detailed family story that’s simultaneously poignant and tragic. It should come as no surprise then to hear that McManus’s latest novel, The Cousins (available now from Delacorte Press), is full of many of the twists and turns that her readers adore.

The Cousins by Karen M. McManus