Latest Books THE LAST TIME WE MET with Anna E. Wahlgren

Old friends. Old grudges. One evening back together again. The last time they all had dinner, someone wound up dead. What could go wrong?

Sophie Lind hasn’t seen her college friends in a decade when a dinner invitation from one of the friends, Ava, arrives on her doorstep. They used to all be inseparable, meeting for dinner every week, even after graduation. But the last time they all had dinner, ten years ago, someone was dead by the end of the night.

It was Sophie’s then-fiancé William who died that night in his apartment, just a room away from the friends he called family. Sophie isn’t sure if it’s curiosity—or guilt—that pushes her to accept Ava’s dinner invitation and unbury those old wounds. When the six friends arrive for the dinner, there’s a small box waiting for each of them by their plates. Each box uncovers secrets that the friends have kept hidden all these years, and with the door to the apartment locked from the outside, it’s clear that Ava didn’t plan this dinner just to reminisce about the past.

What happened to William is buried beneath someone’s lies—and nobody’s leaving this dinner table until the truth comes out.

Anna E. Wahlgren recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss her latest mystery, THE LAST TIME WE MET.

Anna E. Wahlgren

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?

The idea for this book came to me as I read an article about a tragic death among friends. It stayed with me and I kept wondering how something could go so wrong surrounded by people you know and trust. I also started thinking about the impact that the experience must have had on the remaining friends, and once I did that my imagination got lost in all sorts of scenarios of what really could have happened.

In addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?

The book focuses on how we all play a small part in things that happen and that we know very little about what really goes on in other people’s lives. My hope is that readers might think twice the next time they form an opinion about somebody else and understand that nothing is ever completely black and white.

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?

When this idea came to me I was already working on another book. This other plot just started developing in my mind as I was struggling with my other script, and when I realised that the idea was pretty much complete I decided to stop what I was working on to write this instead. I wrote the first draft in one month.

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?

Not more than usual. I love suspense and thrillers and I have a passionate interest in psychology so I am sure that I was devouring psychological thrillers, both books and movies, as I was writing the book. But then again psychological thrillers are always knocking around in my head.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

I wasn’t exactly thinking of filling an empty space in crime lit with my protagonist, it was more about a character who in the eyes of others might have taken the easy way out and ran away from her problems. I thought it would be interesting to bring her back to confront all that she left behind and see how she would deal with the consequences. As it turns out all of the characters had their reasons to leave and I had a lot of fun exploring the group dynamic as they all fell back into the roles that they thought they had moved on from.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?

I am currently working on a small town murder mystery set on the east coast of Sweden, focusing on the death of a summer guest in the past and the secrets and lies that surface after the only suspect of the crime is found dead fourteen years later.