Beware that Girl Author Teresa Toten on Why She Had to Set Her Book in NYC
Teresa Toten’s new thriller, Beware that Girl, is set in two New Yorks: the rarefied sphere of an ultra-elite upper Manhattan prep school, and the gritty, colorful streets and squats of Chinatown. Kate O’Brian, an expert at self-reinvention, is on the run from a violent past. She has learned to lie to survive, managing to con her way all the way into New York City’s Waverly School. There she uses every dime she makes at her grungy job in Chinatown fighting to fit in, while making top grades on scholarship. But to secure her status, Kate needs Olivia Sumner, a vulnerable rich girl she’s determined to make her best friend. Then a dangerously alluring man joins Waverly staff, getting far too close to Olivia and threatening everything Kate has built. New York City is a character all on its own—and, says Toten, a crucial one. Here she is on why had to set her story in the city that never sleeps.
Beware That Girl
Hardcover $17.99
Beware That Girl
By Teresa Toten
Hardcover $17.99
Beware that Girl had to be set in New York City. Absolutely no other city in the world would do.
I loved New York City even before I knew such a place existed. As a little girl it invaded me through movies and television and books and short stories and especially the New Yorker magazine, which I read but didn’t understand. Certainly all those glittering skyscrapers, the heart-stopping skyline, the stores, the museums, the galleries, and the restaurants were enthralling, but it was the photographs and descriptions of the streets and those crowded, pulsing sidewalks that charged through me.
I first came to NYC as a teenager and visited dozens of times before we moved to New York for a few years. And through all those years, before, during, and since, I’ve walked the breadth of the city over and over again. Life is lived on the streets in New York. You have conversations with strangers who are aggressively kind, who comment on your shoes, tell you where to go, offer an opinion on the play you’re standing in line for. Hell, who offer an opinion on anything.
I walk as if possessed from the Upper East Side through the park and over to the Upper West Side; from Grand Central Station down to Tribeca and back via Greenwich Village. I’ve fallen in and out and back in love with SoHo, Chelsea, NoHo, and the Lower East Side. The streets have stories in all of them.
Beware that Girl is my eleventh novel and the first one that demanded to be set in New York before I wrote a single word. I knew I would have two beautiful blond protagonists. When we meet them, Olivia lives in a fabulous Upper East Side penthouse, and Kate lives in the damp basement of a Chinatown market. I know those streets. I’ve met the people who inhabit those neighborhoods. I’ve argued over the price of mangoes in the markets and sat beside art patrons at galas.
My story calls for a deep and well-established strata of wealth that doesn’t exist to that degree anywhere else in the world except perhaps for London. But I don’t know London’s sidewalks, don’t know its parks, coffee shops, and museums. I don’t know its rhythms or heartbeat, but I know New York. Beware that Girl is a twisted psychological thriller that had to be anchored in a solid truth to work. The hyper reality and energy of New York City, a place where anything is possible, was the only choice.
Beware that Girl is on sale now.
Beware that Girl had to be set in New York City. Absolutely no other city in the world would do.
I loved New York City even before I knew such a place existed. As a little girl it invaded me through movies and television and books and short stories and especially the New Yorker magazine, which I read but didn’t understand. Certainly all those glittering skyscrapers, the heart-stopping skyline, the stores, the museums, the galleries, and the restaurants were enthralling, but it was the photographs and descriptions of the streets and those crowded, pulsing sidewalks that charged through me.
I first came to NYC as a teenager and visited dozens of times before we moved to New York for a few years. And through all those years, before, during, and since, I’ve walked the breadth of the city over and over again. Life is lived on the streets in New York. You have conversations with strangers who are aggressively kind, who comment on your shoes, tell you where to go, offer an opinion on the play you’re standing in line for. Hell, who offer an opinion on anything.
I walk as if possessed from the Upper East Side through the park and over to the Upper West Side; from Grand Central Station down to Tribeca and back via Greenwich Village. I’ve fallen in and out and back in love with SoHo, Chelsea, NoHo, and the Lower East Side. The streets have stories in all of them.
Beware that Girl is my eleventh novel and the first one that demanded to be set in New York before I wrote a single word. I knew I would have two beautiful blond protagonists. When we meet them, Olivia lives in a fabulous Upper East Side penthouse, and Kate lives in the damp basement of a Chinatown market. I know those streets. I’ve met the people who inhabit those neighborhoods. I’ve argued over the price of mangoes in the markets and sat beside art patrons at galas.
My story calls for a deep and well-established strata of wealth that doesn’t exist to that degree anywhere else in the world except perhaps for London. But I don’t know London’s sidewalks, don’t know its parks, coffee shops, and museums. I don’t know its rhythms or heartbeat, but I know New York. Beware that Girl is a twisted psychological thriller that had to be anchored in a solid truth to work. The hyper reality and energy of New York City, a place where anything is possible, was the only choice.
Beware that Girl is on sale now.