What is the title of your latest release?
WATCH US FALL
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
WATCH US FALL is a psychological suspense novel about four best friends—Addie, Lucy, Penelope, and Estella—living their post-grad dream life in a shared house in trendy Georgetown, Washington DC. When Josh—Addie’s celebrity ex-boyfriend—disappears, police come calling, secrets spill, and things fall apart fast.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
My novels always take place in Washington, DC. I’ve lived in DC or the DC area since I was sixteen years old, and I love the city so much. For Watch Us Fall, it was a matter of choosing the right neighborhood. My narrator is a broke post-grad up to her ears in student debt, and I thought, no way she’d get very far from her alma mater, which were the best days of her life. So I tossed her and her friends in a very glamorous but falling apart Georgetown rowhouse, where the rent is super high but the social scene fantastic.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Of course! Did I mention Lucy and their friends have great parties? Who doesn’t want to go to a great Georgetown party?
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Lucy Ambrose is loyal to a fault. She loves her friends—almost obsessively. She is fearless in the protection of the people she loves. I find these qualities admirable—to a point.
What was one of your biggest challenges while writing this book (spoiler-free of course)?
WATCH US FALL is a psychological suspense novel. One of the most difficult things is getting the psychology right, especially with characters so completely unlike me. The central question of the novel—other than where the heck is Josh Egan—is what do you do with a truth you can’t psychologically face? If you lie to yourself, or allow yourself to be lied to, at what point do lies cross over into delusion? All very scary stuff I really struggle to understand.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I love revisions! It’s a struggle to keep myself from revision before the draft is ready. But I’m trying to learn to be more patient.
What’s your favorite indulgence?
An espresso martini (or two!) at the end of a hard writing day.
Describe your writing space/office!
An utter and complete disaster zone. I have a desk for the business work for Watch Us Fall (where I’m sitting now), and a standing desk in front of my overflowing bookshelves for writing my current work-in-progress, my book three. My cat lays in the middle of the mess. My family smartly avoids the space.
What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve received?
Write before the sun’s up, when the world still sleeps.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca made me want to write psychological suspense. When I was a kid, I stole it from my mom’s bookshelf and read it before I could really understand it—but loved it. I’ve read it at least three more times at different points in my life and got something different each time. I love how the meaning changes based on who you are now and what you bring as a reader. Just an amazing book.
What’s one of your earliest book memories?
My mother giving me her old Nancy Drew novels. I have this vivid childhood memory: sitting next to her on the floor as we set her old books on my newly-painted white shelves—the smell of the new paint and the old books, and the feeling of timelessness, turning the same pages she’d turned when she was a girl.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Psychological suspense, literary thrillers, crime fiction—I gobble them all.
What’s your favorite movie?
LA Confidential.
Where is your favorite place to write?
My mom has a place at the beach, and in the off-season when no one is around, it’s so quiet there. I love to write by the window overlooking the ocean, and when I’m finished, take long walks on the beach. It’s best in winter when you have to wear a parka and bare feet.
What can you eat and never get sick of?
Chocolate covered pretzels, so yummy!
Will you share a favorite, recent-ish book you recommend?
My favorite books this month were What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown, Heartwood by Amity Gaige, and Lou Berney’s Crooks. I just finished Heart the Lover by Lily King, so good. I’d recommend them all.
Do you have hobbies?
I started indoor rock climbing, an insane hobby given my overwhelming fear of heights and of falling (I am very clumsy). But last week I finally got to the top of the big wall without having a heart attack. Next week, who knows how far I’ll climb.
What do you do when you have free time?
I love to hike in cool places around the DC area, especially the C&O Canal’s Billy Goat Trail, and I like to explore indie bookstores. The DC area has tons of great bookstores, and I really love beach bookstores: Browseabout Books, Bethany Beach Books. The Buzzed Word in Ocean City, MD also sells wine, which seems to me heaven on earth.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on another psychological suspense novel, this time set in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC. The plot revolves around an old murder, two families in conflict with each other, mother versus mother—so fun!
Lucy and her three best friends share a glamorous but decaying house in the heart of Georgetown. They call themselves “the Sweeties” and live an idyllic post-grad lifestyle complete with exciting jobs, dramatic love lives, and, most importantly, each other.
But when Addie, the group’s queen bee, discovers that her ex-boyfriend Josh has gone missing, the Sweeties’ worlds are turned upside down. In the days leading up to his disappearance, Josh, a star investigative journalist from a prominent political family, was behaving erratically—and Lucy is determined to find out why. All four friends upend their lives to search for him, but detectives begin to suspect that the Sweeties might know more than they’re letting on.
As the investigation unfolds, Lucy’s obsession with the case reaches a boiling point, and with it, her own troubling secrets begin bubbling to the surface of her carefully curated life. A thrilling account of the lies and delusions that lurk beneath cloistered groups of female friends and the sinister realities of celebrity, Watch Us Fall is a gripping mystery and an examination of the things we tell ourselves when we can’t face the truth.
Women's Fiction Psychological | Women's Fiction Friendship [ Simon & Schuster, On Sale: December 2, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781501141720 / eISBN: 9781501141751 ]
Christina Kovac, author of Watch Us Fall and The Cutaway, writes psychological suspense novels set in Washington, DC, where she worked as a television journalist at NBC News, before turning to fiction writing. She lives with her family outside of Washington, D.C.
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