Talking Thrillers with Author Jeneva Rose: You Shouldn’t Have Come Here

Rose: I’ve stayed at Airbnb’s throughout the US and Europe, sometimes having the whole place to myself and sometimes renting a room in a person’s home. Overall, I’ve had good experiences but there have been some odd ones, like an overbearing host or undisclosed cameras set-up in all the common areas. I’ve thought a lot about this individual transaction of house/room rentals. As the guest, you expect because it’s a business transaction everything will be business as usual.

As the host, you expect the same. But what if it wasn’t? What if someone didn’t have the best of intentions? What if you truly could not trust the person sleeping in the same home as you? That’s what led me to the idea for You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, which is about a woman who books a room at a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. When she arrives, she’s pleased to find that the host is a handsome man but there are things she discovers that she’s not too pleased about: a lack of cell service, no Wi-Fi, and the sheriff showing up saying a previous guest went missing.

Despite that, they fall for one another; however, as her departure date nears things change for the worse. She believes his infatuation has turned to obsession and he might not let her leave. He thinks she’s hiding something from him, including her reason for staying at the ranch to begin with. It’s a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when you open your heart and your home to a total stranger.

Rose: I’ve written eight books. You Shouldn’t Have Come Here is my sixth published book. My next two will publish in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024. It’s hard to say which is my favorite because they’re all meaningful to me for different reasons. The Girl I Was was the book I needed to write for myself to work through and process grief and to prove that I could in fact write a book.

The Perfect Marriage is my first-born and became a break-out success, selling over 800,000 copies across formats, despite the fact that it was published by a small publisher in another country with zero marketing budget. That book means so much to me because it made me realize what I can accomplish if I put my all into something.

One of Us is Dead was the most fun I’ve had while writing a book, so I treasure that experience and hope to revisit those characters one day. With You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, I really took a risk crafting a thriller that blurs genres and feels like a romance in the beginning but gets creepier as the story progresses and the underlying tension builds.

Being able to try something different and write what I want to write is also an incredible thing to be able to do. So, final answer – they are all my favorite

Rose: I love this question because it’s fun to daydream up these types of things. I could see Elizabeth Olsen as the character of Grace Evans, the Airbnb guest, and I could see Chris Pine as the character of Calvin Wells, the Airbnb host.

Rose: I was looking for a beautiful, rural setting to serve as the backdrop of the Airbnb ranch. I wanted a place with a lot of wildlife in an expansive area that feels small and claustrophobic despite how sprawling nature can be. I wanted a place that could be cut off from the outside world due to its remote location. That’s how I landed on Dubois, Wyoming. From all of the research I did for the book, I fell in love with Wyoming from afar, and hopefully, I’ll be able to visit the place I wrote about one day.

Rose: Without giving any spoilers away, there were quite a few scenes that involve animals (since they’re out in Wyoming and on a ranch), so any scene where I had to consider the animals’ movement or how they would interact or just making note of their presence was more difficult and took a lot more thought. I also had to do a lot of research on the animals I featured, which was fun, because now I know a lot of random facts about quite a few animals.

Rose: I recently wrapped up three projects which I wrote back-to-back-to-back in a six-month period. I’m not sure how I did it, but I did, and I’m exhausted from it. One of them is a thriller that’ll release in Spring 2024. Another is a rom-com called It’s a Date (Again) which will release from Amazon in Fall 2023, and the other has not been announced yet, but it’ll release Winter of 2023. I’ll be starting on edits for the thriller soon, but other than that, I’ve been preparing for the You Shouldn’t Have Come Here book tour, which includes stops in Grand Rapids, NYC, Greenville, St. Louis, Tampa, Dallas, Chicago, Oak Brook, and two in Wisconsin. 

Get Jeneva Rose’s latest release, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, out now on Amazon

You’ve opened up your house and your heart to a total stranger… What could possibly go wrong?

Grace Evans, an overworked New Yorker looking for a total escape from her busy life, books an Airbnb on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. When she arrives at the idyllic getaway, she’s pleased to find that the owner is a handsome man by the name of Calvin Wells—and he’s eager to introduce her to his easygoing way of life. But there are things Grace discovers that she’s not too pleased about: A lack of cell phone service. A missing woman. And a feeling that something isn’t right with the ranch.

Despite her uneasiness, the two bond and start to fall for one another. However, as her departure date nears, things change for the worse. What began as a playful romance soon turns into a complicated web of lies. Grace grows wary of Calvin as his infatuation for her seems to have morphed to obsession. Calvin fears that Grace is hiding something from him—including her reason for staying at his ranch to begin with. Vacation flings typically end in heartbreak, but for Grace and Calvin, it’ll be far more destructive.