"Cross My Heart"

Megan Collins is the author of Cross My Heart, Thicker Than Water, The Family Plot, Behind the Red Door, and The Winter Sister. She received her B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and she holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University. She teaches creative writing and is Managing Editor of 3Elements Review. A Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Net nominee, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in many print and online journals. She lives in Connecticut.

Collins applied the Page 69 Test to Cross My Heart and reported the following:

This is page 69 of Cross My Heart, which includes a text exchange between two characters:

I’m expecting an immediate, emphatic answer: Omg that’s insane, my co-worker LOVES him. Instead, Edith responds with three surprised-face emojis before typing again.

Wowwwww I have not seen that. I think
my co-worker said she doesn’t like him
though.

Wait, really? Why not?

I’m not sure. Something about bad
vibes? It was a while ago.

Well, that’s not much of a reason. But this vague answer presents a good opportunity.

Do you think you could connect
me with her? So I could ask her
myself?

Why, are you like…
investigating him? lol

I hesitate only a second before crafting a lie with just enough truth.

A friend of mine has actually
started talking to him after
meeting him online. They’ve only
seen each other once so far, so
it’s definitely early, but if he’s got
bad vibes…I don’t know. Makes
me want to find out more haha

I watch as Edith’s ellipsis appears. Oh, she says after a while, an answer so curt that I worry my request seems crazy. It’s not that I even care about Morgan’s supposedly “bad vibes.”

I’m actually a little astounded at how well this page gives a snapshot of the entire book. One of the most obvious elements of the story that it shows is the structure. Cross My Heart contains a lot of text messages, emails between characters, web messages, DMs, even a few voicemail transcripts, so this page introduces that format nicely. It also shows a couple crucial things about the protagonist, Rosie: (1) she’s not against bending the truth just a little bit to get what she wants (she’s a romantic and an idealist, and she thinks sometimes you just need to give fate a little push, even if others might side-eye you for it); (2) at the same time, she’s sensitive to people thinking she’s crazy, a trigger she developed after the ex who dumped her in her wedding dress called her that very word. This page also shows that she’s trying to get information on a man named Morgan, which is something Rosie spends the first half of the novel doing, if only to prove that the man she’s falling for does not have a sinister past.

I honestly can’t think of a better page to give the reader a taste of this book! But in case they want a little more: it’s a thriller that my editor has been pitching as You’ve Got Mail by way of Gillian Flynn, and I like to say it’s about a woman who fervently believes she’s living a romcom—only to discover it’s actually a thriller. It’s my wildest and twistiest book yet, and I’m so excited for readers to meet Rosie!

Visit Megan Collins's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Plot.

The Page 69 Test: Thicker Than Water.

--Marshal Zeringue