It Should Have Been You is about a woman named Susan who writes a mean, gossipy message to her sisters all about a neighbour, Celeste, who gets on her nerves. She does something many of us have done in the past – she sends the message to the wrong group. In this case, she accidentally sends it to her entire 300-strong neighbourhood WhatsApp group. The message gives away secrets about Celeste’s family – her husband, her son, her daughter, and all hell breaks loose with screenshots spreading like wildfire around south county Dublin. But things take a darker turn, and within days, four people are dead and Susan is in fear of her life.
The book was inspired by real life – not one particular moment, but many moments in many WhatsApp groups, when someone sends a message clearly meant for someone else entirely.
It’s often something innocuous but occasionally, it’s a criticism of someone in the group. Most of us have done it once or twice – sent a message to the person who is the subject of the text, not the intended recipient. This usually results in embarrassment and apologies and everyone moves on.
But I wondered: what if the outcome was something more than embarrassment. What if the message was the flap of the butterfly’s wings. What if the ripple effect had more serious consequences – the outing of an affair, the uncovering of a crime, or indeed, an incitement to murder?
It Should Have Been You is also a book about sisters – the dynamic of that sibling relationship, the closeness, the things sisters will do for each other. And it’s about teenagers, and the things they’ll do to each other. It’s about husbands and wives and marriage. It’s about affairs and mistakes and neighbourhood gossip. It’s about missed red flags and heads buried in sand. And of course, as it’s a crime novel, it’s about murder.
Of course in real life, erroneous screen shots don’t end in murder, not usually. But fiction is about exploring the ‘what if’ – taking an idea to its furthest lengths and asking what might happen. And it’s also a cautionary tale: if you’re about to share a screen shot, check where it’s going before you hit send.
