“You titillate people with the reality of what you create. That’s the point of a thriller, isn’t it? You want us to think your plots could really happen. Would it be so surprising if someone took it too far? It has happened to other writers, has it not? What would you do if some copycat killer came along and decided to bury a child alive because of something he read in your book?” 

While attending a virtual book club event, a reader’s husband asks Lisa if she is ever afraid of someone bringing her books to life. This question foreshadows the rest of the novel, in which Lisa really does imagine her own book coming to life as a means of coping with her grief.

“So began the chain of events that would pick apart Lisa’s whole world, like loose threads unraveling. The Dark Star.”

After Lisa’s mother died tragically in a car accident, the deaths of her father and three youngest brothers followed. Lisa thinks of this period of time in her life as The Dark Star. Lisa struggles to cope with the grief of losing her family throughout the novel.

“I don’t know. I won’t know until I write the book. But all my life, those are the things I’ve seen wherever I go. I don’t look at the world the way other people do. I live somewhere else. To me, every place turns into stories and crimes and characters and mysteries.” 

Here, Lisa describes the way she experiences the world as a writer. Lisa can look at a landscape and imagine characters taking actions in those spaces. This quote becomes significant later on, as Lisa struggles to separate reality from the fictional world she’s created in her head.