Rachel Hawkins has always had a flair for the dramatic. In grade school, she treated her dolls like tragic heroines in modern gothic novels or Tennessee Williams plays. “The way I played Barbies alarmed my parents,” Hawkins says over Zoom from her office in Opelika, Ala. “I gave the Barbies story lines. I shoved my Barbie Ferrari down the stairs so many times in horrible accidents or murders that the wheels fell off. My mom was like, Please stop staging cliffside dives in your Barbie Ferrari!”
The bestselling author, who writes atmospheric thrillers and paranormal rom-coms, has decorated her office with posters of book covers from 1960s suspense novels. “It’s a lot of women in nightgowns, running from houses,” says Hawkins, who grew up reading gothic classics like Rebecca and Jane Eyre and romance writers Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins, and counts them among her influences. “My books are about what happens when women are pushed into corners. When you take away choices and avenues of escape, what’ll they do? In my books, the answer’s usually murder.”
Hawkins, who lives in Auburn, Ala., with her husband and son, has written some two dozen voice-driven books—for kids, teens, and adults—during her 15-year career. Her novels include Hex Hall, Hawkins’s 2010 YA debut about a boarding school for witches, and The Wife Upstairs, her 2021 adult thriller debut, a retelling of Jane Eyre. She’s also the author of a few paranormal rom-coms (written under the pen name Erin Sterling—a combination of family middle names) that include 2021’s The Ex Hex, which is being developed as a TV series. There are more than 1.5 million copies of Hawkins’s books in print, according to her publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and her books have been translated into 25 languages.
Hawkins’s twisty latest, The Storm, out in January, is a gothic thriller set in fictional St. Medard’s Bay, Ala., a beachside town that, over the decades, has been hit by multiple hurricanes and was the site of the notorious 1984 murder of political golden boy Landon Fitzroy—who may or may not have been killed by his teen mistress, Lo Bailey. The book follows Geneva Corliss, owner of the struggling Rosalie Inn, whose life is upended when true crime author August Fletcher arrives in town to write a book about Landon’s murder. August is accompanied by Lo, now in her 60s, who wants to tell her story. As Geneva gets closer to August and Lo, who stay at her hotel, she learns shocking details surrounding Landon’s death—just as the town prepares for another hurricane, one that threatens to destroy everything in its path, before the truth about the murder can come out.
The Storm was partly inspired by a 1984 Vanity Fair article by Dominick Dunne that Hawkins read in 2024, about the murder of Vicki Morgan, mistress of millionaire Alfred Bloomingdale, heir to the department store fortune. The scandalous crime piqued Hawkins’s interest—and dovetailed with her idea to set a book in a town plagued by hurricanes. “I love natural disasters,” Hawkins says. “It’s catnip for a writer. A hurricane is the only natural disaster that you really have advance warning of. If you knew a storm was coming, maybe that helps you plot other things—things the storm could potentially cover up.”
Sarah Cantin, Hawkins’s editor, praises the author for her cinematic flair and ability to expertly unfurl a mystery. “Rachel’s books have a feminist edge in a delicious popcorn package,” Cantin says. “She’s having fun, and you can feel that as a reader. She always manages to surprise me with one more twist.”
Hawkins was born in 1979 in Newport News, Va., and raised in Dothan, Ala., a creative only child. When she was 17, her father died from melanoma, profoundly altering her life. “Anyone who’s lost a parent as a kid has an inner toughness,” she says. “Anything can happen and anything is possible, good or bad. It freed me in many ways.” While her father was in the hospital, Hawkins took comfort in books. “I remember reading Another Dawn, a cowboy western romance by Sandra Brown. It was so transporting during a difficult time. That’s what I want to be for people.”
In 2002, Hawkins earned a BA in English literature from Auburn University, then spent a few years working toward a graduate degree in teaching, but dropped out. She married her husband, an educator and artist, in 2002 and had her son in 2005. While working as a high school teacher, she began writing Hex Hall. Her husband cashed out a retirement account so she could quit her job and finish the book. Since then, she’s been writing full-time, averaging a book or more a year.
Holly Root, Hawkins’s agent, has been with the author since Hex Hall and marvels at her work ethic. “Reading Rachel’s books feels like being hosted at an incredible party,” Root says. “She has laid this rich table, and there’s something for everyone.”
Hawkins made the pivot to adult fiction in 2017, as she was ending a YA series about teen royals that wasn’t selling well. That year, she was approached by Alloy Entertainment to write an updated take on Jane Eyre, and delivered The Wife Upstairs in 2019. In the months leading up to the novel’s release, she also wrote her first rom-com, The Ex Hex. “Adding that was crazy of me,” she says. “But I wanted to diversify.”
Writing for adults has allowed Hawkins to lean into her gothic and romance roots—and write the occasional sex scene. “I just scream and go for it,” she says of that writing process. “Though, I’ll say, there’s nothing more horrific than having your sex scene copyedited.”
She credits the South—where she set The Wife Upstairs and other books—with inspiring her writing. “The South is a place of storytellers and secrets,” says Hawkins, who’s especially drawn to stories about family secrets. As a young woman, she was shocked to learn that, in the 1930s, her great-grandfather murdered his second wife with an ax—a detail her mother failed to mention for years. “No one in my family talked about the murder!” she recalls. “That’s considered a random story in my family.”
Hawkins relishes writing novels filled with intrigue, homicidal deeds, friendship, and love—ones that, like an out-of-control Barbie Ferrari, are a thrill ride from start to finish. Last year, she and her husband bought a small apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland, and she hopes to spend some time there soon to work on a book. She’s proud of how far she’s come as a novelist. “Publishing is a hard business, but I’m incredibly stubborn,” she says. “The biggest thing for me is, I hope you have fun.”
Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.
