By Louise Sapphira.
Shailee Thompson’s debut novel challenges preconceptions about genre while exploring modern dating and relationships woven into a night of passionate crime.
Speed dating takes a turn for the worse in Shailee Thompson’s debut novel, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates, when the protagonist, Jamie, finds her date has been murdered in pitch black. After the lights are turned back on, chaos erupts among the other participants. The novel explores more than the current context of dating and the fear of intimacy with people who, to a certain extent, can be considered strangers. Female relationships are also a theme in the novel, particularly between Jamie and her closest friend, Laurie. How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates has the reader guessing who will make it out of the night alive and who will not, and, most of all, who is the murderer. Challenging the concept of genre and its boundaries in the horror-romance novel, which will also have its readership giggle in many scenes, is what initiated the book. I was fortunate enough to discuss this with Shailee, including the crafting process of writing a fast-moving, action-packed novel with twists coming from all directions.
We started with why Shailee chose a cross-genre. Shailee explained that it all began with an Instagram post in October 2023 highlighting that there are too many Christmas rom-coms and not enough Halloween rom-coms. ‘I thought it was a really interesting statement to make, because on the surface level, horror and romance do not seem like they would naturally go together.’ At the time, Shailee had no idea what the horror-romance novel would be about or how it would be written. However, ‘It seemed like something that would be a fun experiment, a bit of a Frankenstein challenge, to see if I could put those genres together.’
What becomes evident to the reader is that the concepts of Leading Ladies and Final Girls are prevalent in the novel. Shailee says, ‘They’re obviously really integral archetypes to the genres they exist in.’ Shailee discusses the characters Jamie Lee Curtis and Laurie Strode in Halloween and how the Final Girl is an essential part of the slasher films they starred in. She draws on her English teaching background and leads our discussion into how these archetypes can be considered ‘through different perspectives, and they can have different meanings in different contexts and in different times.’ With the Leading Lady in rom-coms, Shailee discusses Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts, as well as more recently, Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson. ‘There are these characteristics of a Leading Lady that are meant to be aspirational in some way, but twenty years after these movies have been released, there are also some aspects of those characters that seem quite reductive.’ She adds, ‘It was a way to rewrite those roles through Jamie…wondering whether she can be a Leading Lady or a Final Girl and try to modernise it and make something that would fit a little bit better with the context that we are in now.’ But they are also positive roles for Shailee. ‘Strong female relationships and strong female characters are really important to me within this story and a lot of other stories.’
Shailee’s most valued relationships have been with female friends, which inspired one of the most important themes in her novel. ‘But it really did come from probably two places, when I was initially doing research into the book.’ Shailee says, ‘I would watch the rom-coms, and I would watch the slashers, and the representation of the female friendships just did not align with my own experiences.’ For example, in the horror films, ‘The friend was basically sacrificed in some way to the killer or the entity.’ For rom-coms, ‘The best friend was really just there to be a sounding board for the Leading Lady.’ There was this formula that Shailee wanted to break. ‘I knew from the beginning that I wanted to write a friendship between Jamie and Laurie that felt a little bit more authentic to my experiences with friendship.’
In How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates, two best friends, Jamie and Laurie, went on a speed dating event together. However, Shailee says, ‘Honestly, I chose the speed date because it was a really good way for me to incorporate the horror aspects of a secluded location…to create a whodunit atmosphere and just lock twenty people in one space.’ She adds, ‘It was that light bulb moment [because] everyone’s a suspect.’ However, there was another reason behind this setting. Shailee says, ‘Currently, about modern dating, there is a lot of fatigue with apps…There are a lot of conversations around how dating now is very different from how it was in the past.’ In How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates ‘I could put some commentary on it as well.’ She speaks about how harm can be caused to a significant other, particularly against women, and how someone so important to you can also cause the most damage. ‘It’s terrible, but how do you function in a world where dating is something that can be dangerous as well?’
Pop culture is also explored in the narrative. Shailee says,’ I think it’s just something that I’ve always had an interest in. I’m the person who loves a bit of trivia, and my brain is kind of just hardwired to retain random facts and knowledge.’ Pop culture also influences one’s own identity. Shailee adds, ‘When you ask people, “what’s your favourite film, what’s your favourite song, what’s your favourite book”, you can make a lot of assumptions about that person from the pop culture that they consume and the media that they enjoy.’ She says, ‘Once I made Jamie a cinephile, it was a really good way for me to get her to make sense of what was happening around her…Getting her to put it into the context of film was something that I was able to use to push the narrative.’
From Jamie’s own internal voice, we see how Shailee creates the setting along with the character arc in the narrative:
“The shiver is followed by a brief clench in my stomach, an anxious pulse I’m used to experiencing at the beginning of these phone-free events, when my brain wants to flick through all the bad scenarios of how tonight could play out in some misguided attempt at self-preservation.”
When all these elements come together, it is no wonder there is a character arc, a journey for the protagonist, Jamie. Shailee says, ‘What you want in any kind of narrative, or at least what I want in any kind of narrative that I’m writing, is that the character changes through the events of the novel.’ At the beginning of the novel, Jamie questions how her thesis should be written. Deep down, she believes the two genres, horror and romance, should be studied together because they are similar, but questions the best way to communicate this. Shailee says, ‘She has this self-doubt…around who she can be, and what her identity is. She describes it a little bit later on in the novel as being on a tightrope, of being too much and not enough.’ Shailee adds, ‘I think as women we are constantly told to be this but not that…There are a lot of unspoken rules and expectations, and it’s very difficult to navigate.’ With Jamie, ‘It’s the character arc of going, “Do I become what somebody expects me to be, or can I create my own role? Can I decide who I’m going to be?”’
On the writing journey of her debut novel, Shailee is a natural pantser who trains herself to be a planner. Shailee starts by dumping information on the pages before the plot is planned. ‘The first scene that I saw for How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates was the scene of Jamie and Curtis in the bar, where they’re surrounded by Red Velvet, and then there is an event that happens in Chapter Five, which kind of kickstarts the events.’ Shailee speaks about her background in theatre, which influences her writing and the emphasis on dialogue in her storytelling. Sometimes, ‘It looks like a script, then I have to put the scene, and I have to put the action into it, because the characters just start talking in my head and I need to get the dialogue down.’
Shailee’s next writing project, referred to as Book Two, is due to be released next year in February 2027. ‘We just call it Book Two, until I’m allowed to tell the title.’ Shailee describes the book as a horror-rom-com. ‘The title is also another play on a film name.’ Something that the readership twigs on with How to Kill a Guy a Ten in Dates and the connection with the movie, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, including the misquotes at the start of each chapter. She says, ‘I’ve left some clues on my social media, but I’ve made them really cryptic…I love a little Easter Egg.’ She adds, ‘I’m playing with a few other subgenres as well, but I really hope people enjoy it…and they see the thread, and what I’m trying to go for in this book as well.’ In the meantime, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates explores a modern reckoning with relationships and dating while highlighting the history and underlying purpose of rom-coms and slashers.
About Shailee Thompson:
Shailee Thompson is the internationally bestselling author of How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates. She’s always had a penchant for writing women with smart mouths, soft hearts, and strong wills going up against extraordinary odds. Based in Brisbane, Australia, you can find Shailee on Instagram.
