Welcome to The Scroll, a new column that checks in with your favorite writers, asking them to exclusively reveal and annotate the best moments from their brand new books. We also get them to dish on their writing process and divulge a few plot secrets along the way.

This round, we chatted with Saratoga Schaefer, who has successfully left our hearts racing with their chilling thrillers that you won’t be able to put down. Their upcoming novel, The Last Time We Drowned, not only brings them to Cosmo Reads, but also makes us re-think our yachting dreams as a couple of influencers get an unexpected and bloody surprise on their boat. Ready to find out some more? Below, Saratoga chats with us about the element of surprise, creating a setting that works for thrillers, and how fear and clarity create a very human experience in books.

Charlie is an interesting character here in that she is an influencer, but she’s different from her fellow yacht mates?

Charlie was always going to be the main character for this. I knew that I wanted this boat full of mega influencers, and I knew that they probably wouldn't be super likable. I love writing unlikable characters. I think it's really fun, but I know that some readers get exhausted if they're constantly around them. I needed Charlie to be a little bit more relatable and sort of be a stand-in for the reader. So her inherent love of writing and books kind of made her the perfect person to be the vehicle of this book.

Being that Charlie is a bookstagrammer. Did you talk to any as you were writing this book?

I didn't actually talk to any real life bookstagrammers when I was writing this, because I was writing this before I was a published author. Initially, I had my own experience being like a sobriety micro-influencer, so I had that side of things to pull from. I was just very fascinated in the idea of influencers being their own little community, and greatly inspired by things like influencer hype houses and content houses, where they would all be put in like one place together. I was like, Oh my god. Well, what happens if what someone gets murdered? That's the story!

Did you find that setting it on a yacht was limiting in any way?

It felt really exciting, because they're trapped. There's nowhere for them to go. I was like, I can totally torment these people. This is going to be amazing. And that's kind of what I did. I actually like those more isolated and limited settings, because it allows me to a get a little bit deeper into creepy, spooky things. It also allows me to dig a little deeper into the characters, because how they react to being in that setting is a really good indicator of who they are as people. I enjoy those locked rooms or tight areas or single geographic locations.

In the excerpt, it’s very clear that Charlie is running away from something. How do you decide between those moments of clarity over what is happening to her versus a moment of fear?

They kind of go hand in hand. Charlie will have these moments of realization or remembrance or honesty with herself, and then something will happen that shakes that or confronts that in some way. It's like one step forward, two steps back. That's kind of how we as humans tend to process things, especially things that are more complicated. I wanted to capture that complexity in her character journey, where she can sometimes be frustrating because she's not totally getting it. That's very relatable.

Would you ever spend time on Empress?

I think that depends on when in the book I'm dropping in. If the weather was fine, I'd be okay spending 24 hours on Empress. I would just have to manage my expectations and perhaps my irritation with the influencers on board. But in the middle of the book where they're trapped and there's a hurricane and people are dying? No. No, thank you, I shall pass on that.

Excerpt and annotations: Copyright © 2026 by Saratoga Schaefer.

The Last Time We Drowned, by Saratoga Schaefer will be released on June 2, 2026 from Cosmo Reads. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:

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