The Jennifer Garner Easter Egg Author Laura Dave Included in The First Time I Saw Him

“I sat down with the showrunners before they started the writers room in the season and I said, ‘Here’s 100 pages,’” Dave told E!. “Normally I don’t like to show anything before I’m completely done, but I’m like, ‘Here’s 100 pages, and this is exactly where it goes. These are the moves of the rest of it.’”

“I knew I already had a whole draft, I just wasn’t ready to share everything,” she continued.  “And pretty much those moves were the moves of the book. There were some minor tweaks, but that was pretty much where we were going. So, they knew that the question of the book—and then the question of the second season—was: What is what are you willing to do to be forgiven? How do you get that second chance we all yearn for?”

But that’s not to say the recently debuted second season—which sees Judy Greer among those joining the cast—is an exact replica of her book.

“It’s really beautiful the way they dovetail,” Dave noted. “They don’t get to those questions in exactly the same way, but I think it will be fun for readers and viewers to see how they speak to each other.”

For instance, that means, “You’re not going to see Owen killed in the show or the book,” she quipped of Coster-Waldau’s character, “because then I don’t really know why we’re telling the story. Because for me—and it’s sort of how I approach thriller writing in general— I’m not interested in revenge or vengeance.”