As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan’s amazing debut novel, ’The Lifeboat ’ when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It’s such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

Karen Thompson Walker, speaking from her experience as a publishing editor as well as a novelist, describes an early encounter with Charlotte Rogan’s debut The Lifeboat at the manuscript stage. The remark highlights the intensity with which editors can respond to an unpublished work—reading it “in one night” signals both narrative propulsion and professional excitement. Her disappointment at “los[ing] it to another house” points to the competitive nature of acquisitions, where multiple publishers may pursue the same promising debut. The final sentence functions as a compact critical endorsement, praising the novel for uniting literary style (“beautiful writing”) with page-turning plot (“suspenseful storytelling”).