The End of Her

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This is the start of a blackmail campaign which sees Erica impose herself upon all aspects of Patrick’s life. Although the ending was satisfaying I’m a bit skeptical about Stephanie’s actions all of a sudden, as they don’t seem in character with what we’ve been told about her until then. Erica inserts herself in other people's lives, too, and these lives intertwine in ways the people she meets don't realize. Dysfunctional marriages provide the backdrop for this workmanlike domestic thriller from Lapena ( Someone We Know).

Then, as I'm getting towards the end of the book, a thought popped into my head: "You know what would totally cement the insanity? This gave us a well rounded picture of how this one newcomer in town threw several lives into turmoil.

She soon becomes engrossed in her novel, but looks up a little while later when she senses movement across the street. Shari Lapena has done it again - another cracking domestic thriller, and trust me, 'the end' will leave you clamouring for more. With a novel and an ending that taps into present day concerns and fears, The End of Her made for a satisfying read. The queen of the one-sit read' Linwood BarclayThe latest unputdownable bestseller from Shari Lapena, author of THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR and SOMEONE WE KNOW.

First-time novelist Lapena’s writing is spare and tense, and it makes The Couple Next Door a compulsive read. But someone from Patrick’s past has come knocking and Stephanie’s world is about to be knocked on its axis. Her debut thriller, The Couple Next Door, was a global bestseller, the bestselling fiction title in the UK in 2017 and has been optioned for television.For a moment she stands in the doorway, stupefied, because she can’t remember putting anything on the stove. A stay-at-home mom, Stephanie feels she is at her wit’s end, and Patrick, a partner at an architectural firm, also finds his work performance suffering due lack of sleep. That’s because Erica, disgusting piece of human scum that she is, is also running a racket on two other couples at the same time (related to the main storyline, but I won’t say how) and every so often there would be these other perspectives randomly inserted into the narrative. The plot is moved along by Erica, a woman who Patrick had an affair with at the time of his first wife’s death, that may or may not know more details about this death and Patrick whose arrival in town brings all of this to light. Lapena is great at creating a captivating story and building up characters and destroying them at the same time but the thing that always seems to fall flat for me is the endings.

But while readers are meant to despise Erica with a passion, and to sympathize with the protagonists whose lives she is trying ruin, Shari Lapena isn’t about to let Patrick off the hook either.I was initially ambivalent about this man, but thanks to his actions, he soon became the man one loves to hate, albeit in a Dallas/Dynasty-esque way. Her story telling is so strong and so are her characters that I just expect that to carry through till the end but it just seems to lose a little power going into the ending. She would only be wherever there's a device connected to the internet, so it couldn't have been far. Stephanie had always been a little bit of a control freak, and she'd spent a lot of time on her birth plan, wanting everything to go just right.