Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

One of my favourite things to do in fall is catch up on my mystery/thriller TBR pile! With fall weather comes a chill in the air, which – in my opinion – calls for some spooky and intense novels! Shari Lapena is one of the most popular Canadian thriller writers out there, and while I haven’t loved the past few novels I have read from her, I was very excited to read her newest novel, The End Of Her!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

It starts with a shocking accusation…
Stephanie and Patrick are recently married, with new-born twins. While Stephanie struggles with the disorienting effects of sleep deprivation, there’s one thing she knows for certain – she has everything she ever wanted.
Then a woman from his past arrives and makes a shocking accusation about his first wife. He always claimed her death was an accident – but she says it was murder.
He insists he’s innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. But is Patrick telling the truth? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?
How will it end?

This book combined two of my favourite thriller tropes, domestic and blackmail! I have read several domestic thrillers over the past few years, but if memory serves me correctly, I have only ever read one thriller that’s main thrilling plot line centred around blackmailing the main characters. While I had only assumed the main couple in the story would be getting blackmailed, eventually several other characters get blackmailed by the blackmailer herself. The entire idea of blackmail scares the crap out of me, so whenever it is featured in thrillers, I read them so quickly.

The story itself was so immersive and suspenseful. I have been in a bit of a reading slump lately, so the fact that I read this entire novel in 24-hours says a lot about how fast paced the novel reads. So many different sections of this story had me sitting at the edge of my seat, and by the end of the story, I was so eager to find out how the story was going to include.

The characters in this novel were very strong and well-written. At the beginning of the story, readers are introduced to practically every single character in a span of 50-pages. Initially, all of the characters were jumbled in my mind, but as the story progressed, it became easier to differentiate the characters from one another. Stephanie, one of the main characters, went through a lot of changes from the start to the end of the novel, and I really appreciated how developed she was throughout the story.

The one thing I didn’t love about the book was the writing. Of course, Lapena creates and develops her stories so well, but I didn’t love the actual writing style in this book. I feel like short first-person POV chapters would have been so much better than little third-person POVs that occur during each chapter.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story and gave it 4.25/5 stars! I highly recommend this novel if you are new to thrillers, or love domestic or blackmail thrillers!

Good Night Book Owls!