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noveldeelights 's review for:

The End of Us by Olivia Kiernan
4.0

You might want to skip this one if you have trust issues. Just sayin’.

Myles and Lana are living the good life. Until Myles loses a lot of money in an investment gone horrendously wrong. They stand to lose everything, but neither one is bound to let that happen. After all, they deserve this life. Nothing less will do in the slightest. But surely there’s a line you don’t cross?

One evening while talking to their neighbours, Gabe and Holly Wright, the solution of Life Insurance fraud comes up. As it does. There are the beginnings of a plan, which the Wrights make sound incredibly easy, and obviously they will gladly help for a cut of the money. But nobody is serious, right? They’re not actually going to do this? Myles doesn’t think so. Until one evening, Lana doesn’t come home.

The story is told by Myles. I can’t say I particularly liked him, to be honest. For the most part, he seemed awfully entitled. It also becomes clear quite early on that he has no scruples whatsoever, doing whatever he feels is necessary to keep a handle on this nice life he and Lana have created. Despite finding himself in a situation he didn’t ask for, and dealing with things he wasn’t at all prepared for, I found it nearly impossible to muster up a smidgen of sympathy for him. In my mind, greed and overreaching is what put them in this situation in the first place.

In fact, none of the characters were all that likeable. Lana came across as rather toxic and manipulative to me, and I could never really get a solid grasp on Gabe and Holly. There’s an awful lot of backstabbing going on. Betrayal and deceit seem to lurk around every corner and nobody can be trusted. I didn’t think it was too hard to figure out at least some of what had occurred, but the bigger picture remained somewhat of a mystery to me until the reveal. And I still have a few questions, to be fair.

‘The End of Us‘ is a slow-burning, character-driven psychological thriller that shows how far people are willing to go to protect themselves, to survive. It’s a twisty and addictive tale full of intrigue and deception, which definitely takes “a cunning plan” to a whole new level. At its heart, there’s a moral dilemma that will make you wonder what you would do. I thoroughly enjoyed this suspenseful stand-alone by Olivia Kiernan and I very much look forward to whatever’s next.