Reasons to read: short, but sensational

Personal rating: This book was shocking and FUN! I was born in Salem, MA, so...that deems me an expert as all things spooky, right? You people born in New Orleans, shhhhhhhh

Thanks, Edelweiss and Delacorte for the arc!

In hindsight, I should have known what I was getting into when I started reading. I mean, the first chapter was explosive! We're in the head of Charlotte first and her mind is one to behold. She and her sister Maddi lost their mother and almost right away, their father starts up a relationship with his deceased wife's personal assistant. Charlotte is depressed and we see that from the very start. She hasn't gone to school and she rarely bathes or changes her clothes. Maddi-who has to be the strong one at this point- talks her into going to school one day and things take a whirlwind turn from there. Through their mother's letters to a friend, they start to think that maybe her death wasn't coincidental and that perhaps she'd been murdered.

Charlotte had the most page time in this book, but I sort of wanted more of Maddi. I could tell that she has taken on the role of the caregiver because of Charlotte's deep deep sadness, but her descent into madness is just as poignant; these two girls are angry and they're sad and they want nothing more than to get answers for why their father has given his mistress their mother's engagement ring and why she's sleeping in her bed and it's SO MADDENING. I felt their fury. I could almost hear them screaming at me through the pages.

If you're reading this and know the Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters, this gave me vibes except there're no ghosts or anything.

This book is a slow freefall into a black void with an ending so shocking I had to go back and reread it and pick my jaw up off the floor. I loved every second I was in these two girls' heads.

Happy reading!

I think this book covers topics that can be a little too much for some people, like their mom died, talks about miscarriage, depression, and it's always brought up because it's a part of the story's plot. There is nothing wrong, but the constant reminding can be taken one or two ways. 1) It shows the importance of the story and how it's also affecting the characters, which is how it's slowly building up. Or 2) It can come off like, "okay, we get it, why keep mentioning it?" I was in between those two options honestly, it just made me want it to finish quicker.

The book is a fast-paced book with concise chapters that switch points of view between Maddi and Charlotte. In most of those chapters, there are sentences in italics that indicate their thoughts on what's going on in the scene. This was a great thing to see in that format because it did add to the anticipation of the build-up that will be happening in the final act. It added to the crazy hysteria effect that I think Leigh was going for. Plus, with the changing of POV's we got to see the story progress further but know each sister as an individual and not as them grouped together because they're sisters. As the reader, you know their love for each other, but there are points in the book where you see them question their love.

Earlier I mentioned that this does talk about serious things. Even though this is a contemporary take of Lizzie Borden, who knows how this story would have been if the parents actually spoke about it to their daughters. I enjoyed the concept of this plot, and I think others will too. It was a little chilling to read for a thriller, and I think most people will enjoy it for a YA genre.

I made the mistake of reading IT WILL END LIKE THIS right around the time one of my favorite podcasts dropped a series on Lizzie Borden. The idea of updating and retelling the Lizzie Borden tale in a contemporary setting is a rife with potential, but I don't really feel like IT WILL END LIKE THIS lived up to said potential. For one, I thought that the narrative style was a little confusing, as well as a bit stilted. The two sisters, Charlotte and Maddi, had their own chapters, but Charlotte's outnumbered Maddi's by quite a bit. While both unreliable, I wanted to get more into Maddi's head. On top of that, neither of them really moved beyond being rather two dimensional, and in some cases heavy handed in their portrayals (the warring inner monologues within Charlotte became kind of tedious). And on top of that, the inspiration from the Borden Murders felt a bit shoe horned in. While it's true that Lizzie and Emma Borden had a stepmother they didn't care for, it wasn't because they believed that she and their father conspired to murder their mother. And while Leigh did do her best to make various plot points line up with some of the people involved in the murder, there were also so many things that weren't included, or were completely crafted for this narrative alone, that we maybe could have done without the Lizzie Borden comparisons outright. It made for it to be more disappointing, especially since the podcast I was listening to went into a LOT of detail, and made a compelling case for why Lizzie maybe didn't actually take that axe, as it were.

I had high hopes for this one based on the plot description and the comparisons to THE CHEERLEADERS and SADIE, but it didn't live up to any of my expectations. Which is too bad. Like I said, there is a lot of potential with this premise.

Thoughts

This book is supposed to be Lizzie Borden inspired, and there are hints of that narrative, for sure. But if you're looking for Lizzie Borden, don't look here. This is more high-key melodrama than anything else.

Pros
Lingering Grief: I have read a lot of YA books over the past year dealing with grief, but most of these books begin (and end) in the immediate stages of grief--the hours, days, weeks after. This book doesn't end there. This book doesn't even start until months after the girls' mother dies, and the grief is still just as present and just as painful for them at that point. And I like that. I like that this book really shows that grief doesn't end soon after a loved one dies. It continues to affect life for a long, long time to come.

True Conspiracy: Authors writing in the mystery and thriller genres generally try to divert the reader's attention from the true culprit by making most characters overtly suspicious, but the discerning reader can often see through this authorial smoke screen Not so here. Here, because of the main character's growing paranoia, everyone looks suspicious--even those with no possible reason to be involved in anything. This paranoia casts suspicion, and it is compounded by real and concrete evidence of something awry that comes up again and again. Ultimately, these things together work to make it seem as though anyone and everyone truly is conspiring against these sisters. There's just too much evidence.

Growing Paranoia: Just as the sense of conspiracy and tension rises, the paranoia of the focus characters rises as well. That growing paranoia really helps to make the book stand out. At the beginning, our main narrator seems generally reliable (if a bit melodramatic), and so as a reader, you can get lulled into a sense of security with her. But that reliability begins to break down even as the evidence to support her theories stacks up--making her both crazy paranoid and potentially right.


Cons
Melodramatic Narrator: I'm not a fan of melodrama myself, though I do know that many appreciate it to a certain degree. A bit of melodrama doesn't usually affect my review that much. The problem here, however, wasn't just that the narrative itself tends toward the melodramatic but that the narrative voice does. Melodrama seeps through the word choice and phrasing, making the narration very... annoying. I know this was meant to some extent to highlight the increasing paranoia of the characters, but it didn't really work for me. It just sounded overly juvenile and immature.

Special Snowflake Love Interest: There is one particular side character who is highlighted early on as a potential love interest (though this book doesn't have a particularly strong romantic subplot). This character annoyed me because of the clichés used in describing her. She is particularly special in the way she dresses, talks, acts. She knows more than others. She perceives more than others. She is not like other girls, and that's just a stereotype that I'm ready to get rid of for a good long time to come.

Endless Suspicions: I know I said it was a good thing, narrative-wise, to have the whodunnit so hidden, to have so many characters potentially conspiring against these sisters. And it is a good thing, to some extent. But it does get a little out of hand. I like that so many characters had so much going against them, but at the same time, I couldn't help but wonder why? Why would these characters be suspicious at all when they didn't know you, your sister, your mother, your family, et cetera et cetera, at the time you supposed the crime happened? Why, exactly, would these entirely unrelated characters be conspiring against you? I know that we've got an overly paranoid narrator, but that's just one of our perspectives. There are two narrators--two sisters, after all--and they're not meant to be equally paranoid. So why did they both feel like everyone, everyone, everyone was out to get them?


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/10

Those who appreciated the dramatic interpersonal turns of Kara Thomas's That Weekend will love this high-key family drama. Those who loved the foggy uncertainty of e. lockhart's We Were Liars will like the unexpected twists of this Lizzie-Borden-style thriller.

This was a remarkably quick and enthralling read. I finished it in a few hours. The perspectives were interesting and I did enjoy seeing the portrayal of grief through the two perspectives… but there were a lot of aspects of this I feel fall short. The side characters were very extreme and 2D - Amber, Cat, Stephen, Lana - they all just bugged me.

The ending was interesting but I didn’t feel shocked or surprised. I think this book would have benefitted from some extra length and character development! I did enjoy this overall.

This was a pretty decent mystery/thriller. It's clear where the author took inspiration from, but it's definitely for the better.

The Borden Murders are a fascinating historical event, and I was super excited to read a modern interpretation of the story. Sadly, I didn't love it. While there is so much potential interesting psychological nuance to these girls, I found the characters a bit flat, boring, and repetitive. The gaslighting was handled pretty well, though!

Violence: High
Language: High
Drugs: Mild
Sex: None

It Will End Like This is inspired by the Lizzie Borden story, and there are some similarities, but stands on its own very well. Charlotte and Maddi are closer in age than Lizzie and her sister were, and they were inseparable until the death of their mother.
I really liked the suspense that slowly built up throughout the story, as well as the unreliability of each sister’s narration. I also thought Maddi and Charlotte were very well-written teenaged characters, and Leigh depicted the way teenagers act in 2021 very well.
One thing that annoyed me a little bit was that Charlotte’s main piece of evidence that her mother had been murdered was that “people’s hearts don’t just stop.” This is what prompted her investigation into her mother’s death, but it’s just not accurate. People have heart attacks every day, even people who appear healthy. There ended up being more evidence than that, but it seemed a little unrealistic that 16 year old Charlotte thought it was impossible for someone ‘s heart to stop.
Other than that, I enjoyed the story a lot and liked that it was based on Lizzie Borden.

Charlotte and Maddi have been grieving for 6 months--since the day their mother's heart stopped. When their father proposes to their young housekeeper and she starts wearing their mother's jewelry, the girls are obviously furious. While the girls try to uncover the truth behind their mother's death, their anger and grief meld into distrust and drama.

It Will End Like This is a dark psychological thriller. Definitely fits in the horror genre, but I didn't care for the ambiguous ending and there were too many loose ends for me. A great example of an unreliable narrator. I was mostly unfamiliar with the Lizzie Borden story, but this book would make a great tie-in to that true life crime story.

I had no idea this book was based on a true story until I read the last few pages of the book. I felt like if I knew it was based on the case of Lizzie Borden right from the outset I would have liked it more. I am a true crime aficionado and I love reading about them. However, I was really confused during many parts of the book.

There was no clear picture till the end about what happened. It had a bit of an open ending. We sort of have to come to our own conclusions and I am not a big fan of that. It was YA thriller about 2 sisters, Charlotte and Amber, who lose their mom. They were told that their mom's heart stopped and she died suddenly. Their dad soon gets engaged to their mom's young assistant, Amber.

The narrators were both Charlotte and Maddie. The book focussed more on Charlotte's reaction and breakdown more than Maddie's. The dad was always depicted as the villain. There was a lot of deception and cruelty in the book. It was overwhelming at times. The crimes in the book were very violent too. So if you are okay with that, you can definitely give this one a go.

I know the cover isn't the point of the book, but dear lord is this cover an absolute stunner. This was a quick, fun, compelling read, and I devoured it on a train ride. I spent the whole time trying to figure out a) what was going on, and b) how everything corresponded to the Lizzie Borden murders (slash legend slash urban myth?). The narration depicting Charlotte's mental unravelling, and implying that she was maybe hearing voices, was fascinating to read, though not sufficiently addressed--the fact that almost everything was from her perspective made it seem as though her father was gaslighting her into madness (and we never talk about that second voice at all), and everything wrapped up a little too quickly for the twists to have a satisfying impact. I figured out what Lana was doing from the start, and the reveals of her and Stephen at the end were too fast and at once too contrived and too obvious to really land. "We thought it would be funny, now your family's dead, we never loved you despite giving no indication that we were lying," isn't a great character motive. The other side characters had little to no depth, and Amber was cartoonishly a young bitchy stepmother.

I also felt like the very quick muddled ambiguous ending was a little too needlessly obtuse, and I love ambiguity and unreliable narrators in a book! Overall, I feel like "It Will End Like This" (how did it end!!) had a lot of potential and didn't quite live up to it, but was still a fun, unsettling read!

I enjoyed this contemporary retelling of the Lizzie Borden story, even though I didn’t realize that is where the author drew inspiration from at first! It’s a fresh, new deep dive into a story that we’ve all heard for so many years; Lizzie Borden took an axe… but feeling the sympathy for Charlie and Maddie (and Lizzie) was new for me. I definitely recommend this one!

Round up a 3.5 to a 4 because it’s an ARC and I feel like I ruined part of the book for myself. Marketing this as a retelling of Lizzie Borden will either tell people the ending if they know the story or force people to look up the story and then ruin the ending for them: I was the second option. I have to say, as a true crime junkie, I was surprised I didn’t know the story. But as soon as I read about it, I knew what the book was doing.

While the ending was “ruined” for me, there is a lot left open which I appreciated. The characters are all messy, you don’t have anyone truly trustworthy, and the dual-perspective writing really helps showcase just how haphazard their lives are during this time. I did appreciate the cast and how they both complimented and complicated each other.

I was into the story and wanted to see the ending. The plot was far fetched, but easy to follow and it made you want to believe it. I read the book relatively quickly and found myself going back to it even though I knew I had awhile before the release.

I think this is something enjoyable to read, but you do lose a little engagement from the ending. Overall, solid read.

This modern take on the Lizzie Borden story brought me to some serious reading anxiety, but in that good way that means you’re fully enthralled in the story. I felt so many things while reading this one and it was a vivid experience.

I absolutely could not put this down, reading it in a matter of a few hours. They flew by, too. This story of grief and pain is incredibly hangover inducing. We are told the story from the perspective of sisters Charlotte and Maddi, who have lost their mother only months ago. Both sisters are dealing with this loss in different ways, but they never manage to lose the bond they share with one another. Even still, they are both unreliable narrators at times, second guessing themselves and even each other in moments of weakness.

They have to find a way to go on after their loss, dealing with a father who seems to only care about himself and his new girlfriend who worked for their mom before her death. The situations and circumstances surrounding them cause them to fear for their own safety. And this one definitely kept me guessing. Some aspects of this book were easy to figure out well before their reveal, but other twists caught me by surprise, leaving me feeling so many emotions.

I would recommend this one to anyone looking for a psychological thriller that doesn’t leave you with a happy - wrapped with a bow - ending. Bad things happen. Really, really bad and at times, unjust things happen and if you can handle it and go with the flow, you’ll enjoy It Will End Like This. Because not everything is as it seems and even a bad ending can be realistic at times.

You had me at 'inspired by Lizzie Borden' murders-- this is the story of two sisters who are super close, Charlotte and Maddi as they watch their family implode. Their mother's heart stops dead on the beach and now her mother's executive assistant who had been sleeping with their father is now engaged to be married to him and getting everything that had started falling apart when a the first of many tragedies and betrayals happened to the family.

And the back and forth between these close sisters is hard to tell apart at times while there are stark differences in how they're reacting to their grief. Add in their own friendship and relationship elements in the small town in Massachusetts with all eyes on them and you're bound to get a fairly explosive and "killer" kind of thriller. It's heart-pounding and intense with the dark psychological turmoil that is reminiscent of the best kinds of new YA thrillers taking over the bookshelves. This one is no different.

LOVED loved loved this book.

The writing had me captivated from the start to finish, and I found myself reading it almost straight through one sitting. I look forward to reading more by this author.

This is a fast -paced, quick YA read that will entrance readers.

Thank you Delacorte and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

I got this from a suggestion by NetGalley. I liked it but found it to be confusing. I kept having to check who was speaking. I also questioned why nothing was done about Charlotte's behavior in school and her absences. Lana and Stephen were horrible people. At the end, I wasn't sure who was quilty. I did not agree with the person arrested. I also questioned the way the girls were handled by police.

My mom grew up in Fall River and I spent a lot of time there are a kid with my grandparents so I am very familiar with the story of Lizzie Borden. Borden is famously believed to have killed her parents with an axe in their beds but was never actually found guilty of the crime!

This book is based loosely on Borden’s story. After Mattie and Charlotte’s mom dies suddenly they are both sent into spirals as their father moves on too quickly to a woman they already know! The girls are hurt, angry and confused and don’t know what to do when it seems everyone is their enemy.

The book was a quick and interesting read and my only problem was the struggle to distinguish between the two girls as narrators. However I blame that on the kindle because I often find this style of book challenging in that format. An read that will have you guessing till the very end!

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC for an honest review.

I took some time to let this book marinate a bit, because I honestly had no idea how to review it once I was done reading it. This book did the unreliable narrator very well, as I wasn't sure entirely if Charlotte OR Maddi were telling the truth. I think the truth was how the perceived it. Their dad was absolutely the worst human being under the planet, even worse than Amber who clearly was just some dumb young woman who got caught up by an older man. My heart broke for Charlotte and Maddi, and you could see how grief and depression really took their toll on both of them. That is where the book really shined. The writing felt off, disjointed at times, and I'm not sure if that was on purpose or just from the book not being edited. I wanted to really like this book, and I think if the writing felt more smooth, I probably would have given this four stars.