A slow burn psychological thriller about deceptions and lies. The setting is atmospheric during a snowstorm and the close group of friends are grad students of psychology. So intelligent enough to pull of those aforementioned lies.

Such an interesting premise with a few twists and turns that kept me on my toes.

Chelsea Stephens does a good job of bringing the right vibe and voicing so many characters.

If you are looking for a slow burn dark academia novel, you need to check this one out.

Five grad students in Forest, North Carolina, are conducting a psychological experiment about lying under the direction of their professor. But the problem with a study like this is that it makes those conducting it much better at lying, and of course, everyone has secrets. But when one of them is found dead, and the remaining students find themselves trapped on campus during a snowstorm, they have to determine who’s lying, who isn’t, and who’s a murderer.

This work was certainly promising. I loved the idea of the students being expert liars and how that would come into play throughout the read. Despite that, that was really the only strong aspect of the characters. They weren’t especially well developed, and it was impossible to connect with them emotionally. The dialogue was often awkward or forced feeling, and there was just nothing that made the characters feel like real people. This made a lot of the tension and dread that could have been present in this read nonexistent.

While the work is fast paced, it didn’t feel particularly fast and even lagged in places. But the ending wrapped up too quickly, making me wish there’d been a bit more buildup and exploration of the reveal. Several of the secrets leading up to the reveal also just didn’t feel believable, which detracted much from this read.

If you’re looking for a mystery in an academic setting, you might like this one. My thanks to NetGalley and Highbridge Audio for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

In the start, I liked this book. But towards the end I just wasn’t into it. I guessed the who but I also just didn’t understand why. And I found it kind of hard to follow at times. So many characters and they’re all not really likeable. The narrator was good. I just didn’t love the book.

As a thriller, This Is How We End Things, is pretty forgettable. A shadow falls over a team of Psychology grad students after one of their peers is murdered. They are working on a research project focused on deception and quickly start to assess and accuse each other after the crime occurs. The only likable characters were Alana and Patrick, the detective and officer tasked with solving the case. I would give Jacobs’ writing another try as I liked his writing, but would not go out of my way to recommend this title to others

R.J. Jacobs has grabbed my attention. The first by him that I’ve read, it most certainly won’t be the last. , I think I especially liked this because I listened to the audiobook. The narrator, Chelsea Stephens, gave the story a chilling, sinister feel and made the characters seem smarter than they probably would have seemed had I read them on the page.

I guess if you're an avid reader of crime and thriller stories you'll love this one as well. If you look for something that stands out, however, this book will not be able to deliver.

Certain genres are just not my cup of tea unless they're mixing or bending the genre or have a specific and unique theme elaborated well and extensively apart from the main plot. Crime/mystery/thriller is among these genres. What intrigued me most about this book was the science of lies and that the suspects study this topic.
This is a book with multiple POV's so I was hoping something like a lot of unreliable narrators who you cannot trust on even when they ask something, and who'd carefully manipulate their innocence appearance to the point that even their thoughts are misleading, like "think innocent then you'll act innocent naturally". However, I soon started to suspect that this wouldn't be the case and didn't really expect that a huge plot-twist would reveal the contrary (and it didn't).

If you look at it as a crime/thriller/mystery story in itself, one can say it's decent; the story, the characters, the execution, all decent but nothing groundbreaking that'd make me recommend this book over a dozens of others from the genre.

What disappoints me the most is that the science of lies appears at a very minimum level. There's a presentation of one of their experiments at the beginning where there's some mention of this, but the main aim of this scene is just to provide us with one more possible suspect. Then literally nothing. Towards the end, there's a very short conversation about this topic between a police officer and one of the undergrads and it's basically just like this: "no, officer, your information is wrong, liars don't avoid eye contact at all, if anything, sociopaths engage even more when lying". Which is funny because anything we saw about lies during the book was from this police officer's POV who was convinced she can tell if someone is lying or not and her hunches looked like working.
Otherwise, there's no more lies and talking about lies than in any other crime stories. I mean secrets and lies are the very basis of the genre, if you want to make your book revolve around this theme, you have to do more than just the "everyone has a secret in their past" trope and a lot of red herrings. Especially that I didn't find the characters very unique, most of them followed the very usual tropes of dark academia thrillers and they mostly stayed two-dimensional.

On the other hand, the execution is decent and I think it uses quite a few cinematic tropes in how it's built and especially with action-packed scenes.

As for the audiobook aspect, I think the narrator did a decent job with it. One thing that irked me however was the overwhelming amount of "he/she/Scarlet/Robert/etc. said" tags. I'm not sure though if this was due to the narrators repetitive intonation on these sentences or if there actually were more of these than in other books.

Thank you for NetGalley and the publisher for providing the ARC.

This book kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. Every time I thought I had it figured out, another twist threw me for a loop. Highly recommended.

Thanks you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review

I’ve waited to review this one for over a week because I just wasn’t sure HOW to review it. I still don’t know what I feel lol. It was just missing something.

I was hooked from the beginning and really enjoyed the story, thereby it's a 4⭐s.

We can rarely find many adult mystery thrillers in academic settings in which characters behave like real adults. In this story, adult academics are part of a psychological research team that makes things more appealing & interesting. Sometimes the world-building makes it more convenient for the story, but this didn't feel like one of those and the subject matter the research team was experimenting with was so fascinating to me. But the method of the execution of it wasn't up to my satisfaction. The characters were intriguing enough & the story was a fast phase to keep me going.

The writing style was decent enough & I guessed the twist by 2/3 of the story, yet it didn't hurt the enjoyment when the story ended. There will be some visual explanations, which in my opinion should be valid in a mystery thriller, like abuse, bullying, blood, violence, murder...etc that can be trigger warnings. I would classify this one as a dark academia, adult mystery thriller done properly. And I am definitely will be reading from this author more. Highly recommended reading during the fall or winter time.

Engaging, atmospheric, and expertly narrated. A recommended purchase for collections where dark academia is popular.

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐈𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐖𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐓🖤

Out tomorrow!!

🕯️9/12/2023🕯️

"A captivating exploration into the psychology of lying, and a high-stakes, dark-academia thriller full of twists and secrets." —New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda

THIS IS HOW WE END THINGS is a compelling new psychological thriller following a cohort of graduate students studying the psychology of lying—until one of them is discovered dead. But how do you catch a killer who may be an expert in the science of deception?

It’s juicy, fast paced, and binge worthy! While it is dark academia, it also felt a bit like a police procedural-I knocked this book out in a day!

Thank you so much @sourcebooks @bookmarked for sending me a copy, reading this novel was so much fun🥺🖤

I’m planning on going to NYC at the end of the week to finally scout out an apartment! I’m starting to get excited about this next chapter:)

Have you read this novel yet? Are you planning to?!

That’s not chill you feel in the air, that the feeling of being watched and no one is around to help you. This book is more than an academic thriller or a horror story. A setting that you hope to never be left in with the worst of nightmares have to offer. Reading this book as an audiobook gives the story extra step to making it a thriller. I am one for reading ahead and seeing what happens, however as an audiobook you are stuck to listening to the chilling events unfold. Leaving on the edge of your seat you won’t be able to put the book down until the end. It will leave a lump in your thorax and a hint of sweat on your forehead. I highly recommend this book for those who enjoy a well written book with a scary twist to it.

The absolute rollercoaster that this book sent me on. Unbelievable. Just when you think you know where its going, Jacobs completely spins it around. The entire time I thought I knew who the murderer was, only to be completely wrong. Would absolutely recommend it this book

"Campus is empty, a winter storm is blowing in, and someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance to kill again."

This book is a slow burn. We follow a group of graduate students who are studying the act of lying as they discover that one of their own has been murdered. Each is more determined than ever to hide their own secrets. The premise is fantastic, with an urgency to collect the evidence, peel back the layers of secrets that each student holds, all before the encroaching winter storm hits and buries the truth. And to do this with a group of people who study lying, how do you know who's telling the truth?
For me, this book didn't fully deliver. I thought that some of the students secrets weren't very interesting, the twists weren't very twisty, and in the end I didn't care too much about the characters. With that said, I did keep reading because I wanted to know who the murderer was - I just couldn't figure it out.
It's important to note that I read a lot of thrillers. I think that this makes it harder for me to find one that really stands out. This is a solid story, it just didn't knock my socks off.

Thank you to @netgalley @highbridgeaudio and @scourcebooks for the gifted copy of this book.

This one starts with a bang and has such an intriguing concept!! That title?! 👀
I was hooked immediately as I love a good dark academia plot!

This one is about an experiment and the psychology of deception and lying! It’s a fascinating and compulsive page turner that has a lot of great characters and entertaining red herrings! It’s definitely a locked room mystery that leaves you continually guessing!

𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘹 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨!

What a fantastic and wild ride, I love this kind of psychological thriller. It was tense, twisty, nail-bitting, compulsive, gripping and addictive. You won’t be able to stop reading.

Thank you Suzy Approved Book Tours and Sourcebooks Landmark for this tour invite.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗜𝘀 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗪𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 by R.J. Jacobs released September 12, 2023.

https://www.instagram.com/booksandcoffeemx/

This was a lot of fun and just what I was in the mood for. I was able to listen to it all in one go while I worked

I’d seen mixed reviews for this one, but I’m glad I ignored them because I really enjoyed it and couldn’t put it down. If you enjoy stories filled with secrets and lies, dark academia and unexpected twists, I highly recommend this psychological thriller. There were one or two loose ends I would have liked to see wrapped up, but they didn’t detract from the story. I alternated between the audiobook and physical book and enjoyed both formats. 4.5⭐️

A thriller set on a college campus focused around a psychological study? Yes, please! A group of graduate students and a well-known professor are running a psychological experiment. All those involved in running the experiment have been trained to lie - so when one of them is murdered, the suspects are numerous. This thriller was fast-paced, had the right amount of complicated characters to keep you wondering who was a suspect for quite a while. I did guess the the culprit, but not until about 10 minutes before the reveal. I docked one star because I feel that a setting and plot like this could have really stood out from the pack with characters that were more well-formed and intertwined. The characters were a bit one dimensional and their relationships were pretty tenuous. Looking forward to reading more by R.J. Jacobs! The narrator definitely added a mysterious/spooky element as well.

The problem with always telling lies is that it keeps people at arms length- they never know if they should believe you or not. Unfortunately, a book with a whole cast who lies does just this: keeps the reader at bay. Unfortunately I thought the characters were unlikable so I didn't care much what happened to them. While I get that they were supposed to be dishonest these ones just seemed over the top and hard to connect with. I have definitely heard mixed reviews about this book, so take a chance, but it was a "no" from me.