The End of Everything

A gripping and disturbing read about the disappearance of 13-year-old Evie and the impact it has on her best friend Lizzie. The two girls, just entering adolescence, are old enough to have desperate crushes, but young enough that these are really innocent dreams of romance, without any real comprehension of adult lusts. After Evie disappears, Lizzie (who narrates the book) does not quite understand why the grown-ups are so horrified, so her shock is mingled with disappointment that her best friend might have been keeping secrets, curiosity about the Big Feelings that she imagines may lie behind the disappearance, and a certain gratification and excitement at the opportunity it gives her to give support to Evie's handsome, charming show more father. She is able to remember a few bits of information which might be useful for the investigation into Evie's disappearance, but she doesn't tell everything she knows, and in her eagerness to help goes further than she should to make clues appear. Lizzie is a compelling narrator - you understand why she is doing what she is doing, while being horrified at the level of her misunderstanding and the ways that she behaves as a result. And she is not the only deluded one in this narrative - the book is an excellent portrayal of the way that people try and justify their own bad behaviour, and how blaming and judging others feeds into that.

I just know that night I’d stood out there on the bristled tip of that lawn I felt it. Like a little girl slid between the folds of window drapes, between the folds of her mother’s skirt, I stood there and felt small and unwise, like the wisdom of the world lay just above me, lay right out there, lay through this keyhole, past this doorframe, behind these window blinds. show less

This book blew me away. It started out as a disappearance/kidnapping of thirteen year old Lizzie's best friend, and turned into something way more nuanced. All the characters rang true, and perceptions changed constantly as Lizzie tried to find out what happened to her friend, with new revelations and realizations of a psychological nature until the very last page. Unforgettable.

The End of Everything is an extremely well done coming-of-age story by Megan Abbott. Her main characters are thirteen year old friends, Lizzie and Evie, and she perfectly captures the discomfort and awkwardness that the first year of becoming a teen brings. The story is wrapped around a mystery as Evie suddenly goes missing and Lizzie comes to realize that even though the two girls were inseparable for most of their lives, she didn’t really know the inner Evie at all.

I found this to be a gripping and disturbing story as the author delves into adolescent sexuality, family jealousies and parental ignorance. First and foremost, that intimate relationship with one’s best friend is well captured as well as the confusing feeling of show more everything suddenly changing and relationships shifting. I was discomforted by the story but also could not stop reading on to find out what was going to happen.

The End of Everything exposes dark secrets and shines a light on family connections as Lizzie learns about the flaws in Evie’s family, the family she has always wished was her own. Megan Abbott has delivered a book that is both haunting and provocative. show less

Megan Abbott never gives you the ending you want but she somehow gives you the ending you didn’t know you needed. This book, like both other books I’ve read of hers, is difficult and challenging but still riveting. This book intrigued and repulsed me in equal measure. While the dialog is mostly unrealistic, it works to transport you to the world of the book, which is both dreamy and rooted in reality. It somehow feels both pulpy and absolutely, bone-shakingly real. After reading this I feel gross and light and 13 and too adult and like everything is just too much and it’s awful. I love it.

Megan Abbott really captures the innocence and vulnerability of childhood in this literary coming of age/mystery/crime novel. Abbott builds tension and atmosphere continually, building to a climax. By the time I finished it I was burning with anger at the adults who failed to get their heads out of their asses long enough to protect their children.

My only complaint is with the depiction of the Midwest in the 80s. Modern slang abounds with phrases like "epic fail", "she gifted me", etc, that we just didn't say back then. Maybe it will be a relief to some readers who came of age in the '80s that no one says things like "Dude", or "bogus". But I was disappointed that Abbott didn't take the setting all the way.

In spite of that, this story show more is so good that it transcends when or where it's set. show less

I loved Dare Me for its darkness and its portrayal of the seedy underbelly of teenage life. This book - about what happens when Lizzie's best friend Evie disappears while walking home from school - touches on many of the same themes but was more disquieting because of the ways in which the two main female characters repeatedly put themselves in danger without really understanding the stakes. Lizzie is the last person to have seen Evie before her disappearance and throughout the book, she remembers things that hint at the truth behind Evie's disappearance and then later, the identity of her abductor. For a long time, it wasn't clear to me whether the reader was meant to believe Lizzie genuinely remembered things or whether she was making show more things up in part because she enjoyed the attention. There were a lot of uncomfortable, queasy-making relationships in this book, especially involving Evie's father, who all the teenage girls have something of a crush on, which added another delicious layer of ambiguity to the story. Not as good as Dare Me, but still an enjoyable, twisted diversion. show less

I was tempted into Megan Abbott's books by a review of [Dare Me]. I like suitably dark fiction about adolescent and teenage girls and how they relate to each other. [The End of Everything] delivers in spades!

Lizzie, the story's narrator, and Evie are inseparable best friends, both right on the cusp of adolescence. One day Evie doesn't return home from school. As the police investigation proceeds and Lizzie gradually pieces together clues from half-remembered events in their friendship over the last several months, a dark picture emerges that makes Lizzie question how well she really knew Evie. Mysteriously wrapped up in these events are Dusty, Evie's beautiful teenage sister, and the feelings both Lizzie and Dusty hold for Evie and show more Dusty's father.

This was a very dark and occasionally graphic read. It reminded me of [Notes on a Scandal] except that the narrator in [The End of Everything] is innocent....well, more or less. Far from a straightforward story of a kidnapping, it explores uncomfortable issues of autonomy, sexuality, and power struggles between friends, sisters, daughters, and fathers. And if you're partway through the book and think you've guessed the twist - you probably haven't. show less