A Tidy Ending: The latest dark comedy from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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The only reason I’m not giving this book five stars is because number one, I feel like I just read another book about Molly, and number two, Linda is a really exaggerated character.

The ending is cracking, it’s a belter and an absolute doozy of jaw dropper which I couldn’t help but admire! There it waits, trapped in a silver frame, watching me live my life and pointing out all my mistakes. Following a troubled childhood, when Linda and her mother left their old life in Wales, she has tried to reinvent herself. The book and I got off on the wrong foot almost immediately, when two identical phrases are used within pages of each other— “perched on the arm of a settee. The neighborhood looks different too, but she’s still the same woman and it’s still the same place, and as the past erupts into view, they slowly collide.How did what you read in these scenes influence what you thought would happen in the central timeline? Joanna Cannon is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling debut novel The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, which has sold over 250,000 copies in the UK alone and has been published in 15 countries. The chapters are mostly in the past with the murders and Linda’s preoccupation, but there also “now” chapters where Linda is in the present, foreshadowing what may have happened in the past. She is the author of Three Things About Elsie and The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, a top ten bestseller in the UK. The story gets even more interesting when a body of a young woman is found nearby and it doesn’t end there.

Meanwhile, emergency doctor Chris, having recently experienced the breakdown of his own relationship, finds himself unexpectedly attending the wakes of both patients and friends. No, people will say, Linda isn’t in any of those—she was never very big on parties or No, I don’t think Linda was there that day.It lives on the mantelpiece, with a carriage clock and a pair of candlesticks that will never find themselves being introduced to any candles. They offer a lifestyle that she can only dream of and in Linda’s delusional world, Rebecca becomes her best friend. Linda lives a small suburban life to a husband she barely tolerates and a routine that she lives her life around.

Joanna Cannon’s first two novels, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (2016) and Three Things About Elsie (2017), were both Sunday Times bestsellers and Richard and Judy picks. Linda relates her story from within some sort of care facility, six weeks after everything happened, but it’s soon apparent that she’s an unreliable narrator.

Soon after Clare is deserted by her husband, she meets new neighbour Louisa, who persuades her to help with a business venture, providing catering for funerals.

The audiobook was narrated by Lissa Berry whose brilliant reading adds a lot of value to this novel. But she's good at solving puzzles and there are times she sees things other people might have overlooked. Meanwhile, Terry's behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic, and a series of vicious attacks on young women are keeping the town in a state of ghoulish agitation. The remainder of the book is written in the “now”, when someone is writing from a mental institution. A Tidy Ending is thoroughly absorbing… Cannon carefully unspools this character-driven mystery using the superb storytelling we’ve come to expect from her.there are times when you don’t even realize a thought is sitting inside your head until your mouth discovers it and it’s given somewhere to go. Linda, is involved in her own quest to track down Rebecca, who lived in the house before Linda and Terry bought it.