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

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Sublimely structured and darkly witty . . . the multilayered plot offers genuine surprises up to the final revelation. Cannon has raised her game with this one.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

On the positive side, there is plenty of dark humour in the book. There are loads of quotable quotes. The two timelines generate enough of a curiosity to know what’s happening ( though this doesn’t work very well in the audiobook.) Linda is the narrator of the story via a shifting timeline and as the central character, we see events from her perspective. Following a troubled childhood, when Linda and her mother left their old life in Wales, she has tried to reinvent herself. However her marriage to Terry is rather a disappointment and the recent house move on the same estate which she thought would bring a whole new way of life has not turned out that way. Its just the same life in a different house. Discuss the presentation of social media in the book. How does it make the characters feel, and how does it impact the events of the story? How does this compare to your own experiences with social media?Last year, a breakout debut novel hit the scene, and everyone fell in love with the character Molly in Nita Prose’s “The Maid”. An excerpt from my review of that book explains who Molly Gray reminded me of…

Linda has lived around here ever since she fled the dark events of her childhood in Wales. Now she sits in her kitchen, wondering if this is all there is – pushing the Hoover round and cooking fish fingers for tea is a far cry from the glamorous lifestyle she sees in the glossy catalogues coming through the door for the house’s previous occupant.She and Terry have watched the news, seen the press conference about the killing. They are an odd pair, as he is a slob who seems to live to drink beer and litter while Linda lives to daydream and clean. She scrubs everything and begrudges every spot or stain. She has plans. All the creepy, sinister stars in the sky! 🌟”From the bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, a delightfully sinister novel about a married woman living a nice, quiet suburban life—but things aren’t always what they seem…”

Linda is one of those characters that you can’t help cringing at whilst feeling some empathy. She’s lonely and would love a friend or two but she’s rather socially awkward and frequently misreads signals and body language and imagines every new acquaintance as a best friend and at times you worry that she’s being taken advantage of. The reader can see what is happening when others edge away and pretend to be busy but Linda appears oblivious, bless her.

Delicious . . . thoroughly engrossing. . . . This book didn't just stay with me. It stayed and stayed and stayed.” — Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune Re notes, not sure. Wonder if it's@ part of her act, that she needs to be left notes to get her through the day, but keeping them for her plan re Rebecca. I am looking forward to reading more books by Joanna Cannon and am so glad I took a chance on this one.

The whole story is narrated by Linda. She works at a charity shop, doesn’t really have friends (she’s a shy, awkward sort of person who is often overlooked) and likes cleaning and Jaffa cakes. From the start I wondered if she was a reliable narrator but she’s entirely convincing. There’s a dark story concerning her father in her childhood, this is slowly revealed. Heightened thriller plots frequently rub shoulders with compassionate portraits of ordinary lives in the work of Joanna Cannon. But while her bestselling debut, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, successfully used a resident’s disappearance to tease out a community’s secrets, the crime thriller element in her latest novel skews much darker, upsetting the balance.Linda’s not like everyone else, she keeps herself to herself. But she’s good at solving puzzles and there are times she sees things other people might have overlooked. Linda has no hope really given a mother like this, and a lot of the story is her bouncing off of herself about ‘what mother would approve’ of. Linda is friendless, she will hold onto any shred or crumb of companionship, which all ends up being fantasy. This is a difficult book to try and write a synopsis and whatever I say just doesn’t seem to do it justice. I loved it from start to finish and would highly recommend it to other readers. So cleverly written and so worth reading. Rebecca was one of the girls from Wales. Suspect she found her and deliberately bought her house. Am sure there's something about letting Terry think he wanted it but it was her idea. Charity shop worker Linda becomes obsessed with the glamorous previous occupant of the suburban home into which she and her husband Terry have recently moved. Under-stimulated by her humdrum life, and the frequent target of ridicule and gaslighting from both her husband and mother, Linda finds a private delight in poring over fashion and lifestyle catalogues that arrive in the mail for the mysterious Rebecca, meanwhile fantasising about a more exciting existence of her own.