Woahhhh.I just finished this and honestly don't know how to process it. It was one of the most powerful, quietly disturbing books I've ever read. There is so much there and it leaves you wondering, with so many questions.I didn't know if I wanted to read this or "Across the universe", so I thought I'd read a chapter of each and then read the more interesting book. I started reading this and forgot "Across the universe" was even an option.Some people may not like this. Some people may think it mo...

4.5 StarsThriller A Thon: A trope you love WHAT THE F**K DID I JUST READ? Man, this book is dark. I was so creeped out reading this book and I couldn't put my finger on what I found so creepy. The End of Everything is not what I thought it would be. Going into this book, I thought I knew where it was going but it turns out I had no clue. This book was never predictable. Even when I thought I had it all figured out this book took some crazy turns. Can a plot be both slow moving and action packed

Megan Abbott really hit this one out of the park.Everyone's favourite noir pixie takes a step out of her comfort zone with this fantastic contemporary novel. As an award winning aficionado of classic noir tropes, utilised to great effect in period pieces Die a Little, Queenpin and others, Megan Abbott demonstrated her writing style to great effect but with The End of Everything she has taken further leaps towards greatness.No longer confined by her research in to 50s Americana The End of Everyth...

This book represents a significant departure for Megan Abbott and is really more a literary novel than it is a crime novel. Two thirteen-year-old girls, Lizzie Hood and Evie Verver, are next-door neigbors and best friends in the suburban world of the 1980s. They share everything, including their deepest secrets. Lizzie's father has recently abandoned the family, and Lizzie idolizes the Verver family. She is especially drawn to Evie's father whom she believes is virtually perfect.The two girls' i...

Everything about this book looked promising and I picked this book up fully intending to become engrossed in it. I was disappointed to say the least. The choppy writing bothered me from the start; Abbott was trying to say too much by saying too little and it simply didn't work. It was really Abbott's portrayal of Lizzie that ultimately put me off completely. What 13 y/o would deal with the alleged abduction of her lifelong best friend so casually? Lizzie should be upset. She should be doing ever...

a moment alone, i would steal a peek in dusty's room, clogged with the cotton smell of baby powder and lip gloss and hands wet with hair spray. her bed was a big pink cake with faintly soiled flounces and her floor dappled with the tops of nail polish bottles, with plastic-backed brushes heavy with hair, with daisy-dappled underwear curled up like pipe cleaner, jeans inside out, the powdery socks still in them, folded-up notes from all her rabid boyfriends, shiny tampon wrappers caught in the ed...

I did not like this book. I found it disturbing. In a time when so many men are accused of sexually abusing young girls, to have a book centered on 13 year olds who are consumed with their relationships (or lack thereof) with older men, fathers, etc. just to me was off the mark. I was offended when the young girl "offered" herself to the man who didn't kidnap her but she willingly went with him.....all so she could experience the single love of a man as she rivals for her father's attention with...

Teenage neighbors Lizzie and Evie are thick as thieves. When Evie disappears, Lizzie's world is shaken to its foundations. Who was driving the maroon car Lizzie saw circling the block when Evie was abducted and does he have a connection to Evie's disappearance? And will Evie be found alive?I initally discovered Megan Abbott through her noir works like Queenpin, after hearing people mentioning her in the same breath as Christa Faust. While her latest books haven't been noir, she sure paints a dar...

Evie goes missing on May 28th. I finished this book on May 28th. Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln and Lincoln's was named Kennedy. Weird, right?

Megan Abbott – you ain’t right . . . A blurb by Tom Perrotta on the cover of The End of Everything says the following about Abbott: “Megan Abbott writes with total authority and an almost desperate intensity; her story grabs hold of you and won’t let go.” I can’t think of a better way to describe what makes me love reading Megan Abbott’s books. She writes with such urgency, as if the words are clawing their way out and her tales are told with extreme efficiency – every page is used to it...

The writing in this book is brilliant. It's like corduroy or velvet - you can feel it. But, sometimes you don't want to feel it. The book is the first-person POV of a 13 year old girl whose best friend goes missing. The two girls live next door to each other and are practically inseparable, so everyone is looking to her for answers as to what happened to Evie. We live in this pre-teen's head, Lizzie, as she tries to figure out what happened to her friend.This gives us an unreliable narrator and

There are probably thousands of "missing child" books out there, and even the most poorly written never fail to terrify. It must be because there are few more horrifying thoughts swirling around the mind of a parent that the dark image of having your child leave home one day and never return.I will never forget that heart-stopping moment years ago when the school bus pulled up out front and my son DID NOT get off. The phone rang as I was reaching for it, and when I heard my son's voice informing...

Ew. Abbott needs a therapist, I am convinced. In this book a little girl (13) gets kidnapped and raped over and over again by a forty-year-old man and the author seems to think this has something to do with love and that the little girl was asking for it. Deeply sick.

I can't decide how to rate this book - very good? Very bad? It certainly is well-written and has some beautiful prose, some very good descriptions of the confusing times when you are 13 and everything in the world seems to be shifting and changing. I stayed up way too late to finish it in one go because the book gave me a sense of mounting dread that made me want to read on.At the same time, it is extremely disturbing. I can't make up my mind whether what bothers me is the limited, self-centered...

Can you remember the first time you ever had the wind knocked out of you? I was about ten. I was playing with my cousins out in their front yard. There was this fence that ran about 2 feet off the ground that we liked to walk along, imagining tight ropes and balance beams. It was during one of these wobbly walks when my ten year old body lost its balance and I came crashing down hard upon that low fence. It caught me right across my stomach where my diaphragm lives. In a swift "whoosh" all the a...

WOW! This is the first Megan Abbott book I have read. While this may be more of a 4 star book, it gets a 5 from me! I simply adore Megan Abbott! The beginning of this book had me all smiley and nostalgic. Never have I heard girl pubescence so exquisitely described. The scabs and bruises, the racing abandon, the deep desire to know of the elusive adult secrets. And damn, if Abbott didn't take me right down the road of these secrets. It gets dark, very dark.The story is told by 13 year old Lizzy.

Actual rating 4.5 stars.I read Dare Me by Megan Abbott earlier this month and, since then, have been collecting everything she has even penned in the hopes of binge reading all of them over the coming months. Both Megan Abbott and the dark contemporary genre are quickly proving to be my new favourites.When Lizzie's next door neighbor and lifetime best friend, Evie, is abducted everything Lizzie thought she knew about herself, her friend and life in general is called into question.Despite dealing...

The End of Everything features some more messed up teenage girls, just like You Will Know Me. I think these young ladies were even worse. I had fun reading this strange, mysterious, psychologically focused novel.

Huh? If you like a book where you have to read between the lines, try to figure out the innuendos, and keep re-reading passages to see if indeed you did miss something, then this is the book for you.The only reason I finished it was because it was a super fast read.The premise of the book is intriguing, which is what made me pick it up at the library when I stumbled upon it. I think it could have been a good creepy story, despite the subject matter and what the author was trying to make us see.B...

This review talks generally about both Dare Me and The End of Everything and originally appeared on my blog Shoulda Coulda Woulda Books.Before I start with my thoughts on Meg Abbott’s writing, I should state that from what I can gather, she writes two kinds of books. One are pretty old fashioned hardboiled noir books with female-centered stories of feminine power and violence and appropriately stylized covers, all shadows and curves. The latter are books centered around the fairly privileged liv...