Book: “It Will End Like This” by Kyra Leigh
Publishing Info: Delacorte Press, January 2022
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.
Book Description: For fans of The Cheerleaders and Sadie comes a psychological thriller that reminds us that in real life, endings are rarely as neat as happily ever after. A contemporary take on the Lizzie Borden story that explores how grief can cut deep.
Charlotte lost her mother six months ago, and still no one will tell her exactly what happened the day she mysteriously died. They say her heart stopped, but Charlotte knows deep down that there’s more to the story.
The only person who gets it is Charlotte’s sister, Maddi. Maddi agrees—people’s hearts don’t just stop. There are too many questions left unanswered for the girls to move on. But their father is moving on. With their mother’s personal assistant. And both girls are sure that she’s determined to take everything that’s theirs away for herself.
Now the only way to get their lives back is for Charlotte and Maddi to decide how this story ends, themselves.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
Boy did I think that the timing on this was golden! Around the time that I sat down to start “It Will End Like This” by Kyra Leigh, my favorite podcast was starting their two part series on Lizzie Borden and the Borden Axe Murders. “It Will End Like This” is a YA thriller that takes that story and updates it with modern times and sensibilities, so to me this was going to be the perfect pairing, to my mind.
But I think that it actually worked against the book’s favor, at the end of the day. Which is a real bummer, as I was amped for a YA thriller a la “Sadie” or “The Cheerleaders” that tackled a notorious murder mystery. Because “It Will End Like This” fell pretty flat.
I will start with the positive, and that is the very concept of updating the Lizzie Borden tale with YA protagonists and in a modern setting. There are so many aspects of the original tale (at least how it has evolved over time) that have so much storytelling potential: murder! Potential family strife! A freakin’ axe! I was really hoping for a creative and engaging update that would put all of these Victorian Themes (and all the mess that comes with that kind of baggage) into a modern lens. Like, that is just teeming with potential!
But there were some glaring missteps with this story that reminded me that a story can’t float on potential alone. The first is just a narrative style and set of choices that I didn’t like. For one, while we got a lot of Charlotte perspectives, the Maddi chapters were quite limited. I would have liked to have a bit more of an even distribution for their narrations, unreliability between them notwithstanding. Along with that, it’s all very disjointed, which is a fair choice to make given that Charlotte (and to some extent Maddi) is slowly losing her faculties due to grief, resentment, and rage. But the execution feels a bit heavy handed as well as too messy, and it makes Charlotte and Maddi rather two dimensional in their depictions.
But for me, the biggest issue is that while this book is inspired by the Borden Axe Murders, it’s more inspired by the myths surrounding Lizzie Borden versus the actual case at hand. And this is why my podcast timing probably ruined it for me. This book gives Charlotte and Maddi all the reasons in the world to want their father and stepmother dead, the biggest being that they were clearly having an affair and potentially had something to do with their mother’s very recent death. But the real Lizzie Borden had no obvious motive, as her mother had been LONG dead, and there is no reason to think that her father had anything to do with her death. That’s the big mystery surrounding these murders at the end of the day: Lizzie Borden as a suspect is hard to believe given lack of substantiated motive (note: I say substantiated because of speculation about a lesbian love affair being found out as a motive. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case, but I don’t know if there is actual evidence to suggest this? And it wasn’t even used in this book as a plot point, so…) and some timing issues on the day of the murders (seriously, the timing would have to be insane for her to pull it all off). Buuuuut there is also a difficult argument to be made for some random person to have done it without being noticed by someone! Instead of taking inspiration from a truly puzzling murder mystery, “It Will End Like This” takes the “Lizzie Borden Took An Axe” nursery rhyme and speculation run amok and ran with that narrative. I think that if the final product had been stronger and less confusing, and had I not JUST listened to a breakdown of the actual facts of the case, I could have overlooked this all, but with all of these issues at hand, it was a bit too much to get over.
“The Cheerleaders” and “Sadie” this is not. I was sad that “It Will End Like This” was the disappointment that it was. I will say that it makes me want to go read other adaptations of the story to see what they do with it. I’m just not sure I’m convinced that Lizzie Borden did take that axe, and this book didn’t rise up high enough for me to look past that.
Rating 5: A good concept is muddled down by confusing narrative choices and straying a bit from the inspirational event it touts in the description.
Reader’s Advisory:
“It Will End Like This” is included on the Goodreads list “2022 YA Mysteries and Thrillers”.
Find “It Will End Like This” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!
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