This book definitely kept me interested! It made me feel all sorts of weird feelings and definitely made me feel neurotic at times. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where it was going. The writing style of charlottes back and forth thoughts often irritated me though. I have to say the ending seemed kind of disappointing. It seemed to end so fast and it left me needing more. It was obvious who the murderer was but it just felt rushed. Still overall a great read though.

This is such a hard one to review. On one hand, I love that Leigh wasn't afraid to write a book so disturbing. It's exactly what you would expect and want from a book like this. On the other hand, there were a lot of issues that are hard to look past. My biggest complaint is that although there are two points of view, both characters sound so similar that it's hard to distinguish between them at times.

I think ultimately if Leigh was writing it as an adult novel rather than a YA novel, she would have had a lot more freedom to delve deeper into the Lizzie Borden story and it probably would have made a world of difference.

It was still a good read all in all and I'll definitely read more from the author!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Solid 3 ⭐️ Mystery / horror YA

I really wanted to love this more than I did. With that said, I think it was a super quick read and was able to read it in one setting. The premise was interesting and compelling. I enjoyed that the book “goes there” and was dark the entire time. However, it reminded me SO much of the movie “The Uninvited” and not as much the Lizzy Borden murders. The sisters, Maddi and Charolette, both narrate the book but I wish we heard more from Maddi’s POV. Overall, the mystery was still well written and the cover is BEAUTIFUL!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

It Will End Like This is the first book I finished in 2022, but also the one I ended 2021 with.
I know, totally not important information, but still I look at it as fun fact (feel free to call me a loser if you want).

The book started good, with a tone that was so easy and also intriguing to follow.
Short chapters have the ability to make book seem like it reads faster, and the first person pulls the reader in characters' heads immediately.

To make things clear, I was thrilled with the way the book started, and the atmosphere the author described through monologues and happenings reminded me of a brilliant novel called We Have Always Lived in a Castle.

However, the more I read, the more I despised Charlie's inner thoughts, and since we are what we think, I liked her less and less, until I found her just... not my cup of tea.

Still, I could understand how all the things that happened could spin her head and awoke the anger and even madness inside her.

Her sister Maddie seemed like the stronger one, but on the other hand the author decided to focus mostly on Charlie, and explore her character and her inner self more, even if the book follows two POVs.

In the end, I just want to state that I hated not only one, but three side characters: the father, his new girlfriend and the new friend.
Books usually have one or two characters readers like to hate, so kudos to Kyra Leigh for creating not one, not two, but three of them, and if we include Charlie among them, we have a band of unlikeable personas.

- POV's are impossible to differentiate
- I truly have no understanding of why the daughters believed that their mother was murdered. they're convinced that she was poisoned after finding weed killer in the house, right after telling us that their mother loved to garden??
- did not really see the connections to the Borden story

This was an interesting idea, but I never really got into it despite knowing the background that inspired it.

*Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.*

“She’s dead.” - first line

For me, this one was just ok. I kept reading because I wanted to get answers. Some parts dragged a bit, but the end kind of made up for that. The level of cruelty by certain characters was unexpected and I’m still not sure what motivated it.
This thriller, loosely based on the Lizzie Borden murders, follows teenage sisters Charlotte and Maddi who lost their mom suddenly (her heart just stopped). Shortly after their mom died, their father started dating Amber, their mom’s much younger personal assistant.
The book is told from alternating perspectives by both sisters. I had difficulty distinguishing between them and often forgot which sister’s POV I was reading. The sisters are concerned about their dad’s relationship with Amber, and wondering how long it has been going on. Amber was close with the entire family before their mom died; I think she even lived with them. Was their dad cheating on their mom, did Amber murder their mom, was their dad involved? So many questions and the evidence just keeps piling up. Charlotte and Maddie have reasons to be suspicious, but there is also a bit of paranoia and perhaps mental illness as well. Why does their dad insist on giving their mom’s wedding ring to Amber as an engagement ring? That is suspicious and confusing. I’m never quite sure why that was, considering the family was wealthy.
Anyway, the end wasn’t unexpected for me. Leigh answers most of the questions from across the story but chose to leave one final question unanswered. I liked the ambiguity of that.

I got an arc of this in exchange for an honest review. If you want a book where you can't trust ANYONE! Where you have no idea what you just read! Where the writing is addictive and the characters are oddly relatable but not at all read this.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: It Will End Like This

Author: Kyra Leigh

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 3/5

Recommended For...: young adult readers, mystery, thriller, retelling

Publication Date: January 4, 2022

Genre: YA Mystery Thriller

Age Relevance: 16+ (parental death, gore, Violence, depression, Post partum depression, Grief, Language, Drugs, Pandemic, Illness, Murder, Miscarriage, Panic attack, Suicide mentioned)

Explanation of Above: The book revolves around the aftermath of two siblings’ mother’s death via what they believe to be is murder and their grief in processing it. The book has gore with blood and vomit and violence in it, mentioned and shown. Depression and post-partum depression are mentioned and shown, as well as grief, illness, miscarriage, and pack attacks. There is also mentions of suicide. There is slight cursing in the book and there are some mentions of various drugs. The pandemic is mentioned as a past event.

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Pages: 352

Synopsis: 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: For the most part this was an ok book. The book did well to set the tone of the book and it had a lot of fun twists and turns. The book is well done in writing and the world building is great. The character development is also well done and the book, overall, is fairly good. I also liked that the book was a retelling of the Lizzie Borden story.

However, I didn’t like this book as much as I thought I would. The book utilizes the duel POV and duel timeline, which confused me a little bit because I felt that the voices were too similar and the duel timeline wasn’t well separated from the present timeline. The book also had a fairly confusing ending and the retelling portion of the book didn’t come through until the last 10 pages, which is disappointing to me.

Verdict: It was ok!

This was a hard one to read. The change of narrators, all unreliable, didn’t seem to have a rhyme or reason. I knew that this novel had a loose tie to Lizzie Borden and her family. The novel just didn’t explore that deeply enough. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to be an early reader in exchange for my review.

I received a free copy from NetGalley. More than one narrator, none of which I trusted to be reliable and even less reliable as the story goes on, but they were similar enough it was sometimes hard to know which one was telling the story. Lots of paranoia in this story. You kind of just want someone, anyone, to see the girls need help and help them, but everyone just seems to make things worse for them.

I started reading this book after my own brother died. I was enjoying the format and pushed through until about half.way through. Personally had to DNF right now. Maybe one day I will pick it up and enjoy it more.

Charlotte and Maddi’s dad was an asshole. After their mother died he didn’t even feel sad and now, he’s engaged with Amber their mother’s assistant. The pathetic part was that he had been seeing Amber for a while; cheating on his wife. The fact that Amber acts like she’s their mother doesn't sit well either. She uses their mother’s bedroom, uses their mother’s favorite necklace and even the wedding ring. She doesn’t care what Charlotte or Maddi think and feel. And then multiple things happen that drives the girls to the edge of insanity.

This book doesn't let up. It's very well-paced and you are compelled to turn the pages to find out how the story pans out. The altering POVs between Maddi and Charlotte keep you hooked.

I love that the author starts with a quote from Lizzie Borden and then ends the book saying that Lizzie Borden’s Murder trial inspired her to write this story.

There is so much to this story. It's a story about grief, loss, dysfunctionality with a dash of mean girls and dislikeable characters. The ending was an unexpected one in a very good way.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting modern take on the Lizzie Borden murders. This book definitely dives into the family dynamics and imagines the possibilities that could have led to these murders. The book does drag and feel a bit repetitive at times but the driving force is knowing that it's going to have a pretty crazy ending given the source material.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader copy! It Will End Like This was inspired by the Lizzie Borden murders and that it was made me want to pick this bad boy up. I was not disappointed! From the jump we get into a death and it doesn't slow down until the end. I did struggle a few times with mixing up the sisters and getting confused as to when and who was narrating. Overall, if you are a fan of true crime, who-done-its, and anything eerie, you will enjoy It Will End Like This.

I was excited to read this story inspired by the Lizzie Borden murders, it's something that I've never seen before. However, this title didn't quite meet my high expectations. None of the characters were likable, which may have been the author's intent, but it didn't make for a fun reading experience. The pacing felt a little off, I kept waiting for the murders to happen but it wasn't until almost the of the book before they happened and there was no real inclusion of the police investigation or of a trial.

Overall, this book was fine, but I think readers interested in the Lizzie Borden murders would be better off sticking with nonfiction titles about her like "Lizzie Borden Took an Axe" rather than this title.

I was really disappointed in this book. It was marketed as a retelling of the Lizzie Borden crime and it truly didn’t live up to that hype at all. First of all, the chapters between Charlotte and Maddi are one and the same, the voice is similar and the only reason you can tell them apart is that there tend to be more Charlotte’s chapters and her chapters also tend to contain more inner dialogue, but apart from that, they were very similar. None of the side characters were fleshed out. I feel like I never got to know any of the characters, really, and so when there’s a huge reveal it doesn’t come as shocking but more as a “WTF?” moment, as it makes no sense as to why certain characters we barely saw throughout the book would suddenly act the way they did.

This book had a good premise but the execution was poor and the writing wasn’t that great. I did enjoy the short chapters but ultimately, apart from the ONE BIG THING that happened, nothing else seemed to occur. The sisters spend the majority of their time mourning their dead mother, driving to and from school, barely interacting with anyone there, or locked up in their rooms. Their interactions with anyone else besides themselves feel stilted and forced, and I’m surprised Charlotte could ever think that Lana was her friend, because she acted very strange from the very beginning.

All in all, some people seemed to have enjoyed this book, but this wasn’t the case for me. Not sure if I can really recommend it as the story wasn’t really compelling nor good. It’s a pass for me.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I found this one a bit confusing in its intent. The characters are so insistent that their father and his girlfriend killed their mother it seemed inevitable that they would learn it was actually a suicide. Even the discovery of the poison felt misleading. The mystery element is already a stretch. Then we throw in the apparent "madness" of the one daughter. And I found the to girls virtually indistinguishable. The final chapters are jarring and disjointed.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. It Will End Like This is a modern take on the Lizzy Borden murders. I am from the surrounding areas and the Lizzy Borden murders are still popular in true crime around here. I enjoyed the loss of control with the sisters, even during modern times. The unreliable narrator works so well with this book. I applaud the author's choice not to "solve" the crime.

This is described as a "Lizzie Borden" retelling and I FELT IT. This was really good from start to finish. I was so hooked from just the synopsis. This was definitely not a let down and REALLY lived up to the hype!