Poorly executed with a ludicrous plot.

I Told You This Would Happen is the follow up to Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy. The story starts 4 months after Carrie Lawrence loses her sister Becca, a narcissistic serial killer, to another serial killer called Footloose (rolls eyes). She feels like she's finally free, because she doesn't have to help her sister hide bodies in the middle of the night anymore. After attending a meeting for the Brampton Kill Seekers, a group of amateur sleuths, she realizes that her secrets are at risk of being revealed because she's not innocent to at least one murder. A series of events to keep herself from being implicated causes her to become even more guilty.

Elaine Murphy seamlessly blends background information from the first book into I Told You This Would Happen. I honestly felt like I wasn't missing out by not reading Look What You Made Me Do. However, Carrie and Becca's toxic relationship is the only thing that kept me reading. It attempted to show how familial obligation can take over a person's whole life. Carrie is a boring and unlikable main character, because all she does is complain about having a serial killer sister and never take responsibility for her part. In short, Carrie makes me cringe. As she's being followed and cornered by the detective I'm hoping she gets caught and has to come clean. The climax fell so short. I was like wow that's it? This story had potential because the writing style was addictive and edgy. Yet, the bulk of the plot was incredibly disappointing. I don't know what adult is going to read this and think it's intriguing or realistic. I started to wonder if this was supposed to be satire. I hate to say it, but read this only if you want to laugh at a bad popcorn thriller.

Thank you Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was pretty preposterous, but a quick and fun read. I didn't realize it was a sequel! Some of the plot might have had more weight if I'd read the first book first. I didn't feel at all invested in the characters, but enjoyed the tone. It's hard not to compare this to Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, which was more successful.

☠️🚙🩸 I Told You This Would Happen by Elaine Murphy 💋🥣 🔪

H’s Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 4.5/5
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
TW: Murder, mention of domestic violence

👉🏼 Publishes July 12, 2022!

📖 Read if you like 📖
👻 Thrilling plots with lots of twists
💀 Serial killer stories
👯‍♀️ Sister dynamic
☝🏼 Single POV
⏳ Quick reads
✍🏼 Alice Feeney-like writing

💭 H’s Thoughts:
Elaine Murphy does it again! I absolutely loved Look What You Made Me Do, and this was a perfect sequel! 🤸🏼‍♀️ The duology is told from Carrie’s POV as she navigates through having a serial killer for a sister. There was twist after twist, and I devoured this book just like I did the other. I nearly read it in one sitting and stayed up past 1am to finish it because I had to know what happened!! Thriller lovers need to 🏃🏼‍♀️ RUN (not walk) 🏃🏼‍♀️ to go read these two books!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was such a different and fun read! I absolutely loved the characters….even if I should have been more wary. Fast-paced and full of twists. Definitely would read again.

A group of amateur sleuths, a copy cat serial killer and secrets and I was sold.
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I don’t want to say too much but this was a page turner and I was all in. This would make an amazing tv series.
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Huge thank you to @grandcentralpub and @netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Look- I broke the cardinal rule and read this book without reading the first in the series, Look What You Made Me Do. To be fair though, I didn’t even know the first one existed, and the cover made me read it 🤷🏼‍♀️ and it’s perfect for #thrillerthursday!

Carrie Lawrence really got dealt some awful cards to get a serial killer as a sister, and have a different serial killer try to come after her, but honestly, she’s not doing herself any favors.

I gotta tell ya, if I lived in a town with the highest unsolved murder rate, I would be gone so fast, you wouldn’t even know I ever existed. But instead, she sticks around and goes to a meeting of people who are way too invested in the disappearance and murders happening in the town. Would you guess that absolutely nothing good comes of it? SHOCKING, I know.

This book was a super fast read for me. I loved that you never really knew what was gonna happen and then when a twist happened you were left even more confused than before. I almost felt like I was playing a game of Clue trying to figure out what was gonna happen.

Opinions that’s are potential spoilers so skip ahead if you haven’t read it yet
• I really have to agree with Bella when she didn’t like Carrie’s boyfriend. He gave big pushover vibes and it was a no from me
• This book ruined storage units for me. Now every time I have to go to mine to get stuff, I’m gonna wonder what murder souvenirs are hiding in the other lockers

Thanks to @netgalley and @grandcentralpub for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

I loved the first book of this duology? I am not sure if this will just be two books or if there will be more. Either way the first one was a really great read. It had a fantastic wit and a whole lot of sarcasm. It also had great characters and a great mystery. Enough about that one though, this one was almost as good. Still had the same great characters, still had a lot of wit but I felt like the plot and the mystery were pretty messy. There were a few things that just did not seem plausible to me. Overall though it was still a great read and I am looking forward to another book from this author.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I didn't realize that this was the follow up book. I wish i had known that and could have read the first book. That being the case, I will say that you don't have to read book one to be able to understand what's happening in this one. This book was fun and fast paced for the most part. However, there were some parts that were really long in descriptions that I just didn't find myself caring about too much. You also have to suspend disbelief in this book, as some of the plots are very outlandish and with all the technology today it would be impossible for the repeated crimes to happen and the perp to keep getting away scott free.

It would have been helpful to have read the first book but I just could not "suspend belief" enough to enjoy this slapdashery view of a murdering sister with her sister as an accomplice premise of this book. The book frequently refers to the first book which would make it anticlimactic to go back and read the first one at this juncture. One thing for sure if I lived in Brampton with it's high body count/missing persons, I would move!

I really enjoyed this read! It kept me entertained and I laughed a ton. It’s also a quick read, which I really liked! I’d definitely recommend it.

I Told You This Would Happen is an addictive, fast-paced thriller that will hook readers from start to finish. Carrie is thrilled to finally be free of her manipulative serial killer sister and to finally be done covering up for her when she dies. When Carrie finds out a recent victim left behind a note implicating Carrie in the crime, the stakes have never been higher! The story is witty and suspenseful with a nice added dash of humor. I truly cannot recommend this book enough. Elaine Murphy is an author to watch out for!

Carrie Lawrence wants a boring life. She has a job she likes and a boyfriend, and she would like nothing more than to marry him, buy a house, and maybe adopt a puppy. It seems like a simple enough dream. But she’s just not sure it’s meant to be for her. She has secrets.

Carrie lives in Brampton, a small town with an unusually high number of missing persons. One of those missing persons is her older sister Becca. Carrie has some notoriety in town because of her missing sister. She also has some notoriety for having survived the town’s famous serial killer, Footloose. Named because he liked to separate the foot from his victim, Footloose had kidnapped Carrie and taken her to his murder cabin. She had managed to escape, burning down the cabin as she went. But before she escaped, she heard another woman cry out, so Carrie rescued her as well.

Carrie was invited to attend a meeting of the Brampton Kill Seekers, a group of those with missing family members and true crime fans who are working together to figure out why so many people are missing in Brampton. Well, Carrie wasn’t so much invited as badgered, with emails coming in every day for two weeks to encourage her to go to the meeting. She had survived a serial killer. They think she might have information that could help them. But what they don’t know is that Carrie hadn’t survived a serial killer.

She’d survived two.

Her sister Becca had also been a psychopath. She’d tormented Carrie since she was a kid, and eventually started killing people. She had blackmailed Carrie to help her dispose the bodies, so now Carrie is involved in those killings. But nobody knows about Becca, except for Carrie. And now she’s missing. She may be dead, which would make Carrie’s life so much easier. She could maybe have that quiet, boring life of her dreams.

Unless the police find some of those bodies that Carrie helped Becca bury. Or if the Brampton Kill Seekers manage to break through to the truth. Carrie will need to pay attention to every detail if she wants to make it through her life without being in prison. After everything she went through with her sister and then with Footloose, does she have the strength to forge a new life for herself, or will she fall apart under the pressure?

I Told You This Would Happen is a dark thriller that has you swinging from goosebumps of fear to peals of laughter in an instant. The absurdity of Carrie’s situation grows as the twists come at her, and it’s stressful and hilarious at the same time. Fans of Samantha Downing will find a friend in author Elaine Murphy and their similar way of being dark and being laugh-out-loud funny at the same disturbing time.

This book is absolutely crazy-bananas. I could not stop reading it. It’s disturbing and weird and unexpected, but I loved every page. There is so much going on in this book, and I can’t talk about too much of it here. For one, I don’t want to give too much away. You probably think I have given a lot of away, what with talking about the two serial killers, but trust me, there is so much more to come in the story that I’ve barely scratched the surface.

And secondly, I’m not sure how to put into words the things I am thinking and feeling from this book. If you belong to a book club that is comfortable with gallows humor, this would be a great book to it around discussing. With wine. Lots of wine. And a cheese board. But mostly, wine. If you don’t have a dark book club to enjoy this with, read it with your best friend or the person you talk about your favorite true crime podcasts with. This is a good buddy read because it will leave you with things you want to say, and it will help to have someone you can turn to with those thoughts, someone with the same stunned look on their face and a new inability to say “Footloose” without giggling just a little.

Egalleys for I Told You This Would Happen were provided by Grand Central Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I had a great time with this book! I have not seen this book listed as being part of a series anywhere (and I looked) but I would definitely recommend reading Look What You Made Me Do first if at all possible since this book picks up shortly after the events of that book. I was eager to read this next chapter in Carrie’s life and see how she would fare once she is away from her serial killer sister, Becca. Although highly improbable, this book was highly entertaining.

Carrie is glad to be away from her sister’s unhealthy attention. She wants to make a go of things with her boyfriend, Graham, and maybe even buy a house. After multiple invitations to the Brampton Kill Seekers meetings, she finally decides to go and leaves knowing that she has something to worry about since she appears to be implicated in the disappearance of a local girl. Carrie works to make sure that nothing leads back to her which is somewhat complicated by the fact that a local detective seems to be following her around.

So this is an excellent read. Carrie wants to do good things and her heart is primarily good but she has been pushed beyond the grey area by her sister so many times she recognizes the fact that she doesn’t always land on the right side of the line. The book had plenty of action to keep the pages turning and there were some pretty big surprises that kept me glued to the pages. I really wanted to see Carrie find a way to come out on top but wasn’t sure how it could happen.

I would recommend this book to others. There were times that I worried that Carrie was going to get herself in even more trouble with her actions and was really worried about her. I had a great time making my way through all of the twists and turns of this highly entertaining novel.

I received a review copy of this book from Grand Central Publishing.

I didn’t love this one as much as I wanted …

the first few chapters were beyond intriguing - I mean, a sister serial killer act? count me intrigued

after THAT big reveal in the first 30% though, it kinda fell flat? I mean, it was entertaining but not engrossing.

I wished for a dual POV where it showed the good and the evil sides of every mystery instead of just a one-sided conversation with the MC on whether she’s just a good person or a bad person …

INSTEAD I loved how every moment was a new reveal for the MC and we figured out along with her how it fit into the entire picture

overall, I felt the writing dragged on for a bit while the characterization had little improvement throughout the entire story. but I adored the side characters and wished they had more story time!!!

the conclusion of the story was satisfying and predictable for a thriller queen such as myself, but it was still beyond enjoyable and fast paced for any mystery lover!!

thank you to the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!! this one’s out this week!

rating: 3 stars
wine pairing: brazil sauvignon blanc

I Told You This Would Happen
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Thriller Mystery
Format: Kindle eBook
Date Published: 7/12/22
Author: Elaine Murphy
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Pages: 384
Goodreads Rating: 4.07

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: Four months ago Carrie Lawrence lost her sister, Becca, a serial killer unbeknownst to their small town. Carrie attends a meeting set up by the Brampton Kill Seekers, a group of amateur local sleuths, and finds another girl is missing. It may be paranoia, but Carrie cannot shake the feeling that Becca is alive since there has been three hit and run accidents.

My Thoughts: I did not know that this was a follow up to “Look What You Made Me Do.” For me, this one flowed well and I was not lost, the author provided a good backstory to understand what transpired before. The story is told in a single POV, from Carrie, from her perspective. She is relatable, even though she is flawed, and very likable, even through what happened, I rooted for her throughout the story. The story starts out with a bang and continues on a fast paced, page turning journey that I could not put down. I enjoyed this story from the first page, through the last page. The characters are well developed, with layers of depth, mystery, and are creatively written. The author’s writing style was just brilliant, it was complex, suspenseful, gripping, and sinister. The story flowed well, the plot had layers of twists, driven by the characters, and tied up nicely in the end. This was probably one of the better sequels for a thriller book that I have read. This book released a week ago, I highly recommend you go order this one right now!!

The cover immediately made me want to read this book! It is irresistible!. I really wish that I had read the first book. I think that it's important to do that and I wish I had realized it and had time to do so before I read this one. There was some background information but I could just tell it would have been better to read it. I loved how there was a mix of humor in. The twists were surprising and the whole story kept me entertained with it's fast pace.

I don't know if it is because I didn't read the first book in the series, but the info vomit from the start didn't work for me. I tried to connect but couldn't so the read wasn't that enjoyable. That said if you think you might enjoy this story, be sure to read the first book before tackling this story. I give it 2.5/5 stars.


I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of I Told You This Would Happen by Elaine Murphy. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for providing an ARC to review.

Thank you Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for the EArc in return for an honest review.

The follow up to Look What You Made Me Do we once again follow Carrie as she tries to move on with her life after Becca's death. She attends a meeting held by amateur sleuths and discover the evidence they have may expose her and upend the happy life she so desperately craves.

This one fell a bit short for me. It's good but I enjoyed the first book more.

Delightfully twisty!! Look What You Made Me Do is one of my absolute favorites and this was a great follow up! Highly recommend both of these!

This book was so frustrating (but in a good way). It’s so hard to find yourself rooting for someone who is arguably a villain, or someone who definitely is one. But the fact that you can find yourself doing that at all speaks to how the characters are written in a way that makes even the unrelatable, relatable. I found myself hoping that the story could be neatly wrapped up, while also searching for any way there could be more to tell.