This Is How We End Things - R.J. Jacobs

Thriller

Rating: 8/10

This isn’t the first time I have voiced how essential a great opening is to a book. Whether it’s a killer sentence or paragraph, it’s a tricky thing to nail without making it feel contrived. In this novel, a few pages of prologue convey sheer terror at an excruciating pace. A brilliant launch into an atmospheric thriller that will transport you to a tension filled gothic university where duplicity seeps into the place as much as the people. Where the art of the lie knows no bounds.

While most students have fled campus for some spring break fun in the sun, a group of graduate students studying the psychology of deception are otherwise engaged. When one of them ends up dead during a harsh wintery storm, it turns out they may be as skilled in telling the lies they study as they are in detecting them.

I thoroughly enjoy characters with questionable ethics, and this novel has several. Each has a secret past that the author slowly unravels piece by piece.

Book Pairing(s): Everyone Here Is Lying by Shari Lapena, The Maidens by Alex Michaelides, An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks