A Tidy Ending: The latest dark comedy from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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I may have been right about the twist, in the end, but the journey getting there was something I never could have imagined!

It’s totally possible that I would have liked this book more if I hadn’t run into two quirky loners-losers who I didn’t like earlier this year. Her depiction of Linda with her unique voice was superb and there were so many times when I found myself nodding along in agreement with Linda’s view of life or chuckling at her observations and asides. She does a good job of narrating Linda and has a lovely, honey-smooth voice but I somehow kept tuning off from her narration due to the way Linda’s character was written. Moreover, a character being unreliable unknowingly is very different from one acting unreliable deliberately. Linda is an unusual character, she's very naive, socially awkward, doesn't understand sarcasm or social cues and seems as if she's somewhere on the autism spectrum.Her mother is another real piece of work, a controlling woman who moved Linda to Wales after some family event in their past, something to do with her father, which is revealed only slowly. Then someone will have a brainwave and dig out an old school photograph from the loft, one that’s faded and curled where time has eaten into us all, and they’ll climb down from the stepladder and cough and brush the dust from their clothes, and they’ll say, There she is, look, I’ve found her—she’s the one at the back, and they’ll have to point to make it clear: No, no, that one—the one you can’t see very well. The chapters are mostly in the past with the murders and Linda’s preoccupation, but there also “now” chapters where Linda is in the present, foreshadowing what may have happened in the past. While she goes about her routine work, she wonders if there’s more to life, as she can see in the glossy magazines that keep coming to her house, but addressed to the earlier owner Rebecca Finch. When Linda receives upmarket catalogues addressed to the previous occupant, Rebecca, she becomes obsessed by them.

It’s not said outright in either book, but both women seem to be on the autism spectrum, and both are meticulous about cleaning.Then, a glimpse into a new, beautiful life through a magazine addressed to the previous occupant of the house, and things start to change. How often in our lives do we walk around not really noticing the people who are right in front of our eyes? Both completely misunderstand other peoples’ intentions, both are kind of clueless as to how others live their lives, and both are totally unaware of social cues. The audiobook was narrated by Lissa Berry whose brilliant reading adds a lot of value to this novel. Using some incredibly clever deduction, she manufactures ‘bumping’ into Rebecca and her boyfriend Jolyon.