The End of Everything: A Novel

When I was in college, I begrudgingly read Lolita because it was required. I, personally, am not a fan of creepy fiction... So when I had nightmares about Lolita, I knew the book did its job. Same feeling as Flowers in the Attic from middle school... And later Little Children.The writing of this book, with the descriptions and teasing playful pop of colorful descriptions, the naïveté of the unreliable narrator (being an innocent 13 years old), and the sinking feeling you MAY know what's going on, but no...no... That's just me being gross.There were several times I had to put the book down and get myself together. I wanted to shake some of the characters. I found myself rereading whole chapters just to make sure that I read what I thought I had.The end of the book, I had chills. I had crazy chills, the ones that let me know that there is this whole world out there that I do not understand. People out there that are odd... And creepy... The sick feeling I have now, like Lolita and the other novels I mentioned: this book... It did its job.Proceed with caution. Excellent book! Great writing, great story, but not for the weak.

Wow. What a read. This is not, of course, a feel good story; after all, it centers on the abduction/disappearance of a young girl. The real plot, so to speak, lies in the emotional needs of young women, their relationships with older men and boys their own age, and the sometimes very dark secrets within a family.Yes, the protagonist, 13 year old Lizzie, is feeling the stirrings of sexuality. If that puts you off, you should avoid the book. I suspect no one would be shocked to hear that 13 year old boys have such feelings. Well, so do girls. And, yes, girls can develop unwholesome fixations on their fathers. Again, not really surprising news.What makes this a five star book is the gorgeous writing and the intelligence with which the author probes those forbidden feelings - all from the perspective of a girl trying to figure out the world and herself.

Yes, this book is a very disturbing read. The author does write beautifully, but I feel like there are no true answers to this story. Megan did a wonderful job at making me remember a beautiful childhood, but I'm left with questions about the father. I won't say this is a horrible book because I did finish reading it, but I don't like reading books that leave me with so many questions, or feeling like I constantly have to read between the lines. I'm not saying give me a book that has to be straight forward, but it shouldn't have ended the way it did.

This novel blew me away. Its psychological depths are infinite. The story is gripping, building patiently to its beautiful, devastating conclusion. It’s a concise work of unaffected, sensitive, literary genius. No false notes, no false sentimentality, no forced/formulaic twists. Profound, authentic, haunting and beautiful. This was the first of Megan Abbott’s books I’ve read. If she’s written anything else approaching the brilliance of The End Of Everything (and I’ll be exploring her other novels), omg. That’s all I can say. Read this novel—be moved, and amazed.

WOW! This is the first Megan Abbott book I have read. While this may be more of a 4 star book, it gets a 5 from me! I simply adore Megan Abbott! The beginning of this book had me all smiley and nostalgic. Never have I heard girl pubescence so exquisitely described. The scabs and bruises, the racing abandon, the deep desire to know of the elusive adult secrets. And damn, if Abbott didn't take me right down the road of these secrets. It gets dark, very dark.The story is told by 13 year old Lizzy. Her best friend is Evie, with whom she is inseparable, Evie's older sister Dusty, who oozes with all things girl, and also Mr. and Mrs. Verver. It is about how Lizzy idolizes their family and is completely drawn into what life is like outside her own. When Evie goes missing, Lizzy thinks she knows Evie to her core, yet can anyone really know another completely, and can she ever know the full dynamics of another's family? To quote Abbott, "And with Evie gone, I can see things have been changing for who knows how long. It was like the scar on her thigh, the one I could feel beneath my own fingers had slithered from my own leg back to hers."So much centers on Evie's disappearance and what happens after. At times, it reminded me of Lolita. While I haven't read this book, I do know the backstory. What I marveled at was how emotionally advanced girls are at this age. The real power they possess in many ways. How this power cannot be fully understood. Wanting more and not understanding the dangers in the wanting. Abbott shows that girls have a strong intuition, a knowing she infuses throughout this story.All I can say is I was all smiles in the beginning, then ricocheted into a tale that had my heart pounding and didn't let up! I loved it!

If you are a lover of creepy noir (as am I), then this is your book. The plot and characters are dissected in other reviews so I'll tell you why I liked it. Liked? No, loved it.(1) Unreliable narrator: One of my favorite points of view is first person. The narrator here tells us things which may or may not be true. She inserts herself into a bizarre situation, creating more drama. She lies. She connives. She tampers with evidence!(2) The narrator bluntly explores her own burgeoning sexuality, in many ways making herself distasteful. Who says all the characters in a novel have to be sweet and kind? She says things that we don't want to hear.(3) The surprises do not end until the last page of the story. Why write a story, a poem, or a song if you don't have surprises?(4) The book gave me bad dreams. Ah! Success.Megan Abbott has me hooked.

The End of Everything really grabbed me from the first few pages. This is a book that will keep you up at night.Lizzie and Evie are best friends. They practically live in each others pockets sharing secrets, as teenage girls tend to do. They are inseparable until one day Evie is taken from her. That day everything changes for Lizzie.What follows is a compelling yet often slightly disturbing effort by Lizzie to get Evie home. Her journey involves delving deep into Evie's family life and she begins to wonder whether she really knew her best friend at all.The End of Everything really focuses on relationships but it's hard to talk about the individual relationships without spoiling the story but it was interesting that the girl's relationships seem to mirror each other throughout the whole book. Lizzie forms a strong attachment to Evie's father. She worships in a way that is not entirely innocent. The reader is also lead to wonder if his intentions are totally innocent either. What is clear though is that he sees Lizzie as a portal to Evie. He is convinced that she knows something that he doesn't.There is a twist in this book and although it wasn't entirely surprising it still kept me racing through the pages.The ending won't be to everyone taste but I loved it. I really love when the last chapter, or even the last page flicks a switch in your brain and makes you re think everything you've just read.I've only read one Megan Abbott book before this (Dare me). It didn't grab me like this one did but I will definitely be returning to her books in the future.

This is the first of three recent novels by the author with similar themes; a fourth will be published shortly. She is a good writer who gets under the skin of her characters. The subject is, however, disturbing and some readers have found it troubling.As with the later Fever and Dare Me her protagonist is a teenage girl, the 13 year old Lizzie, who is just about to move on to high school. Her friend, Evie, suddenly vanishes. Lizzie desperately wants to have her friend back. She seeks even more to recover their friendship. She becomes amateur detective. In a confused way she comes to an understanding of what may have happened and why. In this process she unpacks much of inner self. She also discovers how some things called love, and even felt in that way, are deformed and false.As with the other two books, the adult world runs in parallel with the adolescent. They too are looking for clues to the vanished girl. Again parents and elders are shown up in a poor light; they do not guide and educate, they are poor role models, they even miss obvious clues to the mystery.In this book though things are darker. Abbott exposes dishonesty and corruption and the manipulation of innocence. While not especially explicit, emotionally it is not pleasant. I preferred the later novels [and look forward to the new one].

I found it quite hard to rate this book. In the end I decided to give it three stars because it kept me reading and I was interested enough to get to the end.However, this is a very disturbing book and it is very hard to believe that it was the voice of a 13 year old, particulary the 13 year old Lizzie that we are introduced to in the book. It would have been a lot more believable if the narrator had been Dusty, or even Evie. Furthermore, it is very hard to believe that a 13 year old girl would make the same choices as the two characters in this book made. Suspension of disbelief would have to play a large part in this, even if you could swallow down the lump of discomfort that had settled somewhere between your throat and your stomach at the subject matter. For, yes, this is a very uncomfortable book. The protagonist, and indeed other characters, have an unhealthy fixation on sex. One could say this fixation was almost a perversion for some and there is an inexcusable acceptance of the behaviour of certain characters. Reading through sometimes made me feel sick but I persisted because somewhere in there was a good story. Having said that, the story did start to unravel for me a little bit because I found a lot of what happened so very hard to believe. It would have worked so much better if the narration was through the eyes of a 16 year old. 13 just seemed too unreal for a lot of what happened and, indeed, for a lot of the adult decisions that were made by the protagonist.Evie was another thing altogether. I can't really nut out the part that disturbed me most without ruining the story for those who wish to read it. Suffice to say that you will know it when you get to that part and maybe you will even wonder at it the same way I did. The whole thing left me feeling very disturbed and sick to my stomach.Concentrating on the parts I did like: this is the first book I have read in quite some time that I have not dreaded revisiting every time I put my Kindle down - in other words, it kept me reading and I was intrigued to find out the whole story. I feel it could have been a little faster paced in parts, but this did not make me want to stop reading or skip parts. Quite aside from the fact that I never skip parts (I just stop reading if I am that bored), I knew there would be a detail I would miss that would make a later part of the story seem nonsensical or as though something was missing. I liked that there was resolution at the end. A lot of books I have read in the last year seem to end in such a way that there is no resolution so it was comforting to see some. I liked the realistic way that the author did not tie up all loose ends and make everyone live happily ever after. The ending and the way it came to pass was all realistic enough for me.Would I recommend this book? NO! A resounding no. That is solely due to the content of the book. I found it disturbing and I could not say I liked this book or enjoyed reading it. Readable? Yes. Enjoyable? How could it be?Would I read another book by this author? Possibly, but I would want a little bit more information as to the content you do not get to see on the blurb and I would do so with wariness. It is not a book to hand to anyone under the age of 18 if you ask me.In three words: Proceed with caution

There was a lot about this novel that I liked. The richness of the prose and its breathless first person adolescent narrative. Abbot handles that point between childhood and teens really well: the confusion over physical feelings, the emotional overload, and the lack of insight or self discipline to manage it. It was like reading Lolita from her best friend's POV.But valid as the unreliable narration was, it made for frustrating reading. The reader gets everything way before the narrator does, which is a clever device but dull to endure. We work out from the first signpost that the narrator has a crush on her friend's father, that he is salacious in a passive but unsavoury way, that her friend has chosen to go off with Mr Shaw, not been abducted, that the lakeside viewing is a red herring. But each of these plot points is hinted at repeatedly before being revealed with a declamatory energy as though we'd never have guessed! We guessed. We guessed at the very first very clear clue. So the narration limps behind the reader, repetitious and unsurprising. I felt that the writing - the characterisation and prose style were way ahead of the plot here, which was thin. The use of repetition, however well written, to pad out what could have been told in a long short story or novella, just didn't work. I could imagine this cut to thirty pages, making it into the Best American shot stories anthology, but as a novel it needed more complexity and surprise to sustain the reader's interest,

I am very pleased i read this book ,as it is not the usual type of story i choose i was pleasantly surprised and absolutely loved it. Two 13 year olds, fast friends, go everywhere and do everything together,tell each other their thoughts and wonder about life. Evie disappears one day after school and is gone for a number of weeks,eventually coming back, but not wanting to say what happened to her. The story is told through Lizzie her friend,it moves along at a good pace and i very soon found i was loathe to put it down and stop reading.Lizzie puts all her waking hours into wondering and on a couple of occassions pointing the police investigation to certain things she thinks they should look into.She is very close to Evies family especially her father and they cling to each other in some respects;as the mother has withdrawn herself from any thing that happens and Evies older sister Dusty ,until the end, is not featured that much,leaving the father to cope with Evies disappearance on his own and so he tends to gravitate towards Lizzie.I felt the story was just as much about the relationship between the father and Lizzie and was mixed into the story line of the disappearance of Evie.I recommend this book whole-heartedly it is a superbly written well paced story and shows that you dont have to write a thrill a minute cop chasing murder or horror plot- line to produce a great book.