King uses the phrase keeping it on the down-low in a way that suggests he probably doesn’t understand how this phrase is currently used—and has been used for quite a while. There it waits, trapped in a silver frame, watching me live my life and pointing out all my mistakes. A highly entertaining thriller with a huge, warm, beating human heart and a central character that stays with you long, long after reading. The writing was good, the style and tone is a bit formal, which makes sense according to Linda's personality, but there's no suspense or urgency and most of the time, I felt my attention drifting as I read. While there is an underlying thread connecting everything, it doesn’t become apparent until the final 10% or so.

It's a book that is always at least two steps ahead—though not in the direction you suspect—and deliciously mixes, as only Joanna Cannon can, suburbia and the sinister. It’s quite an emotional rollercoaster read and frequently it’s sad as you see the impact of judgements or the past catching up with the present. Before you decide that this one is not for you, this is not a thriller, or not what I’d consider a thriller.Linda's husband Terry isn't perfect—he picks his teeth, tracks dirt through the house, and spends most of his time in front of the TV.

She flips through the glossy catalogs that arrive in the mail for the house’s previous tenant, Rebecca Finch, and imagines that woman’s glamorous lifestyle. I have read and loved everything Joanna Cannon has written, and she has surprised me again with this entertaining, character driven mystery that has dark undertones. Then: she accelerates her lifestyle changes, and gradually the layers are peeled back - why they had to leave Wales when she was a child, her attachment/detachment to Mother, and the monochrome of her life gradually becoming coloured. I really enjoyed this book, the writing is superb (see notes for some examples), and the author’s way with words captured me (Joanna Cannon - get OUT of my head! I picture a lot of people sitting around on furniture in relaxed poses—unnecessary visuals, enough is enough.Then, a glimpse into a new, beautiful life through a magazine addressed to the previous occupant of the house, and things start to change. 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. After perusing the glossy catalogs addressed to Rebecca Finch, Linda begins imagining herself into a different sort of life—a better, more glamorous one like she imagines Rebecca must have. Meanwhile, she becomes obsessed with Rebecca Finch, former resident of her house, whose luxe catalogs still arrive in the mail. 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.

Adapted from a short story and inspired by the voice of audiobook reader Lissa Berry, A Tidy Ending is a character driven cozy mystery with an edge that will have you questioning everything. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. As she opens more of Rebecca Finch’s mail, she seems to become fixated on her to the point of stalking. My receipt of a review copy from the publisher did not impact the expression of my honest opinions above. The catalogue was addressed to Rebecca Finch at the house she and husband Terry recently bought in a housing estate and moved into.The voice of Linda is read well in audio, with the undertones of her character giving the reader an impression which may very well cloud their impression of her character in a strong way. I suppose they want to make sense of it all, and they’ll struggle because no one has all the pieces of the story, except for me. Cannon uses her chosen milieu – the suburban street where curtains twitch, the chintzy cheeriness of the old folk’s home, quotidian tragedies and buried truths – to explore the inner lives of outsiders.