Author: R.J. Jacobs
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Thanks to the publisher for a complimentary arc of this title. Opinions expressed are my own.
Riley Sager meets If We Were Villains in a compelling new psychological thriller by RJ Jacobs, following a tight-knit group of graduate students studying the psychology of lying. When one of them is discovered dead after an experiment, everything the group thought they knew about deception crumbles...
A foreboding new dark academia thriller of deception and suspense, This is How it Ends follows the unraveling of a close group of students as they contend with what it means to lie, and be lied to.
Review:
Six graduate students enter a study of the psychology of lying to assist Joe Lyons with a project. Scarlett is a single mother and appears as the peacemaker of the group. Robert, a senior assistant on the project, is highly disciplined, earning the nickname of "teacher's pet". Tattooed Britt is impulsive and prefers keeping things to himself. Bad boy Chris is reckless and has a past connection to Britt. Beautiful Elizabeth is secretive and cunning and generally disliked because of her affair with Joe. New team member, Veronica, is a lawyer who assists with legal advice and apparently has had a conflict with one of the group in the past. Each graduate has dark secrets, and a past they prefer to keep buried. When a brutal murder is discovered, each one of them is suspect, but how do you figure out which one among a group who are masters in the art of lying?
THIS IS HOW THINGS END is a well-written, intelligent murder mystery with a sea of red herrings all who are liars, all with dark secrets. To unmask a killer, detectives will have to unravel a web of lies and dig into each character's past. This is an eerie, page burning mystery, a dark academia style story, that challenges readers to figure out whodunnit. While I managed to do so shortly before the reveal, it in no way impacted how much I enjoyed trying to solve this puzzle of a mystery. Highly recommended to fans of dark academia books and murder mysteries.
Synopsis:
Campus is empty, a winter storm is blowing in, and someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance to kill again.
Forest, North Carolina. Under the instruction of enigmatic Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students are studying the tedious science behind the acts of lying. But discovering the secrets of deception isn't making any of the student's more honest though. Instead, it's making it easier for them to guard their own secrets – and they all have something to hide.
When a test goes awry and one of them is found dead, the students find themselves trapped by a snowstorm on an abandoned campus with a local detective on the case. As harbored secrets begin to break the surface, the graduates must find out who's lying, who isn't, and who may have been capable of committing murder. It turns out deception is even more dangerous than they thought...
Forest, North Carolina. Under the instruction of enigmatic Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students are studying the tedious science behind the acts of lying. But discovering the secrets of deception isn't making any of the student's more honest though. Instead, it's making it easier for them to guard their own secrets – and they all have something to hide.
When a test goes awry and one of them is found dead, the students find themselves trapped by a snowstorm on an abandoned campus with a local detective on the case. As harbored secrets begin to break the surface, the graduates must find out who's lying, who isn't, and who may have been capable of committing murder. It turns out deception is even more dangerous than they thought...
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