Released in 2020, the suspenseful thriller, “The End of Her,” by Shari Lapena, follows a young couple, Patrick and Stephanie Kilgour living in suburban New York.

Patrick and Stephanie are a happy married couple with new exhausting twins. Patrick is an architect with his close business partner Niall, while Stephanie stays home with her children. What Stephanie doesn’t know is that Patrick cheated on his previous wife, Lindsey, with Erica Voss. Lindsey died almost 8 months pregnant in a tragic accident. During Winter of 2009, Patrick shoveled out the car while Lindsey waited inside when the exhaust pipe became blocked with snow causing carbon monoxide to be trapped in the vehicle, killing Lindsey. The police deemed it a tragic accident, and no other thought was ever put into the case.

That same year, Erica became a surrogate for Cheryl, giving birth to a baby boy. When she was 8 months pregnant, she came to Cheryl demanding over 100,000 dollars in cash, or threatening to keep the child herself. Cheryl being desperate for a child, agrees to the illegal payment and is later granted her son.

After the accident Patrick moved to New York and remarried to Stephanie. On Stephanie’s 30^th birthday she received a large inheritance worth killing for. When Erica blackmails Patrick for money, he admits to the cheating on his previous wife and explains her fatal accident, but Stephanie begins to doubt her husband. She becomes an insomniac, always stressed, always worrying, becoming afraid. Erica becomes impatient as she realizes they won’t pay the money and she heads to the Denver police asking for a reopening of the investigation.

After the reopening, Patrick returns to Denver for the trials and begs his wife to believe him, to remain in New York with the twins, but she doesn’t listen. Stephanie wants to believe her husband-she wants to believe that he didn’t kill his first wife for the money- that it was an accident and that’s all it ever was. But with the increasingly new secrets and lies emerging, what will she choose?

5/5 Shields