The Book:
Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy
Published July 13, 2021 by Grand Central Publishing
Date read: September 6, 2022
The Characters:
Carrie
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Carrie wants a normal life.
Carrie Lawrence doesn’t need a happily ever after. She’ll just settle for “after.” After a decade of helping her sister hide her victims. After a lifetime of lies. She just wants to be safe, boring, and not trekking through the woods at night with a dead body wrapped in a carpet.
Becca wants to get away with murder.
Becca Lawrence doesn’t believe in happily ever after because she’s already happy. She’s gotten away with murder for a decade and has blackmailed her sister into helping her hide the evidence—what more could a girl want?
But first they have to stop a serial killer.
When thirteen bodies are discovered in their small town, people are shocked. But not as shocked as Carrie, who thought she knew all the details of Becca’s sordid pastime. When Becca swears she’s not behind the grisly new crimes, they realize the town has a second serial killer who has the sisters in his sights, and what he wants is…Carrie.
The Twist:
Becca disappeared while looking for Footloose, and Carrie knew that he had taken her. Eventually he kidnapped Carrie too. She woke up in his murder cabin, and he showed her videos of him killing the other girls. When it was Carrie’s turn to run the gauntlet of his murder house, she was able to pretend she had died right in front of him. When he came to check out her body, she pushed him into his own trap door and he died. Carrie set fire to his house to destroy any evidence of her and Becca, but there was another girl still alive in the house: Fiona. Carrie saved Fiona and they both escaped.
Carrie figured out who Footloose was (he wasn’t previously involved in the story) and got rid of any evidence in his real home.
Fiona began blackmailing Carrie, saying she had evidence of the people Carrie and Becca had killed and that she’d go to the police if Carrie didn’t pay her $50k. Carrie led Fiona into the woods and shoved her off a cliff.
The Ending:
Carrie is looking for Becca’s body…assuming Becca is really dead.
The Review:
Look What You Made Me Do was such a good concept: the point of view of the pushover sister of a serial killer, where said serial killer constantly forces the sister to help her clean up after herself. And then another serial killer arrives on the scene, and the sisters team up to stop him. Such a good premise, and the first few chapters had me hooked!
After that, though, I began to lose interest. There was too much buildup, and then once things got good, it kind of rushed through the climax. Everything was explained away much too simply to be believable.
I did really enjoy the scenes with Becca and Carrie together–either hiding bodies or searching for Footloose. I thought Becca’s character was hysterical, despite her taking obvious advantage of Carrie, and really enjoyed reading about their screwy dynamic.
If you liked the bizarre hilarity of Finlay Donovan, I think you’d like this one. It’s the sort of book you have to take exactly at face value for the popcorn it is, but if you think too logically about it the plot begins to fall apart.
I think I let this one sit on my shelf too long and let the Bookstagram hype build up, and I expected more from it than I should have. That’s okay, not every book is going to be a five-star read. I’m still excited to read the sequel, I Told You This Would Happen. Hopefully there’s a little more going on in that one, and hopefully the twists are better explained!
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