The Audiobook:
No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield
Published October 12th 2021 by William Morrow
Date read: September 1, 2021
The Characters:
Lizzie and her husband Dwayne
Adrienne and her husband Ethan
Detective Ian Bird
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Dark, deft, murderous, and witty, No One Will Miss Her tackles the thorny issues of identity and belonging at the heart of women’s lives.
On a beautiful October morning in rural Maine, a homicide investigator from the big city pulls into the hard-luck town of Copper Falls. The local junkyard is burning, and the town pariah Lizzie Oullette is dead—with her husband, Dwayne, nowhere to be found. As scandal ripples through the community, Detective Ian Bird’s inquiries unexpectedly lead him away from small-town Maine to a swank city townhouse several hours south. Adrienne Richards, blonde and fabulous social media influencer and wife of a disgraced billionaire, had been renting Lizzie’s tiny lake house as a country getaway…even though Copper Falls is anything but a resort town.
As Adrienne’s connection to the case becomes clear, so too does her connection to Lizzie, who narrates their story from beyond the grave. Each woman is desperately lonely in her own way, and they navigate a relationship that cuts across class boundaries: transactional, complicated, and, finally, deadly. A Gone Girl for the gig economy, this is a story of privilege, identity, and cunning, as two devious women from opposite worlds discover the dangers of coveting someone else’s life.
The Twist:
Lizzie is alive and well, which is why she is narrating the book. She killed Adrienne, not the other way around. They looked similar enough that Lizzie was able to take over Adrienne’s life, and no one was the wiser. We know that Lizzie and Dwayne did something to Ethan, but not exactly what.
Later, we find out that Ethan was killed in a fight with Dwayne. Lizzie and Dwayne left his body in Dwayne’s truck on Lizzie’s father’s land. They then set fire to it all to get her father the insurance claim. Lizzie did all this to cover up Dwayne’s mistake, but ended up killing him too because he couldn’t handle the pressure of covering up what had happened.
The Ending:
Lizzie seemingly gets away with it and runs into the detective years later in a bar in her hometown.
Spoiler review: I loved the twist. Definitely wasn’t expecting it, at least not so early on. I thought it was very well done, and everything fell into place perfectly after that. I felt like the very end of the book fizzled out a little bit since all the real action happened somewhat early on. The ending where she meets up with Ian didn’t really do it for me. It felt a little unbelievable that she’d get away with it completely.
The Review:
Thank you to Harper Audio for this advanced listener’s copy in exchange for an honest review.
No One Will Miss Her is one of those thrillers where the more I say, the more likely I am to spoil it. For that reason, I’m going to keep things short.
To start, I love books that are narrated from beyond the grave. I think it’s such a fun way to tell a story, and obviously gives the reader a different and more omniscient perspective.
This book was perfectly paced. I was never bored, and always interested to see what would happen next. While I didn’t connect with any of the characters, I was drawn in by their stories and histories and was compelled to find out what happened to them.
Overall, I think some suspension of belief is required, but this is often the case with thrillers. It wasn’t so unbelievable that I disliked the ending, but to enjoy thrillers you can’t really expect an ending to be both shocking and realistic.
The narration was great and fitting for the characters. I have no real comments about the audiobook, which means it was top quality and a good match for the story. I’m never sure what to say about audiobooks that I like–I feel like I only have comments on audio copies when there’s something wrong with it!
This was my first book by this author, and as far as I can tell it’s her first thriller. I really hope she writes more in this genre, because I really enjoyed No One Will Miss Her.
TW: a graphic animal death scene, which I know is a big one for many people
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