MYSTERY

All the Broken People

Putnam. Jun. 2020. 368p. ISBN 9780593085479. $26. SUSPENSE
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Konen, known for her YA romances (Love and Other Train Wrecks), takes a sharp turn with her first psychological thriller for adults; one hopes there will be more. Lucy King has left Brooklyn and her abusive boyfriend and is hiding out with her dog in the small, upstate town of Woodstock, NY. Her new neighbors, Vera and John, invite her to dinner, but another neighbor offers vague warnings about them. Nevertheless, Lucy goes and an all-consuming friendship is formed, even after Lucy hears the terrible rumors about John and a local teenager. Lucy has no one; her parents are dead, and her best friend was the abusive boyfriend’s sister, so she clings to this couple. John and Vera decide the only way they can escape the repercussions of scandal is by faking John’s death, and they enlist Lucy’s help. But when John is murdered, everything changes.
VERDICT The main protagonist is an unreliable narrator, but then all the characters are unreliable, making this a fast-paced, unputdownable roller-coaster of a read sure to appeal to fans of Gillian Flynn or Paula Hawkins.
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