Book Review: The End of Everything

By Sandy Amazeen Apr 14, 2011, 16:52 GMT

Thirteen-year old Lizzie Hood and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable. They are best friends who swap bathing suits and field-hockey sticks, and share everything that\'s happened to them. Together they live in the shadow of Evie\'s glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities of their own teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Evie\'s big-hearted father, is the ...more

Thirteen year old Lizzie Hood and Evie Verver are best friends and poised as they are on the cusp of adolescence are coping with their changing bodies, boys harsh teasing and the insidious knowledge that life is about to become a lot more complicated. As part of a broken home, Lizzie has long been envious of Evie’s family, particularly of her fun, understanding father. The relative peace of the neighborhood is abruptly shattered when Evie disappears after turning down a ride with Lizzie and her mom. As Lizzie was the last person to spend time with Evie, she becomes the center of the investigation.

Questions swirl as Lizzie struggles to remember something, anything that might help locate Evie but all she can recall is a maroon sedan and a couple of cigarette butts. Lizze watches the Verver family suffer and feels there must be something she missed but as the truth eventually unfolds, she realizes evil can hide in plain sight and perhaps there is no such thing as the perfect family.

This tightly spun story recreates all the trials that come with emerging adulthood as a young girl slowly realizes she never really knew her best friend and certainly had no clue what was going on in the family dynamics. Beyond the horrors of child abduction and molestation, the heart of this deeply frightening tale is really about the mercurial nature of memories and seeing what we want to see.