**Listened to audio book and read the electronic copy too**

I adore Joanna Cannon's writing - I have read all of her novels up until now, and whether or not I rate the books as a whole, I always come away loving her writing and the characters in particular.
It's the same with this book.

I didn't really know where the book was going, and I felt a little lost in terms of plot at times. However, Cannon's writing and her skilful way of writing such realistic characters kept me hooked and wanting to read. At times, it felt like I was reading a piece of non-fiction, or memoir because the characters just felt so believable.

The plot flicks back and forth from the past to present day, and it's a good plot devise to keep you guessing, and feeling a little confused.

In the audio book, I really liked the narrator and didn't imagine that the central character was Welsh to begin with (when reading the e-book) but the narrator was great, and helped give it that 'true-crime' feel - despite the fact that it was a work of fiction.

I'm still feeling a little lost in terms of the storyline and plot, but I did really enjoy my reading experience. It was a long time coming for this latest Joanna Cannon book - I just hope that it's not a long wait until the next one!

‘Things can be however you want to see them…’

Joanna Cannon is a master of domesticity; with a wonderful ability to recreate the detail of everyday life, to peer into people’s front rooms and bathrooms and paint the clearest of pictures for her reader. But under all the domesticity there is always something going on..a deeper seam of human existence, a bubbling under which hints at something darker.
Linda is 43, lives with her husband Terry and works part time in a charity shop.Terry and Linda go to the pub on a Friday night. Linda’s life consists of her job, the pub and visits to her Mother..Linda and her Mum left Wales after the death of her Father..he was a piano teacher and Linda saw something when she interrupted a lesson..Linda and Terry are not a marriage made in heaven, ‘When you look at the body lying next to you, and you realise that’s it. You’ve dropped your anchor. Here is the view for the rest of your life.’ Living in a sprawling estate life is very ordinary until a young woman is murdered…
Linda’s headspace is difficult to occupy, sometimes uncomfortable. She is one of life’s marginalised humans: socially inept, sometimes inappropriate, fixating on others..She spends a long time peering through catalogues imagining other people’s lives and sometimes her concept of truth and reality is blurred..
I loved the domesticity of this book, the power of the observation which is frequently comic
‘The Swiss Cottage was right by the main entrance, and the smell of car park kept making its way through the doors and mixing with the gravy. There was very little Swiss about it, to be honest..’
I loved the detail of the day to day, and I felt the shock when the bodies started appearing..how could it happen here?! There was a powerful juxtaposition between the daily monotony punctuated by the discovery of women’s bodies…
How we see things is a powerful theme throughout the novel - what we think we see or perceive. What did Linda see all those years ago; what do the neighbours see in each other and what do we see as the reader.
At the end of this novel there is such a twist that you will wonder what you have read, what you have seen…and I feel that I should really read this all over again. Was I too seeing what I wanted to see….

With thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for a digital copy of this great read.

Linda’s life is empty, but filled with disappointment. She’s recently moved, with husband Terry, to another house on the same sprawling estate, and – when she’s not working at the charity shop or visiting her mother – she spends her time trying to keep it spotlessly clean (despite the ill-fitting hallway carpet and the cracked glass in the front door), while listening to her music. She’s achingly lonely, and desperate to find a friend – but she’s not too great at picking up on signals, her choices aren’t always well made, and her awkwardness and too-loud laugh do tend to drive people away.

Hers is the voice of the book – quite wonderfully sustained – and we know that there was a traumatic event in her childhood that forced her and her mother to move away from Wales. When catalogues start coming through the door, addressed to previous owner Rebecca, she catches sight of a different life – and, convinced that this woman could be the friend she really needs, she sets about finding her.

Meanwhile, the area has been hit by a spate of murders – young women, attacked and strangled, left in locations only a local would know – and the police investigation punctuates the narrative. Linda is questioned, and her husband Terry – they know there’s a white van involved, just like his – but it’s just “the usual”, one of those things we hear about in Linda’s matter-of-fact way, as we watch her go about her life.

The characterisation in this book is simply wonderful. Linda herself is someone we all might know, and (just perhaps) cross the street to avoid – but she’s tremendously sympathetic, and there are so many points in the book when you really feel for her. There are some quite wonderful scenes – I particularly loved her trip to the department store, having her makeover at the make-up counter, buying the luxury dressing gown she’ll never be able to wear, extremely funny but also bringing a tear to my eye. And the book is peppered with other distinctive and well drawn characters – her loud mother, her manager at the charity shop, the succession of possible friends, ubiquitous and intrusive Malcolm. The whole book is exceptionally funny at times, and I really loved the writing – for a while I highlighted some of the clever lines that I enjoyed, but soon gave up and allowed Linda’s distinctive voice to carry me along with it.

And when I reached the book’s perfect – and yes, very tidy – ending, I turned back to the beginning and started reading again. I really wanted to understand how the author had done it, to see if I could spot the scaffolding and the building blocks – and I realised that I’d been so caught up in Linda’s life that I’d failed to see the bigger picture, had perhaps seen only what I wanted to see. Despite the strong vein of humour, this is a dark story, often claustrophobic, always compelling, sometimes shocking – and the way the book is structured always had me always following my own assumptions, believing I was one step ahead of the story, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This is, without question, one of my books of the year – the author is an absolute magician, and I’ve never read anything quite like it before. And, whatever your personal reading preferences, I’m sure you’re going to love it too.

A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon is a very interesting story about the murder of young women near where Linda and her husband live. There is Linda’s father who dies or commit suicide when Linda was young, for reasons that were never clearly defined. Was he a child sex abuser of his piano pupils or was it all a mistake.
There are many twists and turns to the storyline that all come together at the end. Not everyone expected the ending to be that way. Very clever and well thought out.
Highly recommended

Excellent pageturner, keeps you guessing right up to the last moment. I liked the use of the first person throughout, gave real character insights. Highly recommend

This is a beautifully written and well observed novel which is rich in gorgeous details about ordinary life and ordinary people who become extraordinary in the authors hands. The main character, Linda is so intricately drawn and has such a strong voice that I won’t forget in a while and the twists and turns of the story are delightful (if occasionally implausible) a great read.

Joanna Cannon's new novel is an excellent follow-up to her first. It is about Linda who is frustrated by her boring life in suburbia. A serial killer in the neighbourhood gives her the excitement she craves. Her husband's odd behaviour and a new friend Rebecca unravel a number of secrets.

Not all is how it seems and there is a resemblance to Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine." The ending will surprise you.

Linda lives in an unnamed northern suburb. She works part time in a charity shop and lives with her husband Terry who barely notices she is there. Her overbearing mother lives nearby, they both moved there to escape something awful that happened when Linda was a child.
Linda is one of life’s outsiders, friendless and not able to make sense of the subtleties of human interaction. When there is a spate of local murders and the former tenant of their house appears to have been targeted, Linda decides to track her down, come what may.
The novel is narrated by Linda, Joanna Cannon pulls off a clever trick of allowing us inside Linda’s head while showing us how she is viewed through other characters’ dialogue. This also allows her to completely pull the rug from under our feet in the last few pages when everything is turned on it’s head and we really understand what Linda’s story has been about.
I must mention Joanna Cannon’s eye for detail, as a charity shop volunteer she made me laugh out loud and cringeat her description of how a charity shop runs, particularly the back shop stuff.
This is a brilliant novel, Linda is an unforgettable character and the ending is very clever indeed.
Thank you to #netgalley and #harpercollins uk for allowing me to review this ARC.

EXCERPT: There are no letterboxes to shout through here, of course. No garden wall to stand on and no doorbell to ring. All the tiny details, all the quiet, unnoticed edges of the world have been taken away, and it's only when they're gone you realise how much you depended on them to make sense of everything else.

There are newspapers lying around, but every time I pick one up it has holes in the pages where articles have been removed. Things that might distress people or make them feel uncomfortable. Although one person's distress is another person's couldn't-care-less, so I don't know how they decide which bits to take out.

'It would be nice,' I said to a woman sitting next to me in the day room, 'if life was like that. If you could just cut around the pieces you didn't care for.'

She didn't reply. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes, it's as though you haven't spoken at all, as if your world or their world are running quite happily side by side, but there isn't any way of moving between one and the other.

ABOUT 'A TIDY ENDING': Linda has lived in a quiet neighborhood since fleeing the dark events of her childhood in Wales. Now she sits in her kitchen, wondering if this is all there is: pushing the vacuum around and cooking fish sticks for dinner, a far cry from the glamorous lifestyle she sees in the glossy magazines coming through the mail slot addressed to the previous occupant, Rebecca.

Linda’s husband Terry isn’t perfect—he picks his teeth, tracks dirt through the house, and spends most of his time in front of the TV. But that seems fairly standard—until he starts keeping odd hours at work, at around the same time young women in the town start to go missing.

If only Linda could track down and befriend Rebecca, maybe some of that enviable lifestyle would rub off on her and she wouldn’t have to worry about what Terry is up to. But the grass isn’t always greener and you can’t change who you really are. And some secrets can’t stay buried forever…

MY THOUGHTS: Very clever, Joanna Cannon. I had absolutely no idea where you were taking me, not the slightest suspicion. My jaw hit the floor at the end and I laughed, probably a tad hysterically. It was just so beautifully unexpected.

Linda is an interesting character. Initially she may not appear so but there is more going on under that tatty blue quilted house coat than it appears. Her husband, Terry, is an irritant. He is messy, uncaring and leaves her notes telling her what to do. She has no friends, and her mother is all show but no real use. She was always much closer to her father, and she misses that. She has an ingrained distrust of the police after they did what they did to him.

I have read and loved everything Joanna Cannon has written, and she has surprised me again with this entertaining, character driven mystery that has dark undertones.

I can't wait to read whatever Cannon writes next.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#ATidyEnding #NetGalley

I: @drjocannon @harpercollinsuk @harperfiction @boroughpress

T: @JoannaCannon @HarperCollinsUK @BoroughPress

#contemporaryfiction #domesticdrama #murdermystery

THE AUTHOR: Joanna Cannon was born in a small Derbyshire town, at the very edge of the Peak District National Park. As a child she discovered what would become a life-long fascination with words, stories and character.

Her love of narrative had always drawn her towards psychiatry, but it wasn’t until her thirties that she decided to go back to college and finally complete the A-levels she’d abandoned some 15 years earlier.

Before specialising in psychiatry, Joanna rotated through a series of hospital jobs, from A&E to palliative care. It was around this time she began writing a blog in order to make sense of her experiences. She soon found herself writing the book that would become her bestselling debut, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Harper Collins UK, Harper Fiction, The Borough Press via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

Wonderful, wonderful story! This book is just amazing. I read it in one sitting, couldn’t put it down. Linda (the main character) is so unusual. Trying to fit in, find friends and live her life- yet her past will haunt her forever. Without ruining the book, she’s a very twisted person who people underestimate. Sometimes she’s so socially inept you can help laughing at the situations she gets into. But then as the book goes on, you realise how astute she really is.
Great book by a very clever author.
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for offering me with the opportunity to read this before publication.

While travelling, I stumbled across a battered copy of THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP and it ended up being one of my favourite reads of the year. Since then, I've recommended it far and wide. When I saw Joanna Cannon was releasing a new book, I knew I had to request it. While A TIDY ENDING retains the author's distinct writing style and expressive character building, I found it a tad too long, especially when the revelations were only uncovered in the last 10%.

Linda lives a plain and normal life. She has a husband (though he takes up a bit too much space if you were to ask her), verges on obsessive when it comes to keeping her house clean and tidy, and loves nothing more than flicking through glossy magazines and inserting herself between the pages. The magazines that fall through the letterbox though aren't addressed to her - instead, they bear the name 'Rebecca', the woman who occupied the house previously and who Linda feels destined to meet. Outside of Linda's domestic bubble, young women are going missing and tongues begin to wag. Finding herself involved in the community gossip, Linda struggles to keep her past at bay, a past she's been running from ever since she and her mother fled Wales after that incident with her father. How long before things start to unravel and the truth finally comes out?

One thing I did love about this novel was the unreliable narrator and the dark undertones masked behind what appeared to be Linda’s normal life. I had no idea where the twists and turns would take me, and by the end I wanted to go back to begin and reread knowing what I knew. Though it was long, it was engaging and immersive, with compelling descriptions and dark humour woven into this seemingly mundane existence. Linda's character was outwardly plain while complex on the inside; there was so much to unpick from her inner thoughts and past experiences. I love a good character study and this one would be perfect for bookclubs that like to dig further into character psyches and motivations.

I may not have preferred this one to THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP, but it was still a beautifully written and compulsive novel brimming with deception, distrust, and delusion.

Whilst I found this quite slow, I was intrigued enough to keep reading. There's almost an epiphany at one point in the book when you realise just what's been going on and I kind of want to read it all again now I know the ending. I did wonder if not all was at it seems but I really did not guess the ending at all. The story centres around Linda, quite an unlikeable person and a very unreliable narrator, and a set of murders that happen locally.

Thank you so much to the author, to the publishers and to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn into this story from the start and quickly became immersed in the unfolding story and characters and couldn't wait to find out how it all resolved itself. Great plot and I followed every twist and turn with anticipation.

A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon
I am a great fan of Joanna Cannon and was therefore delighted to read this novel. It is a sinister story about Linda who is married to Terry. All Terry seems to do is to watch television and fill a space in Linda’s house but not her life. She works in the local charity shop sorting out the objects other people have donated and dreaming of the type of life she sees in glossy catalogues.
Then another girl goes missing in the neighbourhood and Linda has something else to focus on. Everyone in the area becomes wrapped up in the terrible mystery for it seems that the perpetrator must be local. We know that something momentous happens and Linda is talking to us six weeks after this event. But how reliable is Linda’s view of events for she does not seem to understand people’s motives or their behaviour.
At times the story is funny but it is also very dark. We know that Linda was terribly damaged by what happened to her father when they lived in Wales and her mother appears to do nothing other than criticise and takes a macabre delight in the murders on her doorstep.
There is a shocking ending to the novel which I did not predict and I will definitely be recommending this book to my various book groups. Many thanks to Harper Collins and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

'A Tidy Ending' by Joanna Cannon is the story a woman who has a lot going on in her life, even if it doesn’t initially seem that way. Her husband, mother and dark past all influence her thoughts and behaviour, and as the novel progresses it becomes clear that she is a very complex character. This was cleverly written and engaging with plenty to keep me turning the pages. 5 stars!

I chose this book because I adore Joanna Cannon's style of writing and her brilliant, true-to-life characters never disappoint!

A Tidy Ending is about Linda, who lives an ordinary life on an ordinary estate, spending her days clearing up after her messy husband Terry and working in a charity shop. When brochures and catalogues addressed to the previous occupant begin to drop through the letter box, Linda wonders if she's 'settled' for this dull, boring life of cooking and cleaning, married to the first man who asked her. If her mother had been more supportive, instead of constantly running her down, could Linda have followed her dream to be a hairdresser? Could she have become someone completely different, more glamorous, like the mysterious Rebecca, who lived in the house before her?

A Tidy Ending puts the lives of 'ordinary' people under a microscope and reproduces their quirky foibles mercilessly. We all know people like this, with their supposedly perfect lives, completely wrapped up in themselves to the detriment of others, keeping secrets, the events that happened in their past still affecting their decisions in the present.

Running alongside the story of Linda and her dissatisfaction with her uneventful life is a murder mystery that has her neighbours completely agog. A succession of women have been killed close to where she lives and the police already suspect Linda's mild-mannered husband. But Linda has more important things to think about!

A Tidy Ending is a story of under-estimating people at your peril, with shades of Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier, and written with deadpan humour. Linda becomes completely obsessed with tracking down the mysterious Rebecca, oblivious to the way her own 'ordinary' life is collapsing around her. Brilliantly written with several jaw-dropping twists, A Tidy Ending is thoroughly recommended!


Thank you to Joanna Cannon and The Borough Press (HarperCollins UK) for my copy of this book, which I requested from NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

This book was an interesting read, my first by Joanna Cannon. The story flowed easily, thoroughly developing Linda’s character. Told through her eyes, revealing snippets of information about her childhood in Wales, the family move and her present, challenging but simple life. Linda is surrounded by a range of unsympathetic characters. I found their interactions and ignorance with Linda left me feeling frustrated on her behalf.
There were times when I felt I wanted the pace to pick up, to get to the purpose of the story (thus the 4 🌟 rating)
However I particularly enjoyed the ending with its surprising twists and inferences. The title very aptly reflects the ending.

I really enjoyed The Trouble With Goats And Sheep and Three Things About Elsie so I was really pleased to be able to join the blog tour for A Happy Ending. I was not disappointed. Cannon's writing is so evocative and I love her descriptions, particularly those she uses for abstract concepts and emotions: she makes them feel so real and this really drew me into the lives of the characters.

Our protagonist in A Tidy Ending is Linda, and as the novel is narrated in first person we get a glimpse into her character. I really enjoyed getting to know her and I loved the humour in her voice. She is quite naive and there were times I wanted to jump into the pages and give her a hug. We also see other characters such as Terry, Jolyon and Rebecca from her viewpoint and although this is obviously one sided, we do pick up lots of information about them and having such cleverly created characters helped me to stay engaged in the story.

Although A Tidy Ending is not particularly explicit or gruesome, it does handle some very serious crimes. Cannon raises these issues with great care and sensitivity and this made the novel incredibly poignant.

A Tidy Ending is incredibly well plotted and very intelligently executed and I will be thinking about it for some time yet.

I am loving this book! The writing is brilliant, I really feel like I know Linda, her slightly left field observations on life and people are so well drawn (think Eleanor Oliphant vibes) but there is a mounting sense of danger that something huge is going to kick off!

A darkly funny, domestic suspense novel with interesting characters and some clever twists to keep you turning the pages.

A great book with lots of little twists and turns along the way.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.