Where You End
A Novel
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3.2 • 20 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick
A Mary Calvi Book Club Pick
“A perfectly paced, addictive thriller with a vicious twist.” —Paula Hawkins
When Kat Bird wakes up from a coma, she sees her mirror image: Jude, her twin sister. Jude’s face and name are the only memories Kat has from before her accident. As Kat tries to make sense of things, she believes Jude will provide all the answers to her most pressing questions: What happened? Where am I? Who am I?
Amid this tragedy, Jude sees an irresistible opportunity: she can give her sister a brand-new past, one worlds away from the lives they really led. She spins tales of an idyllic childhood, exotic travels, and a bright future.
But if everything was so perfect, who are the mysterious people following Kat? And what explains her uncontrollable flashes of violent anger, which begin to jeopardize a sweet new romance?
Duped by the one person she trusted, Kat must try to untangle fact from fiction. Yet as she pulls at the threads of Jude’s elaborate tapestry, she has no idea of the catastrophe she’s inviting.
Intensely creepy and beautifully written, Abbott Kahler’s Where You End is an unforgettable tale of intrigue, revenge, and the quest for redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Kahler (The Ghosts of Eden Park, as Karen Abbott) makes a brilliant pivot to fiction with this spine-tingling psychological thriller set in the 1970s. Twenty-two-year-old Kat Bird wakes from a coma after a car accident, with her memory wiped clean. Luckily, Kat's identical mirror twin, Jude, is there to fill her in on their shared past. Though Kat wants to believe Jude's stories—and that Jude's efforts to keep Kat inside their apartment are for her own safety—holes in her sister's recollections, plus encounters with people Kat meets when she sneaks out of the apartment to explore the wider world, begin to undermine her trust. Flashbacks from Jude's perspective slowly reveal details of the twins' upbringing in their mother's sinister self-empowerment cult, allowing readers to stay one step ahead of Kat in understanding her horrifying past, and in suspecting that it may come back to haunt the sisters—particularly if she keeps poking around. Kahler's twin heroines feel familiar, but never trite: Kat and Jude make mistakes when trying to impersonate one another, and their quasi-telepathic twin language (which eventually serves as a key plot point) feels like a plausible evolution of a two-decade connection rather than an authorial contrivance. Despite working with themes that often slide into the absurd—family cults, creepy twins, amnesia—Kahler never puts a foot wrong. Readers will be rapt.
