Can Henrietta find out what happened to Annie’s sister—before it’s too late? Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends… Unlike Henrietta, Annie is brimming with confidence—but even she has limits when it comes to opening up. Ever since that terrible night when her sister left a pile of clothes beside the canal and vanished, Annie has been afraid to look too closely into the murky depths of her memories. When her attempts to glide over the past come up against Henrietta’s determination to fill in the gaps, both women find themselves confronting truths they’d thought were buried forever—especially when Henrietta’s digging unearths a surprising emotional connection between them. Could unlocking Annie’s story help Henrietta rewrite the most devastating passages in her own life? And, in return, can she offer Annie a final twist in the tale, before it’s too late?
From the Publisher
Deeply compelling, Tell Me How This Ends is a reminder that, sometimes, confronting our pasts might just be the very thing we need to move forward. Jo Leevers writes with warmth, honesty, and compassion about the human condition, and it is such a privilege to be part of her journey.
Henrietta has a new job: to write the life stories of the dying so that a record of them exists once they’ve passed on. But Henrietta only wants to write the facts, not get pulled in by emotion. When she meets terminally ill, charismatic Annie, it’s hard to stay so removed, especially when Annie reveals that, one night, her sister vanished, leaving only a pile of clothes by the side of a canal. Henrietta can’t help herself from looking into it, but will she be able to find the truth in time?
Jo is the kind of writer that reminds me why I wanted to become an editor. Tell Me How This Ends , her brilliant debut, grabbed me from the second I read that first page and didn’t let me go until the very end.