End of Story: The addictive, unputdownable thriller with a twist that will blow your mind

Reviews

Emma's Biblio Treasures

However, what resonated most evocatively with me, is how this story is about relationships, expression and grief. I knew it would be good, but I was unprepared for the sheer tour de force I was about to read.

Jeanniehay64

I thought the chapters ending mid sentence (a technique used by Fern to encourage her to return to her writing) worked with particular effect in the audio. Ms Swanson has outdone herself with this one.

Stu Cummins

The twist in the storyline, was brilliant, and left me speechless and full of empathy for the main character. She is a fantastic character who I immediately felt connected to and enjoyed reading, seeing how her story unfolded piece by piece.

Bookpreneur

So when she announced End of Story it immediately became my most anticipated book of 2023. It’s incredibly thematic and thought-provoking. The ban on fiction is a fantastic allegory for the current political turmoil we endure, particularly when taken into account in relation to the pandemic and the physical restrictions on our freedoms that we have weathered. I’m not going to write anymore about the storyline as I feel the reader will benefit going onto this book blind, if you want to book that unique ,dark , though provoking and breathtaking then this is the one for you .

The tall one and the short one will be back to take her away. The narrator breathed life into all the various characters and I could always follow who was speaking. It is easily my book of the year and I feel sure that anyone who reads it will be adding her to their auto-buy lists. Her words kept resonating with me; “If you tell a story well enough, it’s true,” and it’s through these words I began to understand the mystery of her confinement.

Hobbled to an existence that almost resembles imprisonment, she lives a nightmare of rules and isolation, longing for the old life; book tours, library events, the warmth of fellow authors, and someone of substance with whom to talk. As I continued to follow Fern’s traumatic journey through the five stages of grief, hoping she would find a way out of her incarceration, I cried a lot, laughed a lot and wished the book wouldn’t end. Fern Dostoy, once a fiction laureate with a bright future, has been robbed of her house by the river and a lifestyle that once complimented her bestselling status. In this surveillance state nothing is hidden from the authorities.

If I could give this more than five stars I would. A work of art. An absolute tour-de-force, End of Story is a heart-pounding masterpiece. The book is multi-layered and complex, Fern’s tragedy unfolding with each chapter.