This Won't End Well by Camille Pagán
This Won’t End Well (Lake Union), Camille Pagán’s new release, is a must-read for anyone who knows the value of some me-time. Or a lot of me-time.
When it comes down to it, Annie Mercer is just your ordinary average science genius, working as a housecleaner, spying on her neighbors and hiding from everyone who has ever loved her. In other words, something has gone seriously wrong in her life. And in Pagán’s latest novel, This Won’t End Well, finding out exactly what is up with Annie is just about the most fun way to spend your time without actually hiding in your neighbor’s bushes with a telephoto lens and a sexy detective.
Here’s what we do know about the hilarious main character, from her diary entries and ill-advised emails: She walked out on her prime lab job under very suspicious circumstances, and she’s been left — sort of — by her fiance; not that she’s going to tell her mother that right in the middle of all the wedding planning. Now her new neighbor is a nutjob, there’s a PI hanging around the backyard, and thugs are coming and going next door at all hours of the day.
Actually, maybe the last bit isn’t so bad. With all the ways Annie has withdrawn from the world, having a little excitement come to her isn’t the worst thing that could happen. Especially not when the PI is kind, funny, compassionate and very pleasant to sit near in the stake-out vehicle.
And actually, the neighbor, Harper, isn’t so bad either, even though she Instagrams everything and wears ridiculous shoes everywhere she goes.
Come to think of it, cleaning houses for her lovely group of clientele turns out to be a whole lot nicer than putting up with some serious issues at her old workplace that just won’t stay buried.
And maybe, just maybe, her fiancé’s surprise jaunt to Paris isn’t the end of their relationship, so much as it is a perfectly normal stage in a perfectly normal engagement. Doesn’t everyone’s soon-to-be husbands disappear to a foreign country and tell their future wives not to contact them under any circumstances?
A PATRON SAINT FOR THE INTROVERTED
Poor Annie. Pagán has created, in this patron saint for the introverted, a character so lovable and so bumbling and so socially tuned-out that even homebodies will want to give her a hug and a shove out the front door. But how can all of us not relate as we read along with her journal entries and see how desperately she’s trying to keep people at bay to protect herself? She’s earned every one of her suspicions in her rocky path through life.
As I turned pages, I found myself falling in love with this book through that very lens. As Annie, Harper and Mo (the PI) move through their little neighborhood (in full view of a hilarious peanut gallery of neighborhood listserv posters that will crack you up constantly), Pagan doles out more and more of their stories, so we get that perfect mix of mystery, romance and humor that kept me reading when I was supposed to go to bed hours before. And though my first take on Annie was of adorable quirk, the more I read, the more I realized Annie is all of us when we hunker down with a blanket and a rerun rather than brave that uncomfortable party called life.
At the point in the story when Annie reconnects with an old friend, I found myself reaching for the phone. When she lets a new person into her life, I cheered for her like she was going to email me to tell me about it herself. When she digs out her heart from the back of the closet and decides to try to love again, I would have started clapping, if it wouldn’t have woken up my dog. Or to put it another way, I was utterly hooked on the story and lost in the classic Pagán cast of irresistible characters page by page. Whether it’s a laugh you crave or a story with true heart and transformation, This Won’t End Well does in fact end brilliantly for the reader and will send you back to the store for more by this gifted author.
