Book Review: No One Will Miss Her | Kat Rosenfield

It is hard to find psychological thrillers that don’t fall somewhere into a common trope (not that there is anything wrong with those—tropes are popular for a reason!), but Kat Rosenfield has done it with No One Will Miss Her.

About the Book | No One Will Miss Her

Lizzie’s father is an alcoholic and runs the junkyard in the small town of Copper Falls. Parenting was hard for him in a town that looks down on him, and Lizzie endures a childhood full of bullying. Some would retreat into a shell of themselves, but Lizzie isn’t that type of girl—she stands up to the bullies which angers them more. They spread rumors about her and talk about how dirty she is. However, her greatest sin in their eyes is getting pregnant by the town’s golden boy and trapping him in a marriage that makes neither happy.

“My name is Lizzie Ouellette, and if you’re reading this, I’m already dead.”

Everything turns when the local police discover Lizzie’s mutilated corpse in their home, and her husband missing. As the state detective gets involved in the investigation, layers of Lizzie’s life are peeled back to reveal more reasons many in the town resented her. Lizzie inherited an old summer cottage which she rents out to a wealthy, entitled influencer from Boston. This causes a lot of questions—why would someone who has the money to go anywhere spend their summers in a backwoods town in Maine? And was she one of the last people to see Lizzie alive?

Review | No One Will Miss Her

Lizzie speaks to us from beyond the grave, telling the reader the story of how she got there. Adrienne also narrates some parts of the story, revealing herself to be a shallow person. More interesting, Adrienne clearly is a liar, and the reader gets the impression that there is something she isn’t saying.

Copper Falls represents so many small towns across the country. The town sees very few outsiders, and the people of that town rarely shake the labels the town placed on them as young people. Lizzie’s husband Dwayne continues to be the athlete and golden boy who gave up his future to do right by the trashy girl from the junkyard. It didn’t matter that Dwayne went on to become a drug addict—the town still sees him as too good for Lizzie. For her part, Lizzie never shook the image of the unkempt girl from the junkyard without a mother. It didn’t matter what she grew up to look like or have—everyone in the town saw her as the town trash.

“They all thought I had it coming. They all thought I was better off dead. And the truth, the one I realized in that last, horrible moment before the gun went off, is just this. They were right….and death has a way of making you honest”.

The theme of people seeing what they expect to see begins the very first page. It plagued Lizzie and made her miserable. But Lizzie was more intelligent and perceptive than people thought. People underestimate those that they think are beneath them. The book tells the story of a woman dragged down by her reputation and eventually by the husband who thought he was too good for her.

The twist! I can’t say what it is, you’ll have to read to find out. It’s a good one, though. It was very unexpected because in most cases it would be nearly impossible to pull off that sort of storyline without a large suspension of disbelief. And yet, Rosenfield managed to pull it off to great effect! As much as I enjoyed the twists of this book, I really enjoyed Lizzie. Even dead, her voice and story deserved to be heard. Rosenfield has a unique way of writing a story, particularly since it is largely narrated from beyond the grave. There’s an honesty to a dead narrator and especially to Lizzie—often I question if narrators are telling the full story, but I never questioned it with Lizzie. She was unapologetically herself until the end.

A shocking and thought provoking thriller!

About the Author | Kat Rosenfield

Kat Rosenfield is a freelance pop culture and political writer, and the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated No One Will Miss Her. A former reporter for MTV News, her work has appeared in outlets including Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, Reason, The New York Times, and Unherd, where she is a regular columnist.

Synopsis | Goodreads

A novel of suspense in which a girl from a hardscrabble small town meets a gorgeous Instagram influencer from the big city, with a murderous twist.

On a beautiful October morning in rural Maine, a homicide investigator from the state police pulls into the hard-luck town of Copper Falls. The local junkyard is burning, and the town pariah Lizzie Oullette is dead—with her husband, Dwayne, nowhere to be found. As scandal ripples through the community, Detective Ian Bird’s inquiries unexpectedly lead him away from small-town Maine to a swank city townhouse several hours south. Adrienne Richards, blonde and fabulous social media influencer and wife of a disgraced billionaire, had been renting Lizzie’s tiny lake house as a country getaway…even though Copper Falls is anything but a resort town.