It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara: A suburban nightmare fueled by gossip, boredom, and bad timing

In It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara, a single, careless message detonates inside a pristine, affluent neighborhood—and what follows is a sharp reminder that the most dangerous places are often the ones that look the safest. This latest thriller from the #1 international bestselling author of All Her Fault leans hard into what I like to call Suburban Gothic, where the manicured lawns and friendly group chats conceal resentment, entitlement, and secrets desperate to stay buried.

Susan is a tired, overwhelmed mother on maternity leave, the kind of woman who feels invisible and slightly feral after too many sleepless nights. When she vents to her sisters about her neighbors—only to accidentally send the message to the entire local WhatsApp group—the damage is instant and irreversible. Even though she deletes it, the truth has already escaped, and the neighborhood’s fragile sense of civility begins to crack.

Andrea Mara excels at exposing the quiet dysfunction of upper middle class communities where no one thinks of themselves as rich, yet everyone has just enough money and comfort to get themselves into serious trouble. Husbands drift into affairs out of boredom. Wives fixate on what others have—or what they’re hiding. Parents either indulge their children endlessly or ignore them altogether, then act shocked when things go wrong. In this world, gossip is currency, and moral outrage spreads faster than accountability.

The novel’s tension escalates quickly when Susan receives a death threat, followed by the murder of a woman who shares her exact address—26 Oakpark—but on the opposite side of town. Did the killer make a mistake? Or was Susan always meant to be the target? As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that one family’s secrets bleed into the lives of the people next door, binding everyone in a messy, overlapping web of blame, jealousy, and long-held grudges.

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This is very much a Suburban Gothic thriller in the purest sense: a dark exploration of how boredom, gossip, and entitlement can curdle into obsession and violence. (If this is your preferred flavor of suspense, check out my new list of similar reads here: Suburban Gothic thrillers: Dark secrets and murder in affluent neighborhoods. If you have tips for me of other books to add to this list, please let me know in the comments below!)

That said, the book ultimately stumbles under the weight of its own ambition. The plot is crowded with multiple threads that rely heavily on coincidence to keep the story moving, and there are moments where credibility stretches thin. Characters collide in ways that feel engineered rather than organic, and the sheer number of connections begins to feel less like fate and more like narrative convenience. While Mara’s pacing is undeniably propulsive, the complexity occasionally works against the tension rather than enhancing it.

Still, It Should Have Been You is compulsively readable, especially for fans of domestic thrillers set behind closed doors and curated façades. It captures the uniquely modern horror of living in constant digital proximity to your neighbors—and the terrifying realization that once something is shared, it can never truly be taken back.

It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara will be released on January 16, 2026.

Have you read Andrea Mara before, or are you drawn to suburban-set thrillers like this one? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Related Content

• It Should Have Been You author Andrea Mara (IMAGE Magazine)
• Andrea Mara – financial services career to author (Midlife Unstuck)
• Podcast: Just write the thing with Andrea Mara (Death is Coming)
• #IrishWritersWed 24-step guide to publication by Andrea Mara (Swirl and Thread)

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For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.