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Getting Away with Murder
Getting Away with Murder by Shari Lapena Review: A Wickedly Sinister Thriller About Greed
Getting Away with Murder is Shari Lapena's tenth thriller, following debt-ridden couple Ted and Jill Westcott as they push Ted's brother Greg overboard at sea to claim his $45 million inheritance — only to find themselves hunted by a Coast Guard investigator, a blackmailer, and a circle of enemies who each want a piece of them. Kirkus Reviews calls it "a scrumptiously sinister novel" and awards it a coveted Get It verdict, making it one of the season's most anticipated psychological suspense releases.
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for
Fans of domestic psychological suspense who enjoy watching morally bankrupt characters spiral under mounting pressure — particularly readers drawn to inverted thrillers where the "whodunit" is replaced by the dread of whether killers will escape justice.
Worth it if
Worth reading if you relish spending time with calculating, unsympathetic protagonists and find your tension in slow-burning accumulation of dread — knowing who the killers are from page one and watching a multi-front net tighten around them.
Skip if
Skip it if you need a protagonist to root for or expect wall-to-wall action, as the Westcotts are deliberately repellent and the novel's pleasures are built on methodical pressure rather than relentless pace.
What readers & critics say
Kirkus Reviews awards the novel a "Get It" verdict, calling it a "scrumptiously sinister" and "knockout contribution to the trending fiction genre that skewers the elite," singling out the visceral opening and the book's dissection of jealousy, vengefulness, and greed. Sharilapena.com collects blurbs from fellow authors including Chris Whitaker, who praises Lapena for flipping the script "masterfully" while retaining her trademark twists and killer ending, and Criminal Element, which calls it "an absolute page turner" that "more than upholds her stellar reputation."
“A scrumptiously sinister novel… readers feel the boat pitch and the wind howl… this most satisfying novel dissects jealousy, vengefulness, and an unstoppable lust for money.”
— Kirkus ReviewsAsk LuvemBooks
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- Is it worth reading?
- For fans of psychological suspense who enjoy morally complex — even morally bankrupt — protagonists, Getting Away with Murder delivers exactly what Lapena's reputation promises. Kirkus Reviews awards it a coveted "Get It" verdict and calls it "this most satisfying novel," praising its dissection of jealousy, vengefulness, and greed. Mary Kubica calls it her favorite Lapena novel yet, and Elisabeth Egan highlighted its methodical, accumulating dread as a structural strength. The key caveat: this is a slow-burn pressure cooker built on multi-front siege tension, not relentless action from chapter one.
- Similar books
- Readers drawn to Getting Away with Murder will find close company in several of the curated titles below. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn shares the deeply unreliable, morally compromised central couple and the inverted suspense structure. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides delivers the same psychological tightening and shock-ending payoff. Tell Me What You Did by Carter Wilson echoes the "I know what you did" blackmail premise almost directly. The Divorce by Freida McFadden — whose author blurbed Getting Away with Murder — offers the same domestic-suspense entrapment energy, while The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave brings comparable accumulating dread and a secrets-unraveling structure.
- Who should read this?
- Getting Away with Murder is squarely for adult readers who enjoy psychological suspense with morally bankrupt protagonists — the kind of novel where watching entitled, calculating people implode from the inside is the entire point. It suits fans of Lapena's existing backlist, readers who gravitated toward Gone Girl's complicit-couple dynamic, and anyone who appreciates social anatomy wrapped in lethal plotting. Readers who need a character to root for, or who prefer relentless action over slow-burn pressure, will likely find the experience a sustained challenge by design.
- About Shari Lapena
- Shari Lapena is a Canadian novelist.
- Is this a good book club pick?
- Getting Away with Murder offers strong book-club material. The deliberate unsympathetic framing of Ted and Jill Westcott — entitled, calculating, and willing to escalate — is likely to generate genuine disagreement about complicity and moral boundaries. The novel's central question, as the publisher frames it, is how far people will go when money is on the line, and the cast of antagonists each driven by their own version of greed (Paul Ramirez, Lara Donleavy, the blackmailer, the con artist) gives groups plenty of specific threads to pull. Elisabeth Egan's characterization of the novel as a "house of cards" folding "one stressful, terrible decision at a time" also makes it a useful lens for discussing narrative structure.
- How does this compare to Lapena's other books?
- Getting Away with Murder represents a structural departure for Lapena while preserving her trademarks. Chris Whitaker notes she "flips the script masterfully yet retains her trademark twists and killer ending" — the inversion of the whodunit structure (readers know the killers immediately) is the boldest formal move in her catalog. Mary Kubica, whose own work inhabits similar psychological territory, calls it her favorite Lapena novel yet, a meaningful signal given the nine books that came before. The social-anatomy ambition — skewering entitlement and greed across an entire cast, not just the central couple — also feels more expansive than her earlier domestic thrillers.
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What the Novel Actually Is
Its Place in Lapena's Career and the Wider Genre
Where the Book Excels
The Novel's Thematic Ambitions
Who This Book Is For — and Where It May Test Patience
Sources & Further Reading
The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.
- Cited in this review
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sharilapena.com
- Further reading
- 4
Shari Lapena, Wikipedia
- 5
kirkusreviews.com
- 6
- 7
penguinrandomhouse.com
- 8
- 9
books.google.com
Age & Reading Level
Recommended age
Adult
Tropes
From how readers and romance sites describe it, not our own reading.
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Content to know about
Skip if you need a protagonist to root for or prefer relentless action over slow-burn psychological pressure
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