Story for the Week
Stranger Things seems to have lost the plot…at least according to Corinne. (I didn’t watch past season two.) In fairness, she felt differently after watching the last 30 minutes of season 5, episode 4 because…. 🤯
Corinne’s obsession with Stranger Things started back in 2016. I watched the first two seasons with her, but they came out a little over a year apart. I’m not a huge science fiction fan, so when the show became a little too sci-fi for me, I opted out. Corinne continued the journey on her own.
In 2019, season 3 prompted a Stranger Things birthday party theme for the year she turned 14. One of the cakes even included a border of Eggo Waffles. And I vividly remember her binge-watching the end of season four on her iPad in our hotel the night before our 2022 Disney cruise. She knew she wouldn’t be able to watch it on the ship. 🤷🏼♀️
As she prepared for season 5, she started rewatching seasons 1-4. I mean, it’s been nine years since the first episode aired. Because we normally relax in the evening watching television, she really wanted me to watch them with her. 🤨 I am so not invested though.
So while she watched, I played The Sims. Occasionally, I would look up when something semi-interesting came on the screen. I asked her random questions about what was going on. I don’t think the questions bothered her because they gave her the opportunity to talk about all the lore.
She (we?) made it through the first three seasons again. While she hoped to watch season 4 again before the new season, she also knew there would be spoilers online, so she watched the beginning of season 5 the day before Thanksgiving. Episodes 5-7 drop on Christmas Day, and she already finished school for the semester, so she plans to go back to season 4 before Christmas. (Oh joy to the world. 🙄🤣)
And somehow…please don’t ask me to explain…I got suckered into going to a movie theater to watch the two-hour series finale on New Year’s Eve. 🤔
In the book reviewed below, one of the characters comes downstairs one morning to find his niece watching an old episode of Stranger Things on television. The book was ok, but much like the creators of Stranger Things season 5, I fear the author kind of lost the plot.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara
378 pages
Publisher: Viking Penguin | Pamela Dorman Books
Publication Date: January 13, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Viking Penguin | Pamela Dorman Books.
Publisher’s Description
You press send and your message disappears. Full of secrets about your neighbors, it’s meant for your sister. But it doesn’t reach her—it goes to the entire local community WhatsApp group instead.
As rumor spreads like wildfire through the picture-perfect neighborhood, you convince yourself that people will move on, that this will quickly be forgotten. But then you receive the first death threat.
The next day, a woman has been murdered. And what’s even more chilling is that she had the same address as you—26 Oakpark—but in a different part of town. Did the killer get the wrong house? It won’t be long before you find out.…
************
Main Characters:
- Susan – new mom to Bella, married to Jon, works as a teacher and is currently on maternity leave, lives vicariously through Savannah who lives at the other 26 Oakpark and seems to have a much more glamorous life
- Greta – Susan’s oldest sister, lives next door to Susan and Jon, walks with a permanent limp caused by a car accident many years before, on medication to treat long COVID, coaches a girls’ hockey team
- Leesa – Susan and Greta’s middle sister, works as an IT contractor, her husband travels a lot for work, has two daughters
- Maeve and Aiofe – Leesa’s daughters, Maeve gets bullied at school, Aiofe stays in the background a lot but seems to be aware of everything that’s going on with everyone
- Celeste – another mom in the neighborhood, seems to complain about everything, married to Warren, has a daughter and a son (Nika and Cody) who attend school where Susan teaches
- Savannah – moved into the other 26 Oakpark after her divorce a couple years before, posts a lot of makeup and workout videos online
- Venetia and Felipe – married couple, Venetia works at a local bar that just opened, Felipe is a software engineer
How many of us haven’t accidentally sent (or almost sent) a text message or an e-mail or an instant message to the wrong person? Embarrassing? Yes. Life-threatening? Not usually.
But when Susan accidentally sends a snarky message, meant for her sisters, to the entire neighborhood WhatsApp group, the backlash is immediate. Susan can certainly delete the message, but dozens of residents have already seen it, captured a screen shot, and continued to share it.
Just as Susan hopes things will start to die down, someone with the same address as Susan but on the other side of town turns up dead. Then two more someones end up dead, one of whom was a subject in Susan’s message. Susan is the only connection between the two crimes.
This definitely pulled me in right from the Prologue. Susan’s first-person point of view is the main one, but the book includes seven additional third-person points of view over a timeline of about 10 days. A lot happens in this book…and that was one of my main challenges with it.
I’m not going to give any spoilers. I expect a thriller to have secrets, twists and turns, big reveals, and a lot of suspects. This one certainly did. However, it felt like the author wrote a back story for every single character, even the minor ones, put them all on a white board and said, “ok, let’s see what sticks.”
Everything started pretty disconnected, which was fine. But then suddenly every single plot point connected to something random and then to something else random and then to something else random. In the end, it just felt incohesive and all over the place.
Another challenge…the timeline jumped around in a way that didn’t make sense. Chapter 1 started, “Tuesday, nine days earlier” after the Prologue. Great. The story continued through Tuesday into Wednesday, but then Chapter 8 started “Thirty-six hours earlier.” Why not just say “Monday,” or “the Monday before”? If you don’t want readers to think it’s the upcoming Monday, put dates or timestamps.
As the book continued through the week, Chapter 36 started “Five Days Earlier.” Just say “the Monday before”! And Chapter 75, which came after Thursday (so three days after the start of the book) started “Last Week.” 🤦🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️
The author also had a habit of ending chapters with phrases that seem like they’re supposed to create suspense before switching a point of view. They just sounded overly dramatic to me.
- “As it happens, things are about to get much, much worse.”
- “But a sense of foreboding seeps into my bones.”
- “And then she remembers what’s under her bed.”
- “And what I find stops me cold.” (There are several variations of this one.)
- “That’s about to change.”
- “Then she hears something else that stops her in her tracks.”
The ending? It wasn’t bad, but I also wasn’t crazy about it. It was definitely a twist I didn’t expect, but it came completely out of the blue. If you’re already a fan of Mara, you will likely enjoy this. Some people might love it, which is why I opted for three stars. I could take it or leave it.
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