The Death of Us by Abigail Dean

A haunting novel about love, loss, and the devastation that echoes long after the violence ends.

Some books don’t just tell a story—they strike a nerve. “The Death of Us” unsettled me from the first page and stayed with me long after I’d turned the last. I picked it up expecting a crime thriller. What I got instead was a profoundly intimate exploration of trauma, resilience, and the slow dismantling of a marriage once built on love.

Plot Summary

Isabel and Edward meet as teenagers, fall in love, and eventually marry. For years, they build a life together that appears strong and settled—until a terrifying home invasion shatters their world. Isabel is assaulted. Edward, locked in another room, survives untouched. And neither of them is ever the same again.

Now, decades later, their attacker—known as the South London Invader—has finally been caught. At the trial, Isabel is tasked with delivering a victim impact statement. Through her voice—written in the second person and directed heartbreakingly at the man who hurt her—we relive the horror and the aftershocks. Edward, now divorced from Isabel, narrates the present-day from a place of guilt, regret, and distance.

What unfolds is not a conventional mystery, but a slow, searing unraveling of how trauma embeds itself in memory, love, and the spaces between two people who once believed they were unbreakable.

Themes

This novel isn’t about the act of violence itself—it’s about what lingers. Dean refuses to reduce her characters to victims or survivors. Instead, she crafts Isabel and Edward as fully human—flawed, resilient, sometimes selfish, often afraid.

The book bravely interrogates:

• How trauma alters identity and partnership
• The complexity of survival—when staying alive doesn’t mean being okay
• How silence (between lovers, in society, in courtrooms) can be as damaging as the wounds themselves

And layered through it all is a sharp awareness of public voyeurism, true crime culture, and the quiet erasure of victims’ lives once headlines fade.

Parallels with the Golden State Killer Case

From the very beginning, this book reminded me of the Golden State Killer case. The pattern of home invasions. The targeting of couples. The unbearable question: “Why didn’t you stop it?”  I couldn’t stop thinking about “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” by Michelle McNamara—how she centred survivors’ stories and treated their pain with dignity. Abigail Dean achieves something similar here, but through fiction: she forces us to witness not just the horror of the night, but the years of emotional debris that followed.

It’s not just trauma fiction—it’s aftermath fiction. And that’s what made this feel so important, and so deeply personal, to me.

What Worked for Me

• Isabel’s voice: raw, intelligent, restrained and yet pulsing with feeling. Her second-person narration is one of the most emotionally effective techniques I’ve read in years.
• The dual timeline: the weaving of Isabel’s perspective with Edward’s distant, quietly crumbling present feels like watching a shipwreck in slow motion.
• The realism: their dynamic isn’t tidy or cathartic. Their choices make you flinch but never doubt.
• Dean’s restraint: the scenes are never gratuitous. The horror is palpable but never exploited.

Who Might Enjoy This Book

This is for readers who gravitate towards emotionally intense fiction that doesn’t flinch from discomfort. It’s a book for those who wonder what happens after the crime scene is cleaned. If you’ve been moved by true crime told through the lens of survivors (“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” especially), this may hit you particularly hard—but with meaning, and resonance.

A word of care, though: this is not a light read. Trigger warnings for sexual assault, trauma, and emotional distress should be considered. But if you’re in the right space to sit with it, it’s absolutely worth the weight.

Conclusion

“The Death of Us” is less about what was done to Isabel and Edward, and more about what they’re left with. It’s a story about two people who survive the unimaginable and must now reckon with everything that survival costs.

It’s not a thriller, not really. It’s a reckoning. A slow-burning, beautifully written, gut-wrenching reckoning.

Abigail Dean has proven again that she’s not interested in sensationalism — she’s here to tell the hard, quiet truths with dignity and grace.

Thank you to Jonathan Ball Publishers for the opportunity to read this book.

About the author:

ABIGAIL DEAN