Book Review - Look What you Made Me Do by John Lanchester

Title: Look What You Made Me Do
Author: John Lanchester
Genre: Fiction/ Thriller
Published: 2026
 
Description: What if the year’s most talked about TV show was all about your marriage?
 
Kate, thirty years into her marriage, has a seemingly idyllc metropolitan, North London life. Phoebe, a young screenwriter, is the creator of the year’s hit TV show, Cheating.
 
When Kate’s world takes a darker turn, she thinks she sees details and intimacies in the the show that only she and her husband Jack could possibly have known. But who has betrayed who? Who gets to tell whose story?
 
Review: With “Look What You Made Me Do”, author John Lanchester attempts to craft a razor-sharp, contemporary psychological thriller. In this book he exposes the tension between generations and the dark side of the media world. Although the premise sounds promising and intriguing, the execution falls painfully short.
 
The story follows Kate, who shared a seemingly perfect marriage with her husband Jack for thirty years. And there’s Phoebe, a young screenwriter whose new series “Cheating” becomes a massive hit. The two woman’s world’s collide head-on when Kate watches the series. To her utter horror, she recognizes intimate details, secrets, and even the specific private language of her own marriage in the dialogue on screen. A dark and vicious battle ensues, filled with resentment, accusations, and acts of revenge, centered on the question: who stole whose story, and what is the ultimate price of this betrayal?
 
Although the premise of a stolen married life in a TV series has the potential to be a successful thriller, “Look What You Made Me Do” disappoints on nearly every front. Lanchester chooses to tell the story from the perspective of the two women, but barely manages to give them an authentic or believable voice. The characters remain stuck in shallow stereotypes: the bitter, privileged Kate versus the cynical, harried Phoebe. As a result, the intergenerational friction feels more like a rehash of clichés than a sharp social critique.
 
The biggest problem, however, is the plot structure. A good thriller relies on carefully built tension, but Lanchester opts for a series of implausible coincidences and far-fetched plot twists to drive the story forward. The pace if initially far too slow, after which the book suddenly derails in the second half into an over-the-top revenge comedy that completely undoes the carefully crafted psychological tension. The climax and the motives behind the betrayal feel contrived and fall apart at the seams. Lanchester occasionally writes quite entertaining and satirical passages about the London elite, but as a thriller, the books lacks any sense of logic, surprise or genuine psychological depth. The result is an unsatisfying whole.
 
Rating: 1,5/ 5