Andrea Mara’s All Her Fault opens with the smallest, most recognisable of domestic moments and quietly expands it into every parent’s nightmare. 

What begins as a casual school-run errand becomes an exercise in dread, exposing how thin the membrane is between routine and chaos. It’s a story rooted in ordinary, modern, comfortable, suburban life: WhatsApp chats, tidy kitchens, and the quiet choreography of middle-class routines, which is exactly where its menace lies.

Marissa Irvine leaves work a little early one afternoon to collect her son Milo from a playdate. She arrives at the house, knocks on the glossy blue door, and a woman she’s never met answers. There’s no sign of a child, no knowledge of any arrangement, no explanation that makes sense. Within minutes, the situation tilts from confusion to panic. The boy is missing, the mother’s certainty collapses, and the novel’s careful web begins to tighten.

Mara handles this setup with remarkable control. Rather than leaning on shock, she builds tension through the granular details of community life: the mothers gossiping at the school gate, the neighbours who text before they knock, the faintly competitive tone of parental small talk. The more Marissa searches for answers, the more her surroundings begin to feel staged, every smile a potential lie.

As she would continue to do in later novels such as No One Saw a Thing and Someone in the Attic, Andrea Mara infuses All Her Fault with that same taut, atmospheric tension that has since become her hallmark. Mara writes about suburbia the way other authors write about haunted houses: full of locked doors, flickering lights, and things left unsaid. 

Her prose is elegant but direct, carrying an undercurrent of empathy that makes the book’s more disturbing moments feel earned rather than engineered. She’s interested not only in what happened to the child, but in what the crisis exposes about the people around him, their insecurities, judgments, and carefully protected secrets.

Each chapter broadens the lens to include different women from the neighbourhood: friends, acquaintances, and mothers linked by proximity rather than intimacy. Through them, Mara sketches a portrait of a community that is both supportive and suffocating. The gossip that once felt harmless becomes dangerous currency. Beneath the novel’s mystery runs a sharper commentary on how quickly blame attaches to women, and on how being a “good mother” can feel like a performance judged by everyone else in the room.

Mara’s pacing is masterful. The tension builds in short, urgent bursts, yet she allows moments of reflection to linger, the stillness after panic, the dread that seeps in when the police lights fade. There are twists, of course, but they arrive organically, more as revelations of character than contrived shocks. By the time the truth surfaces, the reader understands that the real mystery has never been just about a missing child, but about trust, perception, and the limits of control.

The novel’s resurgence in 2025 owes much to Sky TV’s new adaptation, released on 6 November 2025, which reimagines Mara’s quiet terror for the screen. Sarah Snook (Succession) leads as Marissa Irvine, delivering a performance of brittle composure, slowly cracking under pressure. 

Dakota Fanning brings layered ambiguity to the role of a neighbour whose calmness conceals unease, while Michael Peña anchors the ensemble with a grounded, understated presence. Filmed in cool, polished tones, the series captures the sleek surface of suburban life, wide hallways, spotless countertops, against which fear feels even sharper. The adaptation stays faithful to the novel’s spirit: psychological rather than procedural, elegant rather than sensational.

Nearly four years after its original publication, All Her Fault remains a standout in modern domestic suspense. It joins the ranks of thrillers that blend pace with genuine psychological insight, stories that make readers glance twice at their own neighbourhoods. Where some novels in the genre rely on sensational twists, Mara opts for emotional realism. Her characters behave the way real people do under extraordinary strain: sometimes brave, sometimes selfish, always human.

What ultimately lingers is not the resolution of the mystery but the unease of recognition. All Her Fault asks uncomfortable questions about motherhood, responsibility, and the narratives we construct to make sense of chaos. How much can we ever protect the people we love? How well do we know those we trust implicitly? And when everything falls apart, whose version of events will the world believe?

Other works by Andrea Mara

If All Her Fault leaves you eager for more of Mara’s taut, psychologically astute fiction, try:

• The Other Side of the Wall (2017)
• Once Click (2018)
• The Sleeper Lies (2020)
• Hide and Seek (2022)
• No One Saw a Thing (2023)
• Someone in the Attic (2024)
• It Should Have Been You (2025).

Discover your next thriller with Victoria Freudenheim

At Victoria Freudenheim, we’re drawn to stories that make you glance twice at the world around you, books that take the familiar and turn it quietly on its head. All Her Fault is one of those reads: sharp, human, and impossible to forget.

If you love psychological thrillers that balance elegance with unease, you’ll find plenty more to explore in our collection. From the suburban secrets of The Couple Next Door to the twisted domestic suspense of The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, our reviews shine a light on stories that linger long after the final page.

Why not browse our latest book reviews for more top-rated reads? Or, check out the Victoria Freudenheim blog for even more bookish content.