The Breakdown: A Novel

Now A Major Motion Picture Blackwater Lane starring Minka Kelly, Dermot Mulroney, and Maggie Grace.

THE CHILLING, PROPULSIVE NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.


If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

Cass is having a hard time since the night she saw the car in the woods. It was on the winding rural road, in the middle of a downpour, and a woman was sitting inside—the woman who was killed. She’s been trying to put the crime out of her mind; what could she have done, really? It’s a dangerous road to be on in the middle of a storm, and she probably would have been hurt herself if she’d stopped. Not only that, her husband would be furious if he knew she’d broken her promise not to take that shortcut home.

But since then, she’s been forgetting every little thing. Where she left the car; if she took her pills; even the alarm code.

The only thing she can’t forget is that woman, the woman she might have saved, and the terrible nagging guilt.

And the silent calls she’s receiving, or the feeling that someone’s watching her…

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Published May 22, 2018

352 pages

Average rating: 7.38

95 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

CheriF
Sep 25, 2025
8/10 stars
I liked it quite a bit. Felt kind of like The Girl on the Train with something bad happening but the POV character has memory issues. I hate comparing anything to TGotT because EVERYONE was comparing EVERYTHING to it and they mostly lied but this really did remind me of it...

Oh, I forgot about Cass going on and on about whether she should tell various people things and never doing it. That was frustrating... Forgot to mention that in my long review. Need to put that in there.

There's a longer review posted on my site but it mostly says the same thing. http://reviews.c-spot.net/archives/6025
AvidBookGrl
Aug 11, 2025
8/10 stars
Mind bending and suspenseful. One minute, everything makes sense, the next you're not sure and when it is revealed what really happened, you're lucky if you guessed at all what was real and what wasn't. HIghly recommend!
Kellyo
Jun 08, 2025
8/10 stars
Satisfying ending. Interesting to see how stress can compound a situation.
stackedlibrarian
Dec 11, 2024
6/10 stars
3.5 Was not as good as BA Paris's first book, Behind Closed Doors.

Since this is her second book it is hard to tell if the husband will always be the bad guy in her writing. I hope not.
thelexilusk
Oct 08, 2024
4/10 stars
this was my first read by B.A Paris. i rated it a 2/5 on my other apps so im doing 4/10 here so it equals out lol. i feel like this was a redundant lifetime movie. it took quite a while to learn how everything tied into each other. it also felt a little rushed towards the end, because everything started to unfold rather quickly. overall the read was good. i listened to the audiobook so i finished in two days. i kind of had an idea one of the culprits was Matthew but i didn’t expect Rachel to be the killer.

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