On September 11th, 2001, the world changed. For Sophie and Paul, it started with a disastrous dinner party. For the babysitter, it started with waking in a dark kitchen and recognizing the smell of blood. For so many others, it started with a plane flying into the World Trade Center. In this tautly written domestic thriller Michelle Berry weaves together the story of two couples whose lives are about to be unravelled by the murder of a neighbour, a babysitter who has gone missing and the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center. Everything Turns Away is a haunting exploration of marriages and what tears them apart, of what happens to people during shocking events and of how everything can change in an instant. Filled with richly drawn characters, a web of thwarted desires and multiple motives, Everything Turns Away is riveting until the very end.

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"This is a layered and seductive telling of a mystery centred around the babysitter, a murder, and how each of the lives of the four married people is drawn into the ordeal."

Miramichi Reader

"Berry’s skilled, unforgiving rendering of these flawed characters, along with her propelling prose, is exactly what makes the novel so compulsively readable."

Quill and Quire

"Everything Turns Away is an impressive mystery with strong thriller elements and well worth reading on that level alone. Where Berry excels, though, is with her attention to each character [...] While the four main characters begin as familiar types, they deepen and fill out over the novel, becoming relatable and sympathetic despite some inherent unlikability. Most readers will find elements like the respective bitchy post-dinner analyses and the escalating marital complications perhaps uncomfortably familiar."

Toronto Star

"Everything Turns Away is perfectly aware of the ways in which trauma can make people act irrationally, even cruelly. Yet Berry holds space for this reaction all the same. Room must be made to endure all things – regardless of their scope, regardless of whether others have it worse – in order to overcome them. Suffering is no competitive sport."

Malahat Review