Someone We Know (2019)
Book Details
Someone We Know (2019)
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⚠️ Trigger Warnings
- Graphic violence and murder
- Murder of a pregnant woman
- Strangulation
- Body disposal
- Blood and crime scene cleanup
- Infidelity and extramarital affairs
- Marital deception
- Breaking and entering
- Invasion of privacy
- Computer hacking
- Underage drinking
- Binge drinking and blackouts
- Non-consensual drugging
- Marital coercion
⏱️ 2-Minute Spoiler Summary
Amanda Pierce disappears after supposedly leaving for a weekend shopping trip in Manhattan. Her husband, Robert Pierce, reports her missing, but two weeks later her car is pulled from a Catskills lake with Amanda’s body locked inside the trunk. She has been beaten to death with a hammer—and an autopsy reveals she was ten weeks pregnant.
At the same time, Olivia Sharpe discovers that her 16-year-old son, Raleigh, has been secretly breaking into neighbors’ houses. He doesn’t steal anything; instead, he hacks into their computers and snoops through their private files. Horrified, Olivia anonymously sends apology letters to two of his victims, including Robert and Amanda. The letters only make matters worse when one recipient, Carmine Torres, becomes determined to identify the teenage intruder.
Amanda’s murder investigation exposes a staggering number of neighborhood secrets. Becky Harris admits she was sleeping with Robert. Robert admits he discovered Amanda was cheating on him after hacking into her burner phone. Becky then reveals that she saw Olivia’s husband, Paul Sharpe, arguing with Amanda shortly before her death. Paul claims he was warning Amanda to stay away from Becky’s husband, Larry Harris, after catching Amanda performing oral sex on Larry at work. Larry eventually admits that he and Amanda had been having an affair for months.
Suspicion falls heavily on Paul when police discover that the Sharpes own a secluded Catskills cabin only minutes from the lake where Amanda’s car was found. Inside, investigators find evidence that someone scrubbed away enormous amounts of blood. The blood belongs to Amanda, and a hammer is missing from the Sharpes’ tools. Paul is arrested but released when his lawyer argues that the evidence doesn’t prove he killed her.
Then Raleigh admits he broke into far more houses than his parents knew. While snooping through Keith Newell’s computer, Raleigh discovered that Keith—Paul’s best friend and the husband of Olivia’s best friend, Glenda Newell—was also having an affair with Amanda.
Keith confesses that he arranged to meet Amanda at the Sharpes’ cabin on September 29. He left her there alive around 8:00 p.m. When he returned the next morning, Amanda and her car were gone. Whoever killed her knew enough about the Sharpes’ cabin to clean the crime scene, lock the door, and return its spare key to its hiding place.
Meanwhile, Carmine keeps investigating Raleigh’s break-ins. Soon afterward, she is strangled to death in her home. Police eventually question Glenda, who shocks them by confessing to both Carmine’s murder and Amanda’s. But Detective Webb realizes Glenda isn’t telling the truth about killing Amanda.
The real killer is Glenda’s 16-year-old son, Adam Newell. Adam had discovered his father’s affair and followed the situation to the Sharpes’ cabin. Furious at Amanda for threatening his family, he confronted her and beat her to death with the Sharpes’ hammer. He then called Glenda.
Glenda immediately helped her son cover up the murder. She cleaned the cabin, disposed of Adam’s bloody clothes and the hammer, put Amanda’s body in the trunk of her own car, and sank the vehicle in the nearby lake. Weeks later, when Carmine’s investigation threatened to expose information connected to that night, Glenda strangled her to protect Adam.
Adam is charged with Amanda’s murder, while Glenda faces long-term imprisonment for killing Carmine and helping conceal Amanda’s murder. Paul is exonerated, and Raleigh receives community service for his break-ins and hacking.
Robert believes he has escaped the entire mess. He goes into his backyard to retrieve Amanda’s burner phone, which he had secretly buried there, intending to destroy it.
But the phone is gone.
Robert realizes Becky Harris must have seen him bury it and taken it herself. Rather than simply fearing what Becky knows, Robert begins thinking about what he will do to her next.
📖 Full Spoiler Summary
Amanda Pierce Disappears
Amanda Pierce supposedly leaves her suburban Aylesford home on Friday, September 29, telling her husband, Robert Pierce, that she is spending the weekend shopping in Manhattan with her college friend Caroline Lu. When Amanda still hasn’t returned by Sunday evening, Robert contacts Caroline and learns something disturbing: there was never any shopping trip.
Robert reports his wife missing on Monday, October 2.
Two weeks pass before retired resident Bryan Roth goes fishing on a Catskills lake near Canning and snags his line on something beneath the water. What initially appears to be an underwater obstruction turns out to be a submerged Toyota Camry.
When police pull the car from fifteen feet of water, they discover Amanda’s decomposing body stuffed inside the trunk.
Detective Webb and his younger partner, Detective Moen, take over the homicide investigation. An autopsy confirms that Amanda was killed by repeated blows to the head, most likely from a hammer. She has no defensive wounds, suggesting she never saw the attack coming. There is another major revelation: Amanda was approximately ten weeks pregnant.
The question is no longer simply who killed Amanda. Police also need to determine who fathered her unborn child.
Raleigh’s Secret Break-Ins
Amanda’s murder collides with another secret already spreading through the neighborhood.
Olivia Sharpe, who lives with her husband, Paul, and their 16-year-old son, Raleigh, discovers disturbing messages on Raleigh’s phone from his friend Mark. The texts ask whether Raleigh broke into another house and whether he found anything interesting.
Confronted by his parents, Raleigh admits that he has been sneaking into neighbors’ unlocked homes. He insists he isn’t stealing anything. What interests him are their computers. Using USB boot sticks, Raleigh bypasses passwords, reads private files, and occasionally sends prank emails from other people’s accounts.
He initially admits to entering two houses: Carmine Torres’s home at 32 Finch Street and Robert and Amanda Pierce’s home at 79 Sparrow Street.
Olivia is horrified. Hoping to ease her conscience without exposing her son, she anonymously sends both households letters explaining that a teenager entered their homes and accessed their computers.
Instead of resolving anything, the letters create another problem.
Carmine, a lonely 60-year-old widow who recently moved to the neighborhood, feels deeply violated. She begins showing the letter to neighbors and trying to determine which local teenager broke into her home. When she visits Olivia and notices that the Sharpes have both a teenage son and a basketball hoop, Olivia lies to her, making Carmine even more suspicious.
Realizing how serious Raleigh’s actions could become, Olivia and Paul hire prominent defense attorney Emilio Gallo. He warns Raleigh about the criminal consequences of hacking and unauthorized computer access, then turns his frustration on Olivia. By sending anonymous apology letters, she has created evidence that could potentially lead investigators straight back to her son.
Amanda’s Affairs Begin Coming to Light
As Webb and Moen investigate Amanda’s death, the supposedly respectable neighborhood begins unraveling.
A neighbor, Jeannette Bauroth, tells police she saw Becky Harris sneaking out of the Pierce house at approximately two in the morning on September 30—the weekend Amanda disappeared.
Becky eventually admits why she was there: she has been sleeping with Robert Pierce.
Robert confirms the affair but claims he concealed it only to protect Becky. He has secrets of his own. Suspicious of Amanda before her disappearance, Robert figured out how to unlock her secret burner phone and discovered evidence that she was cheating on him. Worried that police would find the phone hidden in his desk and make him look guilty, he buried it beneath a shrub in his backyard.
Becky then redirects the detectives toward someone else. On September 20, she saw Paul Sharpe sitting inside Amanda’s car in a downtown parking lot. The two appeared to be having an intense argument.
Paul admits the meeting but says he wasn’t having an affair with Amanda. Instead, he was confronting her about Larry Harris, Becky’s husband and Paul’s colleague at Fanshaw Pharmaceuticals. Paul had caught Amanda performing oral sex on Larry in Larry’s office and warned her to stay away from him.
Larry can’t deny it. He admits Amanda seduced him and that they had been secretly meeting at the Paradise Hotel since July.
Larry was attending a corporate conference in the Catskills when Amanda was murdered. Although he checked into Deerfields Resort at 3:00 p.m. on September 29, his whereabouts aren’t confirmed again until 9:00 that night. He also admits that after Amanda disappeared, he threw his burner phone from a bridge into the Hudson River.
Amanda had been keeping enough secrets that almost everyone surrounding her now seems capable of having a motive.
Amanda’s Blood Is Found at the Sharpes’ Cabin
Attention increasingly shifts toward Paul.
He claims that on September 29 he drove to Berwick to visit his elderly aunt Margaret, who has severe dementia and cannot reliably confirm his visit. His phone was dead, leaving investigators without GPS evidence. Even worse, Berwick lies in the same general direction as Canning, where Amanda’s car was found.
Then Paul reveals something far more damaging: the Sharpes own an unwinterized mountain cabin at 12 Goucher Road in Springhill, only minutes from the lake.
Police search the cabin on October 23.
Luminol reveals what someone desperately tried to erase. Large amounts of blood had been scrubbed from the kitchen floor, with additional blood spatter reaching the walls and ceiling. DNA testing identifies the blood as Amanda’s.
Investigators also discover that a heavy wooden-handled hammer belonging to the Sharpes is missing.
Paul is arrested for Amanda’s murder.
His attorney, Emilio Gallo, manages to get him released without charges, arguing that the evidence is circumstantial and that other people had access to the property. Paul insists he never killed Amanda, but even Olivia is shaken by what police found in their cabin.
Then Raleigh admits he hasn’t told his parents the whole truth either.
Raleigh Uncovers the Secret That Changes the Case
Raleigh didn’t break into only two houses. He entered nine or ten.
One of them belonged to Keith and Glenda Newell, the Sharpes’ closest friends. While snooping through Keith’s computer, Raleigh found emails proving that Keith was having an affair with Amanda.
Police confront Keith, who admits everything.
Keith frequently visited the Sharpes’ mountain cabin and knew where they kept the spare key: beneath an oilcan inside the shed. He gave Amanda directions to the cabin and arranged to meet her there secretly on September 29.
Keith arrived around 5:00 p.m. and remained with Amanda until approximately 8:00. When he left, she was still alive.
He returned the following morning. Amanda and her car were gone, and the cabin door was locked. Keith had to retrieve the spare key from beneath the oilcan to get inside.
That detail matters enormously. Amanda’s killer didn’t simply flee after murdering her. Someone cleaned the cabin, disposed of the body, locked the door behind them, and returned the spare key to its exact hiding place.
Whoever covered up the murder knew the Sharpes and their cabin very well.
Carmine Torres Is Murdered
While police focus on Amanda’s complicated love life, Carmine continues trying to identify the teenager who entered her house.
Her determination eventually leads her to Raleigh, whom she confronts at The Bean coffee shop. Carmine is getting dangerously close to exposing information about the neighborhood break-ins and the cars that were present on Finch Street around the relevant time.
Then, late one night, someone knocks on Carmine’s front door.
She opens it.
The visitor steps inside and strangles her with a cord.
Carmine’s neighbor Zoe Putillo discovers her body two days later, giving Webb and Moen a second murder to solve.
Their investigation eventually leads them to Glenda Newell, Olivia’s best friend of sixteen years. Under pressure, Glenda suddenly confesses.
She says she killed Carmine.
More astonishingly, she also claims she murdered Amanda.
But Webb watches her closely and realizes something is wrong. Glenda’s reactions and body language don’t fit her supposed confession to Amanda’s murder.
She is telling the truth about Carmine.
She is lying about Amanda.
And there is only one obvious reason to falsely confess to a murder: Glenda is protecting someone she loves.
Adam Newell Confesses to Killing Amanda
Police turn their attention to Glenda and Keith’s 16-year-old son, Adam Newell.
Adam finally breaks down.
He had discovered emails on the family computer revealing his father’s affair with Amanda. Furious that Amanda was threatening his family, Adam took his mother’s car on September 29 and drove to the Sharpes’ cabin.
He arrived around 8:45 p.m., shortly after his father had left.
Amanda was still there.
Overcome with rage, Adam confronted her. He grabbed the Sharpes’ hammer from the counter and repeatedly struck Amanda in the head, killing her before she had a chance to defend herself.
Terrified by what he had done, Adam called his mother.
Glenda immediately went into damage-control mode. She drove to the cabin in Keith’s car, bringing plastic bags and cleaning supplies. She ordered Adam to wash himself in the freezing lake and helped him dispose of the evidence. The bloody clothing and murder weapon were sunk in the deep water.
Glenda then scrubbed Amanda’s blood from the kitchen floor, walls, and ceiling. She put Amanda’s body inside the trunk of Amanda’s Camry, drove the car to the nearby lake, and submerged it.
Before leaving, she locked the Sharpes’ cabin and returned the spare key to its familiar hiding place beneath the oilcan.
For weeks, Glenda successfully protected Adam.
Then Carmine became a threat.
As Carmine investigated Raleigh’s break-ins and started asking questions about who had been in the neighborhood and which cars had been seen, Glenda feared that Carmine might uncover something that would lead police to Adam. To protect her son, Glenda went to Carmine’s house and strangled her.
This time, the murder was entirely her own.
Robert Pierce Has One Last Secret
With the truth finally exposed, Adam Newell is charged with Amanda’s murder and faces confinement in a juvenile detention facility. Glenda Newell faces long-term imprisonment for murdering Carmine and helping Adam conceal Amanda’s killing.
Paul is fully exonerated, although everything uncovered during the investigation leaves his marriage to Olivia damaged by mistrust and secrets. Raleigh also has to answer for his own crimes. He pleads guilty to the juvenile break-ins and unauthorized computer access and receives community service.
Robert Pierce, however, emerges officially cleared of his wife’s murder.
He is delighted.
Now that police are no longer watching him, Robert decides it is finally safe to eliminate the evidence of Amanda’s infidelity. He goes into his backyard with a trowel and begins digging beneath the shrub where he buried Amanda’s burner phone. His plan is to retrieve it and throw it into the Hudson River.
But the phone isn’t there.
Robert digs frantically before understanding what must have happened.
His next-door neighbor and former lover, Becky Harris, must have seen him bury the phone. She dug it up herself.
Becky now possesses evidence Robert desperately wanted destroyed—and Robert’s thoughts immediately turn toward what he is going to do about her.
🔚 Ending Explained
How Does Someone We Know End?
The ending of Someone We Know reveals that 16-year-old Adam Newell murdered Amanda Pierce, while his mother, Glenda Newell, covered up the crime—and later committed a second murder to keep their secret safe. But Shari Lapena saves one final disturbing twist for the last pages: although Amanda’s murder is solved, Robert Pierce may still pose a deadly threat to someone else.
Adam Newell Killed Amanda Pierce
The police initially arrest Paul Sharpe after luminol reveals that Amanda’s blood had been scrubbed from the Sharpes’ Catskills cabin. But Detectives Webb and Moen eventually realize that the cabin was accessible to the Newells, who knew about the spare key hidden beneath an oilcan in the shed.
When police question Adam Newell, he finally breaks down and confesses.
Adam had hacked into his father Keith Newell’s email account and discovered that Keith was having an affair with Amanda—and that Amanda was pregnant. Furious that she was threatening his family, Adam drove his mother’s car to the Sharpes’ cabin on the night of September 29.
He arrived around 8:45 PM and found Amanda inside. Overcome with rage, Adam spotted the Sharpes’ heavy wooden-handled hammer on the kitchen counter, grabbed it, and bludgeoned Amanda to death.
The murder was not part of a carefully constructed plan. It was an explosive act committed by an angry teenager who believed Amanda was destroying his family.
Glenda Covered Up Amanda’s Murder
Immediately afterward, Adam called his mother.
Instead of contacting the police or an ambulance, Glenda Newell chose to protect her son.
She arrived at the cabin with cleansers, plastic bags, and clean clothes. She made Adam strip, wash himself in the freezing lake, and dispose of the hammer and his bloody clothing in the water.
Glenda then painstakingly cleaned Amanda’s blood from the cabin’s floors, walls, and ceiling.
She placed Amanda’s body in the trunk of Amanda’s Camry, drove the vehicle to another deep lake, and submerged it. Afterward, she locked the cabin and even returned the spare key to its usual hiding place beneath the oilcan.
Her actions transform Adam’s impulsive crime into something much larger: a deliberate family conspiracy built around a mother’s determination to save her child from consequences.
Glenda Also Killed Carmine Torres
Glenda’s protection of Adam does not stop with covering up Amanda’s death.
Weeks later, neighborhood widow Carmine Torres begins investigating the strange break-ins occurring in the neighborhood and threatens to reveal who had been on Finch Street the night of Amanda’s murder.
Glenda realizes Carmine is getting dangerously close to the truth.
This time, there is nothing impulsive about what happens.
Glenda goes to Carmine’s home and strangles her with a cord, murdering an innocent woman simply because Carmine might expose Adam.
That second killing changes the way Glenda’s character must be understood. She may have begun by convincing herself that she was acting out of maternal love, but by murdering Carmine, she crosses from desperate mother into deliberate killer.
What Happens to Everyone?
Adam is charged with Amanda’s murder. Because he is only sixteen and the killing was an impulsive act of passion rather than a premeditated murder, his attorney believes he may spend time in a juvenile facility and potentially be released around the age of eighteen.
Glenda faces far more serious consequences. She confesses to covering up Amanda’s homicide and to the premeditated murder of Carmine. She is expected to remain imprisoned for a long time.
Paul Sharpe is released without charges, but being legally cleared does not repair his marriage. Olivia doubted his innocence when the evidence pointed toward him, leaving a deep fracture between them.
Their son Raleigh pleads guilty as a juvenile to three counts involving breaking and entering and unauthorized computer use. He receives community service.
Meanwhile, Keith Newell’s affair with Amanda is exposed, leaving his marriage and reputation destroyed.
But the novel still has one last secret to reveal.
The Final Twist: Amanda’s Burner Phone
After the murder investigation is resolved, Robert Pierce believes he has escaped everything.
Amanda had possessed a secret burner phone containing private information documenting Robert’s dangerous nature. Robert had buried the phone beneath a shrub in his backyard, apparently believing that whatever Amanda knew about him could remain safely hidden.
He puts on his gardening gloves, takes a trowel outside, and begins digging.
But the phone is gone.
The soil has already been disturbed.
Robert realizes that his next-door neighbor, Becky Harris, had been watching him from her window—and that Becky dug up the phone herself.
The novel ends with Robert staring toward Becky’s empty house across the fence and contemplating what he will do next.
So while Amanda’s killer has been caught, the ending deliberately refuses to provide complete safety or closure. One murderer has been exposed, but another potentially dangerous man remains free.
What the Ending Means
The final twist brings the novel back to its central idea: the most dangerous person may be someone you already know.
Throughout the story, the neighborhood appears ordinary and respectable, yet almost everyone is watching someone else, hiding something, or crossing boundaries. Affairs take place behind closed doors. Teenagers enter neighbors’ homes. Private computers are hacked. People observe one another through windows. Parents conceal their children’s wrongdoing. Even a friendly arrangement involving a spare cabin key ultimately helps make a murder possible.
The neighborhood’s greatest danger was never an unknown outsider. It was always coming from inside the community itself.
The Buried Phone
Amanda’s burner phone becomes the perfect final symbol for that idea.
Robert literally tries to bury the truth beneath the carefully maintained surface of his suburban home. But secrets in this novel refuse to stay buried.
Someone is always watching.
Becky’s discovery of the phone therefore echoes the entire structure of the story: one person hides something, another person sees it, and that knowledge immediately creates a new danger.
The missing phone also turns what initially feels like an ending into the beginning of another potential crime.
The Hidden Cabin Key
The spare key beneath the oilcan represents a darker version of neighborly trust.
Paul and Keith are close enough that Keith knows how to enter the Sharpes’ cabin. That casual sharing of access seems harmless—until Adam and Glenda exploit it to conceal Amanda’s murder.
Something intended as a convenience between friends becomes part of a crime scene.
The Hammer
The murder weapon carries a similar meaning.
It is not some exotic weapon brought specifically to kill Amanda. It is an ordinary household tool sitting in an ordinary kitchen.
That transformation—from domestic object to murder weapon—mirrors the novel itself. Ordinary homes, ordinary marriages, ordinary parents, and ordinary neighbors repeatedly reveal something much darker underneath.
Glenda and the Dark Side of Parental Protection
Glenda’s choices provide one of the ending’s bleakest examinations of parenthood.
Her initial instinct is recognizable: protect her child.
But the novel pushes that instinct to a horrifying extreme.
Instead of allowing Adam to face the consequences of what he has done, Glenda cleans the crime scene, disposes of Amanda’s body, destroys evidence, and ultimately murders Carmine.
Her actions show how parental protection becomes destructive when protecting a child matters more than morality, accountability, or the lives of other people.
There is also an important contrast between Olivia and Glenda. Both mothers become involved in their sons’ wrongdoing, but Glenda takes that impulse to its monstrous endpoint. What begins as the desire to save a child from consequences becomes justification for almost anything.
Adam’s Murder and Keith’s Betrayal
Adam’s confession also exposes the destructive ripple effect of Keith’s affair.
Adam sees his father’s betrayal, Amanda’s pregnancy, and the possible collapse of his family and reacts with adolescent rage and powerlessness. Amanda becomes the target of that anger even though Keith is the person who betrayed his family.
That does not excuse Adam’s violence, but it helps explain why the murder erupts so suddenly.
The tragedy is that virtually every decision made afterward makes the situation worse. Adam commits one terrible impulsive act; Glenda’s attempts to erase it lead to another murder and the destruction of the entire Newell family.
Why Paul and Olivia Don’t Get a Happy Ending
Paul’s release might ordinarily provide a moment of relief.
Instead, his relationship with Olivia demonstrates another of the novel’s central ideas: being proven innocent does not undo the damage caused by suspicion.
Olivia believed her husband might actually have murdered Amanda. Paul now knows that when confronted with frightening evidence, his wife was capable of believing the worst about him.
The police can clear his name.
They cannot restore the trust that existed before the investigation.
Why the Final Robert Pierce Twist Matters
Robert’s final scene prevents the mystery from ending neatly.
The detectives have solved Amanda’s murder. Adam has confessed. Glenda’s crimes have been exposed. Paul has been released.
Structurally, the mystery should be over.
Instead, the novel reveals that solving this crime does not mean the neighborhood is safe.
Robert has successfully maintained his respectable exterior while concealing something deeply disturbing about himself. And now Becky possesses the evidence Amanda left behind.
That creates the novel’s final unsettling implication: Becky may have placed herself directly in Robert’s path.
The ending therefore shifts from detective-story closure back into psychological suspense. The police have finished their investigation, but the reader knows something they do not.
The Ending Explained
Ultimately, Someone We Know ends on the idea that secrets create their own chain reactions.
Keith hides an affair. Adam secretly hacks his father’s email. Adam discovers Amanda’s pregnancy and kills her. Glenda hides Adam’s crime. Carmine investigates what others are hiding and is murdered for getting too close. Robert buries evidence of his own darkness. Becky secretly watches Robert and digs it back up.
Every secret produces another secret.
Every act of concealment gives someone else dangerous knowledge.
And that is why the final image of Robert staring toward Becky’s house is so effective. The central murder mystery has technically been solved, but the pattern that caused it has not ended.
The neighborhood still looks peaceful.
The houses still look respectable.
The secrets are still there.
And someone is always watching someone they know.
👤 Characters & Fates
🔶 Main Characters
🔷 Supporting Characters
🕳️ Potential Plot Holes
Carmine becomes intensely concerned about her security after learning someone has entered her home, checking locks and worrying about what the intruder may have accessed. She also confronts Raleigh and makes it clear that she intends to pursue the matter. Despite this heightened fear, she later answers a late-night knock by simply opening her front door while wearing a bathrobe. It is possible Carmine assumes she knows the visitor or momentarily lets her guard down, so this is not an outright contradiction. Still, her behavior is noticeably inconsistent with the security-conscious behavior established immediately beforehand and conveniently leaves her vulnerable to her killer.
📚 Book Club Q&A's
⭐ Final Rating & Thoughts
Shari Lapena is at her best when she drops a murder into a seemingly ordinary neighborhood and then lets everyone’s secrets slowly destroy them, and Someone We Know is exactly that kind of thriller.
I loved how quickly this one moved. Between Raleigh secretly breaking into neighbors’ houses, Amanda’s disappearance, the affairs, suspicious spouses, anonymous apology letters, and the increasingly complicated murder investigation, there was always something happening. Nearly every character had something to hide, which meant my suspicions kept bouncing from one neighbor to another.
The suburban setting made it even more fun. These people are watching each other, gossiping about each other, sleeping with each other’s spouses, and generally making terrible decisions behind perfectly respectable-looking front doors. It had that Desperate Housewives meets Big Little Lies feeling that I absolutely love.
Most importantly, the twists worked for me. I didn’t feel like the story sacrificed logic just to shock me, and the ending left me with one final deliciously unsettling thought. Fast, messy, addictive, and exactly my kind of domestic thriller.
✨ Adaptation description
🎬 Adaptation
As of November 2026, there is no officially announced film or television adaptation of Someone We Know by Shari Lapena.
Lapena’s novels have attracted considerable interest from the film and television industry, and her official biography states that her books have been optioned for film and TV. However, there has been no public announcement specifically identifying Someone We Know as an adaptation in active development.
No production company, studio, streaming service, director, screenwriter, cast, filming schedule, or release date has been announced for the novel.
Current Status
Adaptation: None officially announced
Format: N/A
Production Company: N/A
Cast: None announced
Release Date: None announced
Status: No confirmed adaptation in active development
The book itself was published in 2019 and follows the residents of a quiet upstate New York suburb after teenager Raleigh Sharpe secretly begins breaking into neighbors’ homes and accessing their computers. His actions expose private secrets just as local woman Amanda Pierce disappears and is subsequently found murdered, turning the neighborhood into a web of suspects, affairs, lies, and cover-ups.
Lapena’s broader catalog continues to attract screen interest, so Someone We Know remains a plausible candidate for a future adaptation, but any claim that a specific adaptation is currently underway would be premature.
✨ Books Like Someone We Know (2019)
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