Kaira Rouda’s latest mystery thriller, “Somebody’s Home” is full of suspense. A fast-paced novel with multiple characters, it reveals the course of the events through the eyes of the narrators. Each chapter is named after the narrator, who is going to present his or her account, and the readers are left to judge based on that. It’s definitely confusing but also very exhilarating because readers are left to solve the puzzle on their own by gathering pieces from the accounts of the narrators. Let’s go through the plot in brief and move on to the ending.
The story begins with Tom telling us how his parents have sold the house to a complete stranger without telling him. Now he has no place to go, and he has no friends who would be able to help him out in this situation. He works in a bar and can barely pay for his living. He has made some friends recently, though, one of them being Vic, a guy who has introduced him to some other guys with whom he hangs out nowadays. They had taken a trip together to a desert which he had enjoyed a lot after a long time. He has anger issues too, and Vic has advised him not to let out his anger but to contain it, wait, and then let it out at the right moment. He has been told to move out of the carriage house on Sunday, but he intends to overstay and leave only when his job is done.
What is this job that he is talking about? We have no idea. Soon, we will meet Julie, who has bought this house from Sandi and her husband, Doug. She is the wife of the rich Roger Jones, who is a real estate developer and quite an influential person in Orange County. His house is on the oceanside, but Julie has bought this place so that she could shift here with her daughter Jess because she wants to stay away from her husband. She plans on asking for a divorce and has already talked to the lawyers. Jess is a girl going to high school and will soon be away at USC, where she has been accepted for college. She is quite proud of her achievement, as are her parents. Roger made her choose USC because he felt that it would help him make a lot of connections, which in turn would be good for his business.
Jess does not approve of her mother’s plans and intends to shift to her friend Bonnie’s place for a while until she is off to college. She knows that her father is a very controlling person and has made her mother’s life hell, but she doesn’t care. She finds Tom in the backyard and is immediately attracted to him. They talk, and the attraction becomes mutual. Jess leaves for a party at Bonnie’s and plans on shifting to her place on the weekend. On the other hand, Tom’s friends come to his place and see Julie and Jess. Vic is adamant about having s*x with Julie and tells Tom to get him both the mother’s and daughter’s numbers. Tom doesn’t want to give Jess’s number and somehow manages to avoid it. Julie, having seen Vic lurk outside her house, is certain that both Tom and his friends are up to no good. She decides to talk to Sandi again about it.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Somebody’s Home’ Ending Explained
After the social media scandal, Jess gets to know that all her friends are leaving for other boarding schools, and she gets very upset. She decides to meet Tom and talk to him about it. Roger’s lawyers have managed to bail him out, and he comes back home and decides to get Julie and Jess home as soon as possible. He hears about Jess’s incident from Julie and tries to convince her to come back, saying that Jess would need more protection now. Davis and Danny find a dead rabbit with its limbs cut in their new house, and Sandi is sure that someone is trying to cause them harm. Doug tells her that he needs to work overnight as he is trying to help the children and the parents who are involved in the Nazi game scandal. He is shown on national television too, and the way that he speaks about kindness and the importance of forgiving people makes Sandi want to puke. She decides to leave him with her children as soon as possible.
Jess meets Tom, and they drink and talk about leaving the town with each other. Tom soon tells her that he would be glad to leave, but he has a job to take care of on Sunday, after which they can go someplace else where no one would be able to find them. After seeing the guns that Tom keeps, Jess realizes that Tom is not at all the person that she had thought him to be and tries to make him tell her what his plans actually are. Tom tells her that he plans to kill his father before Sunday Mass. Jess is terrified and doesn’t know what to do. She tries to talk Tom out of it, but Tom only becomes sure that Jess wants to ruin his plans. He keeps her hostage for the night at his place. Julie constantly worries about Jess after she doesn’t come home for the night.
The next morning, she attends the school meeting and leaves when she sees Jess calling her. It turns out that Jess had somehow managed to escape while Tom had fallen asleep and was now at the park near their house, hiding from Tom. She tells Julie about Tom’s plans, and Julie manages to call the police to let them know and also calls up Roger, telling him to go over to their house because Jess is in danger. Tom wakes up and finds Vic’s message saying that the police have surrounded the church. He knows that it’s Jess’s doing and goes over to their house to look for her. Roger enters the house and is threatened by Tom to sit tight until his daughter comes, or else he’ll shoot him. Jess gets to know from Julie that Roger has come to find her and goes there, but before she reaches, Doug does, and Tom first shoots him on the thigh and drags him to the kitchen where Roger is.
Sandi, on the other hand, has left home for the shelter with her two children and decides to check up on Tom one last time. When Jess enters the house, Roger and Doug both try to save her from Tom, and both get killed. Julie and Sandi reach just in time to find Tom trying to kill Jess, and while Julie manages to get hold of Tom’s gun, Sandi manages to hug Tom from behind and calm him down. The police arrive on the scene and arrest Tom. After a month, we find Sandi having started a new life with her children. She is now a professional painter working on painting portraits of children. Jess still repents her father’s death and is still traumatized by the entire incident. Julie has decided to sell her house and shift to some other state with Jess, where she would be away from any people they have both known and be closer to Julie’s mother, who loves both dearly. Tom finds prison life suiting him quite well. He finds himself in the company of people who are more like him and doesn’t have to worry about food and shelter. He has talked about Jess to his prison mates, and he knows that most of them won’t leave her alone once they are released.
