by: Sharon Overend
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Release Date: October 21, 2025
A haunting, lyrical exploration of family, silence and the secrets we inherit.
Years of avoidance and blame have left the McLaughlin clan fractured and ill-equipped to face the critical illness of one of their own. When long buried memories of a neighborhood child’s death while in their care resurface the family truly begin to unravel.
Told in alternating voices, Look Over Your Shoulder, reveals how secrets ripple through generations, and how healing begins when someone finally dares to speak the truth.
ANNE
Here’s what I’m willing to accept: my family is made up of a pack of chronically disconnected, emotionally crippled individuals. Full stop. I can also accept that taking a three-month break from it all twenty-six years ago was a really bad idea.
What I can’t accept: jackasses who come along claiming they know exactly what’s wrong with us, and then promise they can fix our crazy in Ten Easy Steps.
Okay, I appreciate how at first glance you might think my walking away was what put everything into motion—the kids getting lost at the river, and Carrie Morrison falling to her death. But you’d be wrong. If you want to know the exact moment things went sideways, you’re going to have to go all the way back to the day Ed refused to help me paint the bricks at the front of our house.
That’s not to say I think I’m blameless. I don’t, and I’m not. Every single day, I replay every single cataclysmic mistake I’ve made over and over. Even now, after all this time, when I hear how one of my kids has screwed up their life in epic McLaughlin proportion, my sins bear down on me, and fully knowing the price they continue to pay for my selfish blip, brings me to my knees. That, I’m still trying to accept.
Here’s what I’m willing to accept: my family is made up of a pack of chronically disconnected, emotionally crippled individuals. Full stop. I can also accept that taking a three-month break from it all twenty-six years ago was a really bad idea.
What I can’t accept: jackasses who come along claiming they know exactly what’s wrong with us, and then promise they can fix our crazy in Ten Easy Steps.
Okay, I appreciate how at first glance you might think my walking away was what put everything into motion—the kids getting lost at the river, and Carrie Morrison falling to her death. But you’d be wrong. If you want to know the exact moment things went sideways, you’re going to have to go all the way back to the day Ed refused to help me paint the bricks at the front of our house.
That’s not to say I think I’m blameless. I don’t, and I’m not. Every single day, I replay every single cataclysmic mistake I’ve made over and over. Even now, after all this time, when I hear how one of my kids has screwed up their life in epic McLaughlin proportion, my sins bear down on me, and fully knowing the price they continue to pay for my selfish blip, brings me to my knees. That, I’m still trying to accept.
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Sharon and her husband live on a 156- rural acre property in Ontario, Canada where she has found inspiration for many of her projects.
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