She Treads Softly: This Changes Everything

Sunday, June 21, 2026

This Changes Everything

This Changes Everything by Lisa Scottoline
7/14/26; 400 pages
Grand Central Publishing

This Changes Everything by Lisa Scottoline is a recommended paranormal mystery, for the right reader, that focuses on friendship, justice and the use of paranormal/psychic abilities. This is a sequel to The Unraveling of Julia.

Julia Pritzker is with her husband and daughter at her villa in Tuscany when she has a premonition to call her best friend Courtney, who happens to be arriving at her grandmother's farm in Pennsylvania. Before Courtney can step in the door, Julia has a psychic premonition and warns her to not enter. Courtney, who already had the door open doesn't stop and as she enters she sees her grandmother has been murdered and the killer is leaving through the back door. Courtney pursues him but he escapes. Now Julia is traveling to the States to provide comfort and support to her friend Courtney. The police think it was a burglary, but the two friends end up investigating the murder and uncover a series of secrets, conspiracies all while Julia is having her supernatural visions.

Expect a plot full of action and twists as the two investigate, looking for the truth and justice while exposing secrets and conspiracies that have been hidden and there are people who don't want them revealed. The story is suspenseful and the tension rises throughout the fast-paced plot. While a large part of the story is focused on their friendship, the plot requires you to set aside a large dose of disbelief in order to appreciate all of it and I was not willing to do so for this plot.

Even though this is a sequel, it could be read this as a standalone although you will have more character background after reading the first novel. I was more sympathetic to Julia in the first novel and found her and all the female friendship/empowerment above everything else annoying this time around, perhaps because common sense is lacking. The paranormal/psychic activities were disconcerting and a plot device I wasn't interested in embracing yet again after reading The Unraveling of Julia. When the focus is on Julia's horoscope, astrology and the paranormal I skimmed over them.

This Changes Everything is a good choice for those who enjoy paranormal mysteries and have read The Unraveling of Julia. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.