Readers Guide for Dear Debbie

My Readers Guide for Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden will have a character list, a plot summary, the ending explained and my questions answered. Let’s hear yours!

Readers Guide for Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden

Table of Contents:

Dear Debbie: Jen’s Quick Take

Dear Debbie: Character List

Dear Debbie: Plot Summary

Dear Debbie: Jen’s Quick Take

• Dear Debbie has three narrators alternating epistolary elements (drafts of Debbie Mullen’s advice column.) The plot centers around Debbie’s trials and tribulations with her family and neighbors.
• Debbie has a very rigid personality, an extremely literal way of thinking, and the opinion that everything should be as she wants it to be. Sometimes her anger is justified, though.
• But Debbie’s “advice” and problem-solving is also more than a little unhinged
• Dear Debbie has a darkly comic tone. It’s a wish fulfillment revenge book that reminded me most of The Housemaid is Watching and Want to Know a Secret.
• It has fewer shocking twists and reveals (I think just one) than some of her other books.
• I’d recommend Dear Debbie to readers who like out-there narratives and revenge stories.
• Publication date: January 27, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press. Thanks so much to them for the advance copy!

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Dear Debbie: Character List

The Mullen family

• Debra “Debbie” Mullen: Hingham housewife
• Cooper Mullen: Debbie’s husband
• Alexa “Lexi” Mullen
• Isabel “Izzy Mullen

• Coach Pike
• Zane: Lexi’s boyfriend
• Garrett Meers: Debbie’s boss
• Sierra: Garret’s secretary
• Ken Bryant: Cooper’s boss
• Cherese: Cooper’s sponsor
• Nita Geisler: magazine editor
• Harley: personal trainer
• Cindy: gym receptionist
• Jesse: Cooper’s coworker

Neighbors:

• Brett Carlson: neighbor
• Jo Dolan: neighbor
• Bev: neighbor
• Rochelle: neighbor
• Tabitha: book club
• Lorraine: book club

Dear Debbie: Plot Summary

Though they are amusing, I’m not going to summarize Debbie’s advice posts. Her advice is always “solve the problem, or kill the problem (!)

Debbie is shocked when she learns that her daughter Izzy got cut from the soccer team. Lexi claims the soccer coach, Coach Pike, is a pervert. 

Debbie’s neighbor Brett comes over, accusing her of cutting the power to his office so he can’t play loud music. She denies it.

Debbie is a high IQ college dropout who codes phone apps (including on called Findly that she uses to track her family) and writes an advice column. Her husband Cooper gets a mysterious phone call. Debbie wants Cooper to ask to be a partner in his accounting firm.

Debbie prepares for the magazine photographer coming to take pictures of her garden. But he’s a no-show. When Debbie calls, she’s told they decided to use her neighbor Jo’s garden instead. Debbie goes to drink a bottle of wine she’s been saving, but someone swapped it with water.

When Debbie heads to Jo’s house, Jo is incredibly rude and Debbie warns her about karma.

On her way to the gym, Debbie heads to the nursery and buys Japanese beetle traps. At the gym, she talks to personal trainer Harley, who is coming to book club. 

Cooper’s boss has no interest in making him a partner. When Cooper says he will look for other opportunities, he gets fired. 

Harley and Debbie head to Rochelle’s house for book club.  Harley is annoyed that Debbie forgot about her avocado allergy. Suddenly Rochelle gets sick, then Tabitha. Was it something in the sandwiches Debbie brought? The avocado, perhaps?

Debbie heads to the newspaper office. Her boss Garrett is upset with some of her murder-y content as this is a “family newspaper.” She gets fired.

Cooper dreads telling Debbie that he lost his job, so his colleague Jesse suggests a trip to the firing range. 

Debbie shows up at school to talk to Coach Pike, who says Izzy needs to lose weight and is too slow. 

Debbie and Cooper lie to each other: she claims the photo shoot went great, while he doesn’t admit he got fired.

Cooper shows up at Harley’s. Yes, they are having an affair.

Yes, it’s weird that she and Debbie are friends, but that happened after the affair started. Harley hopes that Debbie finds out, because she wants Cooper. 

Lexi and her boyfriend Zane seem to be fighting. Cooper finally tells Debbie he quit his job.

Debbie sneaks out of bed and goes to the opium flowers in her garden. Then she buries beetle traps in Jo’s garden. Finally, she heads to Coach Pike’s house. She drugs him with brownies.

Cooper wakes up, notices Debbie is gone, and then throws up. He feels drugged, checks the Findly app and writes down Debbie’s location.

The next morning, Debbie heads to Ken’s house with a gun to confront him

Cooper wakes to the sound of Debbie’s boss calling her repeatedly. Cooper answers and Garrett accuses Debbie of putting porn on the newspaper website and changing the password.

Cooper checks. It’s a video of Garrett having sex with a woman who isn’t his wife. Debbie laughs off the idea that she did it.

Lexi doesn’t want to ride to school with Zane, so Debbie drives the kids to school where there are police cars.

Debbie learns that Coach Pike planted cameras in the girls shower. 

Cooper gets to work and his boss is “on vacation.”

Jesse tells Cooper that Debbie is kind of vengeful hahaha

Debbie tends her opium plants, then she invites Harley to meet her lunch. On her way, she sees Jo freaking out about Japanese beetles in her garden. 

When Debbie arrives at Harley’s house, she finds a men’s t-shirt. Afterwards, she calls Cooper and tells him to ask for his job back. Ken is indeed “on vacation.” Forever. 

Cindy, the gym receptionist, tells Harley to leave Cooper alone. Harley vows to tell Debbie that Cooper is cheating.

When Harley gets home, she’s confronted by the sister of a married man she had an affair with. He tried to end his life and is now in a nursing home. She wants Harley to visit him. Harley pepper sprays her.

Izzy tells the family she is back on the soccer team.

Cooper looks up the address Debbie was at in the middle of the night: Coach Pike’s house

Lexi’s boyfriend is blackmailing her for sex. Debbie tells Lexi that in college, she went to a frat party and was drugged and sexually assaulted by a guy named Hutch. Debbie uses Lexi’s phone and texts Zane to meet her.

At a deserted playground, Debbie drugs an open beer with opium and hides. Zane drinks it. She deletes all the pictures and texts of Lexi from his phone. She finds photos of an underaged girl that Zane has pictures of and emails them to the school and the police. 

Cooper wonders where Debbie was last night. When he gets to work, he’s told that there’s money missing from the company accounts.

Debbie codes a new phone app called Punish Your Husband

Izzy calls and says a drunk senior guy crashed his car into the school. When Debbie picks up her kids and learn that Zane was the one who crashed his car.

Debbie takes a road trip to the fraternity house where she was assaulted she pretends to be a reporter writing articles

Lexi calls Cooper saying she thinks there’s something wrong with her mom. First, the soccer coach gets arrested, then Zane is in the hospital, and now she found a weird document on her mother‘s computer.

Cooper rushes home. The girls are looking at drafts for Debbie’s column and they are all full of advice about killing people. Cooper tries to call Debbie, but his call goes to voicemail. He and the girls check Debbie’s location history on Findly, and he’s worried.

Debbie plans to set the frat house on fire, but the fraternity present tells her that they take sexual assault and drinking very seriously

Cooper goes to Ken’s house and finds him dead with a bullet hole in his forehead

As Debbie’s driving home, Harley calls and invites her over for dinner

Cooper starts wiping his fingerprints off everything in Ken’s house. He notices a camera over the door.

Harley plans to tell Debbie Cooper doesn’t love her anymore. She gets a text from Cooper and apparently he’s invited to Harley’s for dinner too.

Cooper goes to the garage to look for his gun and of course it’s not there.

Is Debbie is framing Cooper for the murder of his boss?

A guy shows up at Harley’s house, but “Cooper” is actually Jesse.

Cooper’s AA sponsor, Cherese, calls to check on him. Cooper’s secret: Debbie doesn’t know he’s a recovering alcoholic.

Debbie bursts out laughing. Jesse confesses that he was using Cooper’s name.

Debbie pulls out a gun and shoots Harley. Jesse passed out because Debbie drugged his water bottle at the gym. Debbie embezzled the money at Jesse and Cooper’s office and is going to frame Jesse for Ken’s murder.

Not only is Jesse fake Cooper, he is also Hutch, the guy who assaulted Debbie

Cooper finds Debbie’s car parked outside a house and starts banging on the door. Inside, Debbie puts the gun in Jesse’s hand. Cooper starts yelling that he loves her, but Debbie pulls the trigger

Debbie takes off her gloves and leaves the gun in the house. Cooper’s there and confesses that he’s a recovering alcoholic. Debbie confesses about her assault in college. Cooper asks her if she shot Ken with his gun and she says no. (She actually shot Ken withJesse‘s gun and got rid of Coopers gun.)

One year later:

Cooper started his own accounting firm. He’s still in shock that Jesse killed Ken and embezzled money. Debbie didn’t kill Jesse she just framed him for Ken’s and Harley‘s murders.

Debbie sold her Punish Your Husband App. She claims that her crazy advice column answers weren’t serious, just a way to deal with her trauma.

Jesse is in prison. Another prisoner kills him at the request of a guy whose sister also got assaulted by Hutch/Jesse.

Debbie’s doing better though she still has to keep secrets from Cooper …like all those people she killed.

We learn that Cindy was a) one of the women who wrote to Debbie for advice and b) Ken’s wife.

Who was Who and Reveals in Dear Debbie:

• Harley’s “Cooper” was actually Jesse (Cooper’s coworker) AND Hutch, Debbie’s assaulter.
• Cooper’s secret calls were not to Harley, but to Cherese, his AA sponsor
• Cindy the gym receptionist was actually Ken’s wife.

Debbie’s Dirty Deeds:

Vote in comments: justified or not?

• Infested Jo’s garden with beetles as revenge for Jo stealing her photo shoot.
• Drugged Coach Pike and then planted the camera so he’s get fired.
• Poisoned the book club ladies with sandwiches
• Drugged Zack so he crashed his car into the school
• Shot Ken
• Shot Harley
• Embezzled money from the accounting firm so she could blame Jesse
• Framed Jesse for Ken and Harley’s murder

Do you have questions, corrections, or thoughts? Please leave them in comments!