Did you read The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz and have questions? Need a character list or a plot summary? Want to discuss the ending of The Spare Room? You’re in the right place: my Spoiler Discussion for The Spare Room!
Spoiler Discussion for The Spare Room
Welcome to my spoiler post and discussion. This is intended for those who have read the book or don’t care about spoilers. I also have a spoiler-free review of The Spare Room.
Table of Contents:
Character List (Spoiler Free)
Plot Summary
What Was the Ending of The Spare Room?
Spoiler Discussion
Character List for The Spare Room
Kelly: main character; broke her engagement during the pandemic
Sabrina Balzer Lamont: award winning romance novelist, high school friend of Kelly
Nathan Lamont: Sabrina’s husband; works for the Department of Defense
Mike: Kelly’s former fiancé
Amy: Kelly’s best friend, who is not physical present in the story, but gives her advice
Diane: unfriendly neighbor of Sabrina and Nathan
Elizabeth/Beth: missing woman who was Sabrina and Nathan’s former partner.
Lydia: Beth’s aunt
Megan/Renee: Kelly’s new friend in the Lamont’s neighborhood
Virgo: Kelly’s cat.
Brief Plot Summary of The Spare Room
During the pandemic, Kelly and her boyfriend Mike cancel their planned wedding after some unspecified drama.
Reeling from the break-up, Kelly heads from Philadelphia to Washington DC to take up the offer of an old high school friend, Sabrina, to stay with her and her husband, Nathan. Kelly is very upset and seems to suggest that Mike suggested they take some time to think about their relationship.
Nathan, Sabrina’s husband, picks Kelly and her cat Virgo up at the train station and drives her to their mansion in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a gated house next to a cemetery.
Kelly clearly needs distraction from her personal issues. After Sabrina tells Kelly their house might be haunted, Kelly has a steamy dream about Sabrina.
After bering prickly about sharing her writing, Sabrina suddenly asks Kelly to read a few chapters of her work in progress. The chapters feature her main characters, a couple, meeting a new woman who looks a lot like Kelly.
Kelly takes a walk in the cemetery and meets Megan, a friendly neighbor about Kelly’s age.
Kelly keeps reading Sabrina’s chapters, in which the couple and Kelly lookalike have a threesome.
Kelly finds some Polaroids of a blond woman engaged in 50 Shades of Gray-style activities with Sabrina. When Kelly tells Sabrina about the photos she found, Sabrina is alarmed.
Kelly, Nathan and Sabrina have a threesome. Kelly feels a little guilty for cheating on Mike. Sabrina confesses that the blond woman in the photos was their former threesome partner … and she’s missing.
Nathan and Sabrina convince Kelly to break up with Mike.
As Mike tries to win Kelly back, he tells him she’s seeing someone. Sabrina confesses that she and their former partner talked about leaving Nathan to be together.
Out of nowhere, Nathan tries to push Kelly’s head underwater in the hot tub. Then Kelly discovers that there is a two-way mirror in the master bedroom with a video camera behind it.
Kelly freaks out. Sabrina and Nathan reassure her by showing her they haven’t filmed her. But when she looks at what they have filmed, she sees the same woman from the Polaroids.
Kelly corners Nathan and finds out the missing woman’s name: Beth. Nathan says Beth had an ex who was harassing her and he fears she might be dead. Then Kelly finds a newspaper article saying that Beth was last seen right near Sabrina and Nathan’s house.
Upset, Kelly decides to go to a hotel. But Nathan and Sabrina show up to “check on her.” They beg her to give them another chance.
Kelly comes back to the mansion, where she gets hit on the head and knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, Beth and Sabrina are there. Kelly learns that Beth’s abusive ex is a woman.
Beth and Sabrina start making out, which annoys Kelly.
Sabrina tries to convince Beth that she and Nathan were worried about her even though they took up with Kelly, and tries to reassure Kelly that she wasn’t just a replacement for Beth
Beth says her ex, Renee, has been looking for her. They check the security footage and Kelly realizes that Renee is actually her new friend Megan, who said her ex (Beth) stole her money and tried to get her fired.
Kelly and Beth argue and Kelly threatens to call the police – or Renee – and tell them Beth is back.
But when Kelly wakes up and Beth is dead. Kelly wants to call the police. Nathan and Sabrina lock Kelly in the house.
All three of them claim they did not hurt Beth. Kelly searches Beth’s belongings and finds out she was pregnant.
Nathan thinks Renee is responsible. He offers to get rid of the body.
What is the Ending of The Spare Room?
In Nathan’s study, Kelly sees blood on his distinctive paperweight and realized it must be the murder weapon. Nathan shows up with a gun and orders Kelly to drop the paperweight.
Nathan blocks Kelly from leaving the room and there’s a struggle. He puts Kelly in headlock, and as she tries to get out, the gun goes off and Nathan is dead.
Sabrina is shocked but Kelly tells her that Nathan must have killed Beth. They make up a story for the police: Nathan killed Beth and trapped the two of them in the house.
Sabrina and Kelly decide to move to New York together.
One day Kelly gets a text from Megan/Renee who swears she never hurt Beth. Kelly doesn’t know who to believe: Sabrina, who has repeatedly lied, or Megan/Renee.
Kelly decides she believes Sabrina. But on their drive from DC to Brooklyn, she stops and see Mike.
Mike asks how she could be living in a “house of horrors.” Something he says makes her realize that he was there.
Mike says he’s sorry. Beth’s death was an accident, as he mistook the blond Beth for Kelly. He was mad about an Instagram post Kelly made saying she was happy.
He claims killing Beth was an accident. That she surprised him and he hit her. He’s wracked with guilt.
Kelly tells Sabrina that both of them need some time on their own. They split and Sabring starts dating agin.
Epilogue from Beth’s POV
(Six months earlier, when she’s just arrived at the Lamont house)
Beth did steal Renee’s money, and lied about Renee abusing her. Beth caused her own injuries.
Beth considered blackmailing the Lamonts but then left for Santa Fe to start fresh. Then she discovered she was pregnant.
She had decided to come back to ask Nathan to pay her off for the baby. She meets Kelly and thinks she’s harmless, a “nervous hamster.”
She wakes up and hears noise in Nathan’s office and gets up to go talk to him.
Spoiler Discussion for The Spare Room
I’m always up for something different with a thriller. I knew Andrea Bartz from We Were Never Here and just grabbed it.
I thought there were some good twists in this one.
I didn’t expect Megan to be Renee.
Given all the talk about Kelly and Beth looking alike, I should have seen the mix-up coming.
But I don’t know – there was something missing in The Spare Room for me, and the polyamory didn’t make up for it.
The pandemic setting felt a little flat, when it should have felt claustrophobic.
Kelly’s whole emotional journey was weird: she loved Mike, he was so sweet. No, actually, he was controlling and angry.
I felt like Kelly’s attraction to Sabrina could have been set up SO much better. They had known each other for years, so why not make it that they’d had a fling together in the past?
That would have added a lot more tension and made her sudden desire for the polyamory seem less like rebound experimentation. It also might have made her less of a doormat when she kept finding out that Sabrina and Nathan were lying to her.
What were your thoughts? What are your questions? Let’s discuss in comments!