Book Club Questions for Dead Ends by Samantha Byres | WellRead’s July 2025 selection

WellRead's July 2025 selection was Dead Ends by Samantha Byres. Full of mystery, characters that will keep you on your toes, and plenty of bad decisions, we hope you enjoy meeting Nell and the town that raised her, for better or worse. 

Use these discussion questions to engage with the book further, whether in a book club with friends, or just on your own as you digest the story. 

Reading questions for Dead Ends by Samantha Byres: 

• How do you feel about Nell? Did you sympathise with her off the bat or did it take a little longer to understand her?
  

• In a story that contains a lot of death and dying, Petronella Bush offers something for those who are willing to listen to her. What did you make of her by the end? Fraud? Savvy business woman? Scam? Legitimate? Some kind of combination?
  

• Leigh and Jackie are like so many hardy Antipodean matriarchs that we know and love in our lives. With strong personalities and sway over the people around them, some could say that they’re not all that different from Petronella. What do you think these women all have in common and what makes them different from one another?
  

• Miri, Lucrece, Mick, Katya – none of these people are particularly wise choices for Nell. What do you think it is that draws her back to them and keeps her making these bad decisions over and over again? 

• Nell says, about her brother’s grief at April’s funeral: “It’s a cleaner wound, when you can just be sad, without the guilt or rage.” How do each of the characters we meet handle grief for the tragedies they have witnessed?
  

• Dead Ends is such a great title for Nell’s story. What do you think about the different dead ends that are encountered at different points of the story? 

Please note, these questions were written and distributed in July, 2025.