Published by Reagan Arthur on July 7, 2011, the novel was generally well-received, particularly for its portrayal of the female characters and the complex relationships between teenagers and adults.

After Lizzie spends another evening talking with Mr. Verver, Dusty confronts her and claims Evie knew Mr. Shaw was watching her and that she wanted him to take her away.

When she decided to take a break from the genre following the publication of Bury Me Deep in 2009, she returned to her earlier draft, intending to cover similar themes in a new setting.

[9] In a 2020 article for The New York Times, Abbott wrote that she was repeatedly asked whether the novel was inspired by the Oakland County Child Killer, who kidnapped four children in 1976 and 1977 from a Detroit suburb.

[3] She often listened to the song "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" by Dusty Springfield while writing and has cited the television series Twin Peaks as a big influence.

[9][17] Throughout the novel, the adult world is viewed "through screen doors, crawling through neighbours' lawns at night" and Lizzie and Evie are curious about it without truly appreciating the potential consequence.

The End of Everything explores these power dynamics and the uneasiness men have with their daughters as they age, similar to a passage in Abbott’s earlier novel Queenpin where the narrator recalls her father stopped sitting on her bed to wish her good night as she grew older.

Despite criticism from readers about his portrayal, Abbott considers Mr. Verver to be careless but not purposely malicious, unaware of the impact that his actions have on the young girls around him.

[27][28] The Huffington Post praised the novel for its erotic prose and its sinister portrayal of Mr. Verver, describing Abbott as "a scalpel to the origins of incest".

[29] Nick Hornby, in an article for The Believer, similarly commented that "sex hangs over the suburb like some sort of tropical mist", in a novel of "transgressive and occasionally sinister sexual chaos".

He commended Abbott for the way she handled the plot, balancing her primarily female characters between the roles of victim and instigator, in a difficult topic area of young women pursuing older men.

The young women in the novel are "so complicit, so responsible for this fog of repressed sexual yearning" but "[Abbott] knows what she’s doing, even if her characters don't".

[31][32] The novel received a critical review from Leah Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly, who gave the book a B− rating and argued that its interesting story was hidden behind overwrought prose.

[33] Booklist praised the novel's "dreamy, first-person narrative", which moves easily between the present and past, and the characterization of Lizzie, who "just does things, without good reason, on instincts that, though twisted, are true".

[34] The novel received criticism from one Elle reviewer for its plot twist, which was described as possibly "leav[ing] some feeling frustrated, aghast, and slighted by an author unwilling to unveil the truth and entrust us with it".

[26] A review of The End of Everything in The Times praised in particular the scenes focusing on Lizzie's obsessive fascination with the Verver family, although it noted that Abbott is occasionally "a tad heavy-handed with the hormones and horror (all that sweat and insomnia and stirrings in the belly) and, in striving so hard to keep the atmosphere erotically charged, her mechanics sometimes begin to show".

[35] Cullen Gallagher for the Los Angeles Review of Books described the novel as "disturbingly, even brutally honest", as Lizzie grapples with her fear and her desire to be at the center of what is happening.