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pagesplotsandpints 's review for:
What the Neighbors Saw
by Melissa Adelman
Read Completed 7/21/23 |
I received a digital copy of this book for review via Netgalley & Minotaur books. This does not affect my review in any way.
I'm always up for a new thriller and I'm always interested in a new domestic suspense. WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW was a little slower than I had hoped for with a lot more Desperate Housewives than I bargained for, but it's another "lives of rich people" book too, so there's more behaving badly and still trying to protect a reputation.
Unfortunately, this book was just a little too sloppy for me and I absolutely hated the twist. It's always difficult because if you get trigger warnings, you'll spoil the twist for yourself for this book (and for a lot of thrillers, I imagine) so I would recommend it and also not? If I had known that was how the book was going to go, I wouldn't have read it, but then again, that would have spoiled everything. The way it all played out was kind of infuriating on many levels.
Aside from that, the writing was just underwhelming. Alexis and Blair are the two main POVs here and Alexis's family was just the worst. Her husband Sam was just plain mean for no reason and extremely awful. While everyone else was off being terrible, it would have been nice for him to be a nice guy and her family to be the quiet ones on the street. Alexis was not perfect either... she didn't have the best relationship with her mother but I also don't know why that was such a huge focus when it didn't end up having anything to do with the plot. She was also wildly insecure about the baby weight she gained from her pregnancy that ended two months ago after the birth of her child and she just wouldn't stop talking about it. I get that she was insecure but it was so negative, constantly talked about, and she even recounted previous stints of an eating disorder in her past (bulimia)... But again, why was it such a big deal? She mentioned it all the time, and few times so we get it, sure. It was too much and it got to be really annoying.
I would have actually liked to get to know Blair more. She does have her own chapters but we don't really get to know her past until the ending. She could have been a bit more well-rounded and had some more depth. The rest of the characters were mostly unbearable, cheating on each other, getting into each others business, gossiping... and the author made them all caricatures instead of real people.
Aside from the characters, the plot didn't have much going for it. There was a twist with blunt hints throughout the book (which I tried to brush off as a misunderstanding or red herring... but sadly no). The rest of the plot was focused on the drama of the neighborhood. I would have rather had Alexis do much more sleuthing or have a better reason to try to figure things out.
Not much really worked for me here except easy readability. I never really wanted to put the book down, but things also kept going downhill as I was reading.
I received a digital copy of this book for review via Netgalley & Minotaur books. This does not affect my review in any way.
I'm always up for a new thriller and I'm always interested in a new domestic suspense. WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW was a little slower than I had hoped for with a lot more Desperate Housewives than I bargained for, but it's another "lives of rich people" book too, so there's more behaving badly and still trying to protect a reputation.
Unfortunately, this book was just a little too sloppy for me and I absolutely hated the twist. It's always difficult because if you get trigger warnings, you'll spoil the twist for yourself for this book (and for a lot of thrillers, I imagine) so I would recommend it and also not? If I had known that was how the book was going to go, I wouldn't have read it, but then again, that would have spoiled everything. The way it all played out was kind of infuriating on many levels.
Aside from that, the writing was just underwhelming. Alexis and Blair are the two main POVs here and Alexis's family was just the worst. Her husband Sam was just plain mean for no reason and extremely awful. While everyone else was off being terrible, it would have been nice for him to be a nice guy and her family to be the quiet ones on the street. Alexis was not perfect either... she didn't have the best relationship with her mother but I also don't know why that was such a huge focus when it didn't end up having anything to do with the plot. She was also wildly insecure about the baby weight she gained from her pregnancy that ended two months ago after the birth of her child and she just wouldn't stop talking about it. I get that she was insecure but it was so negative, constantly talked about, and she even recounted previous stints of an eating disorder in her past (bulimia)... But again, why was it such a big deal? She mentioned it all the time, and few times so we get it, sure. It was too much and it got to be really annoying.
I would have actually liked to get to know Blair more. She does have her own chapters but we don't really get to know her past until the ending. She could have been a bit more well-rounded and had some more depth. The rest of the characters were mostly unbearable, cheating on each other, getting into each others business, gossiping... and the author made them all caricatures instead of real people.
Aside from the characters, the plot didn't have much going for it. There was a twist with blunt hints throughout the book (which I tried to brush off as a misunderstanding or red herring... but sadly no). The rest of the plot was focused on the drama of the neighborhood. I would have rather had Alexis do much more sleuthing or have a better reason to try to figure things out.
Not much really worked for me here except easy readability. I never really wanted to put the book down, but things also kept going downhill as I was reading.