The Couple Next Door - Shari Lapena

Genre: Thriller
Synopsis: How well do you know the couple next door? Or your husband? Or even—yourself?  People are capable of almost anything. . . Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story. Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco  soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.


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Review: I decided to pick up this book due to rave reviews all over Goodreads.

I've no idea what the hell those people were reading, but it wasn't this, coz this book fails on almost every level. It's not even that it's bad, as such, it's just dull, poorly paced, poorly plotted, unengaging, and all round 'meh'.

It started off pretty okay, and in fairness I tore through the whole thing in an evening and a bit. It was easy to read and I guess I was interested enough to want to find out what happened. Unfortunately the biggest downfall of this book is that you're told exactly what happened via the deductions of the flattest detective I've ever encountered in a thriller, right in the first couple of chapters. And in case you miss anything along the way, every other character endlessly repeats every possibility and their own place in the case, so that absolutely no mystery whatsoever is retained. Except the Mystery of the Spectacularly Bad Tacked-On Ending, which is a final chapter that was utterly unnecessary.

There was a good premise here, but it just didn't work. The author doesn't know how to construct a thriller. Or tell a story. I gave it two stars simply because it was a quick read. Don't bother.

Rating: 2/5

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