Shari Lapena | The Couple Next Door

I stayed up way too late last night to finish THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR and for as tired as I am today, it was so worth it. Talk about starting in a terrifying way...and ending even scarier. I was left speechless with this one...which never happens.

Plot:

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, baby Cora goes missing. 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. Anne and Marco each discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family—an addictive tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.

Review:

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR starts off literally drunk on wine as the most terrifying thing two parents can go through happens. The premise of this novel is spooky and anxiety-filled with realistic characters and so many twists and turns, you'll need a neck brace by the last page. If you make it to the last page, that is. This is a twisty, fun, and cinematic read that is perfect for summer!

I loved this plot! It was tense and spine-tingling fun, following the two main characters (husband and wife) and the detective who is sometimes a little too smart for his own good. Lapena did a wonderful job building the tension and adding snippets of mystery throughout multiple storylines that are all somehow connected to the larger issue at hand. Who took baby Cora? At times, I felt bad for Detective Rasbach as each and every single character in this novel is hiding something and multiple big and small revelations and secrets come out like clockwork. As intense a novel as this is, right when things start to cool off just the tiniest bit, something happens and you are right back to where you started. Panicked.

The characterization in this is a cut above the rest. Flawed, dysfunctional, and easy to hate yet hard not to root for. I’ve never read characters like this before as I actually didn’t like any of them, but maybe that was the point. For as much as I disliked all of them, mostly for what they were hiding and the things I found out as I read this novel, I still was rooting for each and every one…some for their gain, some for mine. At times, I was angry at the decisions they were making when so much was at stake, but secretly I loved the drama and the tension.

Around 100 pages in, this quickly turns from a nightmare to a full-blown panic attack as the tension mounts and revelations are sprinkled at a fantastically pace. If you think you know what's going on or what will happen at any point in this one, let me do you a favor and let you in on a little secret; you're wrong. As the tension mounts and the characters are running like chickens with their heads cut off, the reader is sucked into a whirlwind of questions, demands, and twists that I didn’t expect coming. Similar to how shocking the middle of GONE GIRL was, the twists start with this one and don’t stop until the last page. I had about six different theories and each was debunked rather quickly. When you think this one can’t get any better, the ending is so shockingly disturbing and menacing, I ensured all of my doors were locked before going to sleep.

Rating: 4/5