#Bookvent – Celebrating my top reads of 2019
My day nineteen #bookvent selection is one which I had been desperate to read as I’m a fan of the author’s work, but for some reason it never seemed to make it to the top of my reading pile. I vowed after seeing the author at Harrogate that I would read the book, and made sure that I made time in my reading schedule to do just that. Boy am I glad I did. The author is renowned for writing some pretty dark and deadly books and this one is no exception. A book that will have you viewing the people in your street with great suspicion, my day nineteen bookvent selection is:
The Neighbour by Fiona Cummins
A new home. A new start.
Available from: Amazon | Kobo | Waterstones | Googleplay | Apple Books
It’s all the Lockwoods want.
And on The Avenue, a leafy street in an Essex town near the sea, it seems possible.
But what if what they want isn’t what they get?
On their moving-in day they arrive to a media frenzy.
A serial killer has struck in the woods behind The Avenue.
The police are investigating.
And the neighbours quite clearly have secrets.
With their dream quickly turning into a nightmare, the Lockwoods are watching everyone.
But who’s watching them?
Back when I was a kid, everyone in my street . pretty much knew everyone else. Maybe it was a generational thing – after all all the kiid went to the same school and in a town that was much smaller than it is now, parents all belonged to the same social clubs, societies and drank in the same pubs. Nowadays I probably know a handful of my neighbours, if that, and people come and go with regularity as some of the houses are used for student housing for the local university campus. But imagine if on the day you moved into the street a body, the latest in a line of bodies, was found in the woods which neighboured your new home. Imagine if there was the slightest possibility that one of your new neighbours was responsible. How would you know if you don’t know the people around you? With The Neighbour, Fiona Cummins has found a new kind of horror to bring to her readers – that of the everyday and the highly plausible neighbours from hell. far from the fresh start and quiet neighbourhood the Lockwoods imagined, they are faced with secrets, lies, murder and mayhem, all wrapped in an atmospheric, slowly unwinding tale which spans decades. I loved the mix of the old and the new, some chapters told in a mystery voice who held the key to what was happening in the present day and who could, quite feasibly, have been any one of the Lockwood’s new neighbours. From the very opening you get a sense of the grotesque without ever once . being exposed to anything unnecessarily macabre – unless of course you have a real phobia of puppets. Let’s face it – they can be pretty bloody unnerving. I loved the complex but believable characterisation, the setting, the sense of an underlying tension and the very chilling matter of fact-ness of the killer. It all pulled together in a story which gripped me from the start, making me both delighted (as a reader) and uncomfortable in equal measure. Another top read from a brilliant author.
You can read my full review of The Neighbour here.
Happy #bookvent reading all
Jen
Jen Med's Book Reviews 