About the Book:
Maybe you don’t know your neighbours as well as you thought you did . . .
“This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out.”
In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses–and into the owners’ computers as well–learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too.
Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they’re telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets?
In this neighbourhood, it’s not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .
You never really know what people are capable of.
About the Author:
Shari Lapena worked as a lawyer and as an English teacher before writing fiction. Her debut thriller, The Couple Next Door, was a global bestseller, the bestselling fiction title in the UK in 2017 and has been optioned for television. Her second thriller, A Stranger in the House and third, An Unwanted Guest, were both Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers.
My Review:
As a huge fan of Shari’s debut book The Couple Next Door I was delighted to be invited to take part in the blogtour for her latest standalone psychological thriller, SOMEONE WE KNOW.
I have read several books over the years with a similar premise – a murder in a small community; lots of neighbours and suspects; lots of characters and lots of twists, so I started this book in the knowledge I knew what to expect.
How wrong I was; firstly I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to keep up with all the different characters (it’s an age thing apparently!), but that was NOT a problem here. Each chapter and each character had their own individual voices and it was really easy to keep track of who was who. What was difficult was to try and work out who did what and why and what everyone was hiding.
There were many layers to SOMEONE WE KNOW told through the many characters from Robert the husband of the murdered woman Amanda, to Olivia the mother of Rayleigh who has been caught breaking into the neighbours houses; and the rest of the neighbours trying to cover their tracks, guilt and secrets from one another. This book has so many interwoven stories that I found myself totalling immersed in this small neighbourhood wondering who did kill Amanda and what are these people hiding.
If you like your thrillers with twists and turns at every corner, suspects and characters you can’t quite work out and a cleverly plotted storyline than I am sure you will love SOMEONE WE KNOW.
My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the invitation and Thomas Hill of Penguin Randomhouse and Netgalley for my copy of the book for an impartial and honest review.
