The Couple Next Door // book review

Do you ever read a book that just grips you completely, that you can't stop thinking about when you're not reading it and then even after you've read it? That's what it was like for me with Shari Lapena's The Couple Next door, published in 2016. My mum got it for me for my birthday, knowing how much I love a psychological thriller, and I finally read it when we went to Prague last month.

From start to finish the book is jam packed with twists and turns - honestly, it's a bit of a rollercoaster but one of those that you'd ride time and time again (like I did with the Star Wars ride at Disneyland). It was also easy to keep up with; sometimes, when books have this many twists fed into every bit of the plot, it can get confusing and have you flicking back a few chapters to see if something has been mentioned before because it just can't possibly make sense. But this isn't like that, because each storyline has been so well thought out and so intricately written that ti all just makes perfect sense.

The characters are so nuanced, too - there's bits of each character that I liked and disliked, and they all had me feeling some kinda way at some point throughout the story. I like that in a book, where there's no definitive nice guy and no definitive bad guy, and everyone's got a bit of something going on.

The plot follows Anne and Marco, who leave their baby home alone to go to a dinner party next door, armed with a baby monitor and a promise to check on the baby every half hour, which they do. Only, when they arrive home the baby is gone - cue police, crying, fighting, secrets, anger, stress, speed, nerves all that good stuff, exactly what you want from this kind of book. We meet Anne's family, we get to know the neighbours, we follow the police on their journey to reunite baby Cora with her parents; the book delves into Anne and Marco's lives, and those of everyone around them, in extraordinary detail. And I loved it.

This book has some pretty negative reviews on goodreads, but I really truly loved it -it was fun and exciting and everything I enjoy in a book. My mum's reading it now and she loves it, too, and I'm hoping to get Sam and Holly to read it as well. Biggggg love.