We’re back with some Lightning Reviews from Carrie and Elyse! In this collection of mini reviews, we have a novella with an office romance and a biography of Shirley Jackson. Plus, a psychological thriller with family secrets that ultimately didn’t live up to its hype. Check out the books below!
The Couple Next Door
author: Shari Lapena
The Couple Next Door is a much-hyped psychological thriller that I was really looking forward to. Unfortunately my response to the book could be summed up as, “meh.”
Anne and Marco Conti are new parents. They leave their infant daughter, Cora, asleep at home in her crib while they go next door for a dinner party. They keep an eye on her through the (audio only) baby monitor and check on her every thirty minutes. When they return home at one-thirty a.m. they find their front door open and Cora missing.
The mystery around Cora’s disappearance is intriguing–the Contis left the baby home alone only after their babysitter canceled that day. Since they couldn’t have known that, it seems unlikely that they were involved. Similarly, how could a stranger possibly know that they weren’t home? A neighbor reports seeing a car pulling away from the Conti house at 12:35 a.m. – a mere five minutes after Marco checked on the baby. That seems to also rule out stranger abduction. It’s a mind-fuck of a puzzle.
So why was I meh? First of all, we get the answer to the mystery halfway through the book. It doesn’t completely resolve WTF is going on, but it’s enough of a reveal to kill the suspense. Also I found all of characters, from Marco to the neighbors, to be unlikeable. Anne is clearly set up to be a sympathetic protagonist, but her character felt two dimensional to me.
But the big disappointment was:
I was intrigued by the premise of The Couple Next Door but the lack of characters who were likeable and the early resolution to the mystery left me largely disappointed.
– Elyse
Mystery/Thriller
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Fling
author: Jana Aston
I’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately (I know, right?) so I’ve been turning to novellas for quick reads to help me cope.
Fling by Jana Aston is a forbidden office romance. For the most part I enjoyed it, but the romance wasn’t adequately developed (probably due to the length of the book) and sometimes the hero irked me. He was irksome.
Sandra Adams is an executive assistant to the young CEO of a company (Sawyer, hero of a previous book). She has a massive crush on Gabe Laurent, the CFO and Sawyer’s best friend. During a meeting she fills out a sex quiz and names Gabe as someone she’d like to bone (cuz she’s 15 I guess?) and accidentally leaves it behind. Her name isn’t on it but Gabe finds it and figures out it belongs to her.
I was kind of hoping for delicious awkwardness, but Gabe basically just decides to go for it. Enter hot forbidden office sex.
Like I said, the novella was okay but it didn’t have room for much in the way of conflict and absent conflict there isn’t much development. Also I really wanted a less alpha hero. Gabe is all about fucking not loving and I’m so sick of that guy.
I think this book might be better served as an add on to the rest of the series, but on its own it was pretty meh.
– Elyse
Contemporary Romance, Novella, Romance
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Shirley Jackson
author: Ruth Franklin
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is depressing, but also fascinating. This biography follows the life of the author of The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in The Castle from her birth to her premature death at the age of 48. The biography presents Jackson as complicated, neurotic, brilliant, often very happy, but often terribly frustrated.
The biographer, Ruth Franklin, presents Shirley as a person who was torn between her domestic and creative life. As a woman who was married from 1940 until her death in 1965, she was responsible for the management of the house and raising the four children that she had with her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. Hyman, a book critic, was so dependent on her for household issues that when Shirley died, Stanley was unable to make a cup of coffee without assistance from his daughters.
At the same time, Shirley was the primary breadwinner in the house, and Stanley resented any time that Shirley spent writing letters or writing in her diary because he felt it took away from her earning potential as a writer. Shirley felt resentful of Stanley’s many affairs and his refusal to engage emotionally with the family – he preferred to work in his neat study and spend time with university students than engage with his wife, four children, and many, many pets. Shirley considered divorce many times and themes of family, home, and escape are featured repeatedly in her work.
As depressing as this material is, it’s also excellent reading for writers and for readers who are interested in the history of women artists and the role of women in society. The book details how Shirley went through boom and bust times when trying to get her work published, how she was sometimes creatively blocked and at other times overflowed with ideas, and how her ideas evolved from draft to draft. It also explores social issues including anti-Semitism (Hyman was Jewish), racism, and feminism, as well as Jackson’s struggles with her weight and her self-esteem. By putting all these issues in both a personal and historical context, the biography gives the reader great insight into Jackson’s life as well as the lives of other women of the time period. It’s a great resource and a compelling read – just don’t expect anything cheery.
– Carrie S
Nonfiction
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I can’t even with a professional filling out a sex quiz during a meeting. candy crush i’d believe. Pencil and paper seventeen mag quiz? Nope.
Too bad about The Couple Next Door. It sounded intriguing.
Shirley Jackson was required reading in most of lit classes. What a brilliant mind. If you want some suspense reading, there’s your woman. She was also responsible for the scariest movie ever. 1963’s The Haunting is an outstanding adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House. I wasn’t freaked out by a movie again until Poltergeist.
I agree with your review on the “Couple Next Door”; I expected it to be an intense psychological thriller, instead I would say it gives bad bargain basement suspense vibes. I wasn’t quite sure if Ann was supposed to be likeable or if it was just that everyone else was such an asshat – she won by default.
Left an infant unattended while they went to a party next door? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I don’t have kids, but even *I* wouldn’t do that. When I took care of my grandnieces, I played with them all over the neighborhood, the house, the library, never out of my sight. So what if I collapsed like Tootsie at the end of each day, it was my responsibility to keep them safe. Read *that* book? Never.
Ever since my brother and his ex split up, I’ve been taking my nephew to school/daycare 2 days every other week since he was 5. He’s now 9 1/2 and at the age where he’s exerting his new-found independence. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me to drop him off out front, sometimes in the parking lot (the drop off line is LONG), and not actually walk him into the school anymore. I feel like I haven’t actually fulfilled my responsibility to either him or my brother until I’ve personally delivered him into the building. I understand why he wants this, needs it even, but oh, how it bothers me.
The idea of leaving an *infant* so that I could go next door and party? Never in a million years and I don’t even have kids of my own.
On another note, I don’t think I’ll be reading Shirley Jackson’s biography either. He couldn’t even make his own cup of coffee? He was an emotionally distant, cheating asshat? AND she was the main source of income and he treated her like that? I couldn’t even rage read that book because the entire time I’d be screaming at it “why didn’t you kick his worthless ass to the curb where it belonged?” My blood pressure is fine just as it is, thank you very much.
I am so thankful my mother raised me to be independent. Any man like that would starve in my house- if he couldn’t feed himself he’d go hungry. (Because you know that if he couldn’t get a cup of coffee, he didn’t fix his own meals and I’m including sandwiches in that. The selfish, lazy bastard.)