Office Rivalry, Creepy Neighbours and Quija Boards – What I Thought #5

What I Thought is a feature where I discuss books that never inspired me to do a full review, but yet fascinated me enough for some reason to want to share them with you.

The Child Next Door by Shalini Boland

Genres: Psychological Thriller
Published: 29th March, 2018
Series: N/A
Rating: 5

Is Kirstie imagining things, or is someone trying to take her baby? After she overhears an alarming conversation on her baby monitor about taking the baby, she’s relieved to find her daughter is still where she’s supposed to be. But then who is taking and what baby? There aren’t no other babies around as far as she knows!

Well, guys, I ripped through this one in one day. It was so tense, it had me crawling up the walls. Kirstie turns amateur detective in trying to solve the mystery of the baby, even though her husband tries to convince her she’s just being nuts. What’s with husbands in thrillers being absolute dicks by the way? Dominic is a proper tool, and refuses to entertain Kirstie’s worries in any way, and even feeds her paranoia some more for good measure. Kirstie first accuses, then somewhat reluctantly enlists her weirdo neighbour, Martin who is basically the only member of the neighbourhood watch. She doesn’t trust him very much though. I mean, dude has a basement. Who does that?! Fuckin’ creeps, that’s who, if you ask Kirstie.

The Child Next Door was a proper nail biting suspense!

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The Memory by Lucy Dawson

Genres: Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Published: 6th December, 2018
Series: N/A
Rating: 3

Oh, ya boring!

Because there is slow burn, and there’s plain old dull. The whole premise sounded so exciting! Izzy is a thirty-something grown lady, but often acts and even sounds like a little girl. Allegedly because of the traumatic thing that happened to her when she was seven years old. Her mother, Eve, is trying her best to help her, but she just can’t, can she.

After Eve sells their house, Fox Cottage (cool name) to a couple, Tim & Clare, all shit breaks loose. Izzy becomes frantic, and heavy use of quija boards and voodoo dolls are applied. I had a sense that this was supposed to give a slight supernatural flavour to the story, but it just came across as superstition and eyeroll inducing woo-woo.

I can’t say I liked any of the characters, which is not necessarily a problem, but I didn’t find them particularly interesting either. The mystery of Fox Cottage was all right, but for me it was a little too late.

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The Temp by Michelle Frances

Genres: Thriller
Published: 13th September, 2018
Series: N/A
Rating: 3

You know those couples who appear to be perfect and of course in reality their marriage sucks balls. Well, that’s Carrie & Adrian for you. Both are successful, they have money, everything is peachy. Until Carrie gets pregnant. If that’s not enough, Emma enters the scene. She’s the temp supposed to cover Carrie. Emma is young and basically a nobody, and yet Carrie feels threatened. Is Emma after her job? What’s next? Her husband?

This was a pretty twisty story with a great sense of underlying mystery and uncertainty, but all that tension got lost in the details. I think this book was just simply too long. When I read the author’s previous book about the scheming girlfriend I could not put that shit down. I was barely awake, but had to know how it ends. This one? Well, yes, I was somewhat intrigued, but it didn’t feel such a pressing urge to find out what’s going on.

I did however enjoy Michelle Frances’ writing style, and how she was able to paint a picture of the setting, particularly the small town with the lighthouse I almost felt like I was there. The nosy neighbour was absolutely brilliant!

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Have you read any of these?
Do you like your neighbours? Or are they creepy?

I don’t know about you guys, but my favourite neighbours are the ones I can’t see or hear.