Category: 2 star

2 star

Review: What the Neighbors Saw by Melissa Adelman

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Desperate Housewives meets The Couple Next Door in a chilling story of murder and intrigue set in a well-to-do DC suburb.

Sometimes the darkest acts occur in the most beautiful houses…

When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbors welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind.

But the neighborhood’s picture-perfect image is shattered when their neighbor Teddy – a handsome, successful father of three – is found dead on the steep banks of the Potomac River. The community is shaken, and as the police struggle to identify and apprehend the killer, tension in the neighborhood mounts and long-buried secrets start to emerge.

In the midst of the turmoil, Alexis takes comfort in her budding friendship with Teddy’s beautiful and charismatic widow, Blair. But as the women grow closer, the neighborhood only becomes more divided. And when the unthinkable truth behind Teddy’s murder is finally uncovered, both Blair and Alexis must reexamine their friendship and decide how far they are willing to go to preserve the lives they have so carefully constructed.

Desperate Housewives does meet The Couple Next Door in this novel, but mostly just Desperate Housewives, in my opinion. Everything about the premise gave me the sense of your average thriller, but unfortunately, it was anything but. Read on to find out why.

What the Neighbors Saw is an apt title, as it does revolve mostly around what the residents of a secluded but very grand and affluent neighbourhood all see out their windows. One of the main protagonists, Alexis, has just barely made ends meet to reach and live in a nice new neighbourhood, which has long been her goal. Blair, the other POV we get to see, is already a resident, and is Alexis’s neighbour. Shortly after Alexis arrives though, a man is found dead, and more suspicious things start happening. Was Alexis wrong to choose this seemingly lovely neighbourhood to move into?

Continue reading “Review: What the Neighbors Saw by Melissa Adelman” →
2 star, adult

ARC Review: Twenty-Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Phoebe Dean was the most popular girl alive and dead.

For the last ten years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean twenty-seven minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe?

Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth.

With Phoebe’s memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition, and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart—the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy, and a former football star. Just kids back then, are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died. 

Perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Celeste Ng, Tate’s literary suspense Twenty-Seven Minutes is a gripping debut about what happens when grief becomes unbearable and dark secrets are unearthed in a hometown that is all too giddy to eat it up.

Overall Recommendation:

Twenty-Seven Minutes is not for the faint hearted, or those who do not want to fall into a pit of despair. While it tried to be a super twisty thriller, it ended up being a super slow read, filled with unlikable characters you can’t root for, all while a cloud of hopelessness permeated every page. I didn’t quite see the twist at the end coming, but at that point, I couldn’t utter much emotion for it either way. If that’s what the author wanted, then it was a success. Otherwise, please be warned.

Publication Date: January 23, 2024

I’m a huge sucker for thrillers, and from the beginning of Twenty-Seven Minutes’ synopsis, I was hooked, line and sinker. But upon opening the very first pages, something immediately felt off to me. Perhaps it was the writing style, which was disjointed and flipping across 4 characters. Or maybe it was the way each character was already being portrayed. Either way, this should’ve been my warning sign.

Spanning only the course of 3 days – which felt like a lifetime while reading it – we follow mostly Grant, Becca and June who are assumedly 3 adults in their late twenties still stuck in their old town and in the trauma they all faced on the same night a decade ago. Let me be clear. All three of these individuals are badly in need of consistent therapy. Becca claimed she went when she first survived the accident that claimed Grant’s sister’s life, but it’s clear she should’ve never stopped. Frankly, her POV probably left me with the worst feeling out of all of them. And that’s saying something because they’re ALL super messed up.

There’s definitely guilt and plenty of secrets between them all. How that would play out and explode into the public sphere was probably the only thing that kept me going at times. None of these characters were likable, although June was probably the closest one I could feel a smidge of sympathy for. But every single one of them was wrapped up in layers of grief, trauma, and addiction to unhealthy, obsessive behaviours that would make someone unsettled from only one of these POVs. There is no break regardless of who we switch to as each POV had so much to unpack. They were also unreliable narrators as you know at least one or all of them are hiding something from us, the readers. The overall result of this? Just a cloud of unsettled discomfort and despair over me outside of this book. I would definitely not recommend this for anyone who struggles with grief or feelings of despair in general. This book will only compound those feelings.

When I finally came through to the other side, the ending was partly something I should’ve seen but also not what I expected. I expected something bigger, for the fact that it ruined so many lives for so long. I suppose there are some points to be given that I didn’t see the twist right away until close to the end but a part of me feels let down. It was the only thing driving me to finish. And I can’t say I wanted to finish because it was fast paced or super suspenseful. I just like knowing the answer. The only reason this rating isn’t lower is because I did manage to finish and I did push through – a part of me was too afraid to stop reading for fear I’d never be able to pick it up again. That counts for something at least.

I’ve read my fair share of mysteries and thrillers over the years. While this could’ve been an amazing read, there was too much focus on grief and trauma to give us anything else to hold onto (or anyone healthy to read from for a reprieve). With no likable characters means no one cares what happened to them all. As this is a debut that was apparently borne of grief the author suffered herself, I can empathize this may have been therapeutic for her – but not quite so for anyone else. I can only hope any more books after this one will be a little more well-rounded, emotionally.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review

2 star, YA

ARC Review: Artifacts of an Ex by Jennifer Chen

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

When Chloe Chang gets dumped via USPS after moving across the county from NYC to LA, her first instinct is to throw her box of memories in the garbage. Instead, she starts buying other teenagers’ break-up boxes to create an art exhibit, Heartifacts. Opening night is going great, until she spots Daniel Kwak illicitly filming his best friend’s reaction to his ex’s box. When she tries to stop him, an intense discussion ends up launching a creative partnership and friendship… and a major crush for Chloe.

There’s just one problem: Daniel is dead set on not being another rebound.

Five times he’s been the guy who makes the girls he’s dating realize they want to get back with their ex. And he refuses for there to be a sixth. She insists she’s over her ex, but when he shows up unexpectedly with his new girlfriend, it turns out Daniel was right. She isn’t ready for a new relationship.

She throws herself into making Heartifacts successful, but flashy influencers threaten her original vision of the exhibit. To create the exhibit she’s always wanted, Chloe needs to go back to basics, learn to work with artists in a more collaborative way, and discover what love can be. Only then will she convince Daniel she’s truly ready for everything they could be to one another.

In the tradition of Jenny Han and Emma Lord, Jennifer Chen’s Artifacts of an Ex is a story of love, art, and finding your way when everything you know has changed completely.

Overall Recommendation:

Artifacts of an Ex touches on key themes of loving yourself and learning to let go before falling in love again. While I agree with these things, the execution was not as strong as I had hoped and it was hard to believe in Chloe’s newfound love for Daniel while her breakup was still so fresh. I had also wished for more about her family as they felt like filler rather than important side themes to explore in the book. Overall it was an okay read but it did take me a while to finish it.

**Artifacts of an Ex comes out November 14, 2023**

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review

There were plenty of things I wanted to love about this book: themes of heartbreak, new love, and the feelings they invoke in us universally. Perhaps some of it was too much to explore altogether in this one novel, or my expectations were too high, but it felt like it bit off more than it could chew.

Chloe quickly gets dumped early on in the book. Her idea to form an art exhibit from people’s shared experiences of heartbreak from an ex was unique and refreshing.

But too much focus was perhaps on the actual planning and replanning of the exhibit. She is apparently a big enough YouTuber who is known for, well, planning. As PlanItGirl, she utilizes a number of, what I guess to be, sponsored items from stationery brands for her planning journals and writing utensils. I never understood all of it as it’s not explicitly explained, so either this is a popular real brand I have absolutely no idea of or it wasn’t meant to be analyzed beyond its mention in the book.

Then we have her Asian family. There are a few side plots with them, namely the fact they moved to LA to be with her ill grandmother. Their search for the recipe ingredients in her grandma’s famous pineapple cakes was fun and I loved the dynamic with her Ahma when she could remember who Chloe was. However, nothing more substantial really takes place beyond this and it leaves me wondering if they were just plot filler to pad out the story. They all feel a little too two-dimensional for characters that did take up a certain amount of space in the book.

My biggest problem, though, was how hard it was to believe Chloe could just fall in love with Daniel so fast after such a breakup with her ex. She barely had time to process her feelings, and when her ex, Jake, popped back in her life post-breakup, she clearly had hoped to still give it another try with him if he also wanted that. This was after she had met Daniel and thought he could be someone of interest to date. With Daniel’s history and his concern as the “rebound” guy, her reassurances to him that she wouldn’t do that seems super hypocritical.

For a book about love, whether new love or loving yourself with your flaws and all, I didn’t really feel either of these things from Chloe’s journey. That, perhaps, is why it was so hard to love this as much as I had hoped from the synopsis. With more focus on this main theme, I may have learned to love it more but it just wasn’t for me.