Category: adult

3.5 star, adult

Review: The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all–a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family–a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.

This was my first experience with Lapena’s work and I have to say I am overall quite impressed. This thriller was truly filled with many twists that were well planned out and not too forced. I have to say that I was initially shocked when there was a dramatic reveal and I was only halfway through the book! Needless to say I could not predict the endless numbers of twists that always left me guessing.

The Couple Next Door is the story of Anna and Marco Conti and their baby, Cora, and the crime that happens while they are at dinner party at their neighbour’s house. This story is also told from the perspective of the detective who is in charge of the case. All the different perspectives are written in such a way that is meant to add more suspense and mystery – just who is the one telling the truth? Overall it was fairly well done, but I think this kind of style has its limits. I personally found some things to be less convincing (“mysterious”) because we already had the truth from a different perspective. Having these different point of views took a little bit away from the overall suspense, but certainly did not take away from the mystery shrouding the entire case.

Twist after twist, even though I saw some coming, more kept coming! I thought this was quite exciting. So for what the book lacked in overall chilling suspense (in my opinion, usually maximized by keeping to a single clouded main POV), it certainly made up for in overall craftsmanship of the story. I rapidly grew suspicious of most of the characters and wondered how everything would come undone in the end. There may have been some elements in the book that I found a bit extraneous, but I generally take fictional accounts with a grain of salt anyway – surely people do things they regret when they’re stressed. I think we can all relate to that at the moment.

I definitely enjoyed my experience reading this though. I was reading it so quickly, so desperate to find out the mystery and motivations behind it all that I definitely just flew through this novel. There seems to be some comments online indicating some problematic/unnecessary plot points and I think I tended to agree on a logical level. There were certainly aspects that I wouldn’t have put in there were it my choice. However, I respect the decisions that were made by the author, as I honestly did enjoy the book anyway, so I can’t really fault it on not being the paragon of believability.

I tend to take things at face value and try to enjoy the story as intended, and it usually goes alright for me – it takes some pretty jarring faux-pas to throw me off the wagon! I wouldn’t recommend this book for its suspense factor, but if you want to see a complicated, tied up plot unfold itself before your very eyes, this book may float your boat. Give it a try! I know I will be trying some more of this author’s work in the future, before I form any final judgments.

Overall Recommendations

The Couple Next Door involves the mystery behind a crime that is committed while parents are at a dinner party at the neighbour’s house. As the case is investigated, more and more truths about the past about everyone emerges, each adding more mystery to the case. Just what happened that night, and who is lying about it? Find out in this thriller mystery full of twists and turns all the way to the very last page! I enjoyed watching how the plot unfolded like a knot slowly untangling. This story was fairly light on the suspense aspect, so I wouldn’t recommend it for that. However if you’re just looking for a mystery with a constant series of twists, this may be the book for you!

4 star, adult

Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

This one took me by surprise. Not in the sense that I didn’t think I would like it, but rather in the way that it panned out. A friend of mine suggested this to me and I happily obliged to after I heard about the concept. As I was reading the first part, I was definitely not super engrossed, but willing to press on out of interest. But after the second, third and the final part, I found that I was really enjoying it, and the rest of the book flew by for me!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold centers around a special café in Japan. Its specialty? Time travel. Say what? Yes that’s right, at this coffee shop, they offer a very special deal indeed, an opportunity to go back through time….with conditions of course. I thoroughly enjoyed the way time travel was portrayed in this novel, and how the situation was set up for it to occur. Perhaps it’s the Japanese origin of this book, or perhaps I haven’t read enough time travel stories, but this one struck me as quite unique, and the themes that it explored using its special time travel scenario was very well done.

The book is set up in four parts, each following a different individual who ends up deciding to go on this little time travelling journey. What is the price of time travel and what are the gains and risks? These are all questions that are well answered in here, in my opinion. Though of a scientific education, I am not a particular stickler for the scientific feasibility and logic of such sci-fi stories. Despite this, I found the scenarios to be quite believable, and the staff of the café really do well to add to its mysticism. Each character has their own personal growth journey, and a very particular reason why they want to travel back in time – what will they learn along the way, and will they come out the other side a changed person?

Of course in any time travel book, the mechanics and rules of all the time travel itself are very interesting and intriguing. However, the build up and growth of the characters, and the complexities of the choices one can face even with an option to travel through time, really spoke to me in this book. I really felt for each character, and struggled to contemplate what I would do in their situation. I found that each scenario in the book added more and more stakes to time travel, and this quiet underlying build up of tension and suspense also constantly pulled me forward through this story. Overall, I had a great experience reading this book, and I can solidly recommend it to all of you guys!

Note from Fives: I do believe this book is translated from Japanese though, so some of the manners of speech, etc. are more or less directly translated and were a bit odd as a North American reader. That being said they weren’t grammatically incorrect or anything – just make sure to keep that in mind if you ever find something a bit strange in the way things are said. Some things just don’t translate to English very well, and I’m glad the translator chose to keep true to the elements of Japanese culture.

Overall Recommendations

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a tale of an interesting café with the ability to transport its patrons backwards in time. Set in Japan, translated from its original Japanese, this story follows different customers looking to tap into the special powers of this café. It has very original rules for its time travel, and undoubtedly creates complex situations in which these customers must make decisions of heavy weight. How the customers go through their decision making, and the ramifications of their choices are all explored in this short novel. What would you do if offered the chance to go back in time? A very thought-provoking novel, with ever increasing tensions with each story, brings us through an emotional journey which truly tackles the complexity of human nature. I recommend this read for sure!

4.5 star, adult

Review: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole
Little Fires Everywhere | Rakuten Kobo Australia

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned–from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren–an enigmatic artist and single mother–who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood–and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, but I was honestly blown away by what I read! Immediately after picking it up, my friend told me: it’s slow-paced, but with amazing character development (I totally agree). Well alright, I thought, I can handle slow-paced. But in all honesty, I was fascinated by the story from the get-go, and didn’t look back at all. It was a complete page-turner for me, and this novel truly has a lot to offer.

Little Fires Everywhere follows a couple of protagonists, but it mainly follows the story of teenaged Pearl and her mother Mia moving into Shaker Heights, a peculiar community with tightly controlled rules and regulations to maintain the image of a perfect community. They rent a house from the affluent Richardsons, and slowly but surely, the juxtaposed family lives (think Parasite!) mix together until the point where one cannot tell whose has melted into whose. This idyllic situation gets torn asunder when the community is divided on the custody of an Asian baby – which is better for the baby: a struggling single biological mother who abandoned her or an affluent white family so very desperate for a child?

This novel truly explores all the intricacies of such a situation, and just how complex it can get between the ethics, legalities and human empathy. Meanwhile, trouble stirs between the Richardsons and their tenants when the town conflict arises. Little Fires Everywhere is truly an apt title (and is in fact, mentioned on like, the third page) and fires and flames are a huge theme throughout this whole story. Ng makes great use of imagery and symbolism, and I truly enjoyed how the story was so cleverly woven together. If you keep an eye out, there are so many little tidbits to catch, and what could be more exciting than all these Easter eggs left for you by the author?!

As part of the Asian community myself, I quickly found myself wondering what I myself would have done or thought in that situation, and I was honestly just as stumped as everyone in the book. I can understand both sides, and see the unfortunate situation that has arisen between two equally desperate parties. I thought this issue was well addressed and really explored an issue that is more rare in the literary world, and so in that sense I am glad that Ng brings it to life in such an interesting manner. I think regardless of race and background, you too will find yourself caught in the situation presented, unable to fully decide which side should have the upper hand. Find out for yourself on this exciting adventure!

There’s also a TV series based on this book (I believe only on Hulu) – if any of you have read the book and watched the series, let me know! I am unable to access Hulu here, but I would love to know how the adaptation is. Please comment below if you know!

Overall Recommendations:

Another book I would highly recommend! Little Fires Everywhere follows the story of a poor nomadic family renting from an affluent one in a quirky town full of rules, which ends up divided over the custody of an abandoned baby. Full of deep characters that are explored ingeniously, and complicated intertwining relationships, this novel also includes some discussion of racial issues and politics! I would especially recommend this to Asian readers, as I think the conflict at hand would be truly relatable, and is not a topic often explored. But regardless, I found that this was a beautiful and evocative story, truly highlighting the highs and low of humanity.