The annual block party is the pinnacle of the year on idyllic suburban cul de sac Ivy Woods Drive. An influential group of neighborhood moms—known as the Ivy Five—plan the event for months.

 

Except the Ivy Five have been four for a long time.

 

When a new mother moves to town, eager to fit in, the moms see it as an opportunity to make the group whole again. This year’s block party should be the best yet… until the women start receiving anonymous messages threatening to expose the quiet neighborhood’s dark past—and the lengths they’ve gone to hide it.

 

As secrets seep out and the threats intensify, the Ivy Five must sort the loyal from the disloyal, the good from the bad. They’ll do anything to protect their families. But when a twisted plot is revealed, with dangerous consequences, their steady foundation begins to crumble, leaving only one certainty: after this year’s block party, Ivy Woods Drive will never be the same.

 

From award-winning author Tara Laskowski, The Mother Next Door is an atmospheric novel of domestic suspense in which the strive for perfection ends in murder…

 

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The women stood between two cafeteria tables, four of them with slight smiles, heads cocked at the same angle, a united front. An army with moisturizing sunscreen and Kate Spade purses, doused in St. Yves perfume.

 

…she was about as clever as a pipe cleaner.

 

We passed gossip around our group like a bottle of wine— plenty for everyone.

 

The perfect house on the hill that I’d had to have. The perfect house in the perfect neighborhood. I’d built a castle on top of a snake’s nest.

 

 My Review:

 

This was cleverly paced and shrewdly plotted with just the right levels of humor and irony to temper the intrigue and needling angsty suspense that kept tickling my gray matter. The author is new to me and I enjoyed her writing style and hope to read much more of it in the future as her prose was smartly provocative yet easy to follow and called up sharp visuals behind my eyes. She craftily stuffed agile narratives with uniquely compelling characters who kept me a bit on edge and curious to know more about each one, although I wouldn’t want to share air with any of them.

 

A modern-day retelling of A Christmas Carol…

Caroline is a cynic career woman living the high life in Manhattan where love and relationships are but a distant memory of the past.

But after a freak accident on Christmas Eve, Caroline receives a visit from a cheeky spirit of Christmas Past, Present, Yet to Come, and—most importantly—Christmas That Could Have Been. When she wakes up on Christmas Day suddenly married with three kids and living two doors down from her parents in New Jersey, Caroline has a chance to experience the life she would’ve had if she’d made a different choice.

Will small-town life as a mother and a wife make her rediscover what’s really important in life?

 

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New York is the city that never sleeps. The place where everything is possible. The tall skyscrapers glitter in the night with a seductive promise, like when you meet the eyes of a handsome stranger in a bar. Anything could happen.

And no matter that I was bone-tired half an hour ago, when Sam looks at me the way he is now, he could resuscitate me from the dead.

 

My Review:

 

I can always count on Camilla Isley for a sparkling, entertaining, and fun yet insightful read, she doesn’t disappoint. I enjoy her cleverly amusing tales and smooth writing style that easily and quickly pulls me right inside her characters’ fully inhabitable skins. This was a humorous and creative amalgamation of a modern-day A Christmas Carol and the 2000 Nicholas Cage movie The Family Man. I wore a smile most of the way through my perusal of this one.

 

Camilla is an engineer turned writer after she quit her job to follow her husband on an adventure abroad.
She’s a cat lover, coffee addict, and shoe hoarder. Besides writing, she loves reading–duh!–cooking, watching bad TV, and going to the movies–popcorn, please. She’s a bit of a foodie, nothing too serious. A keen traveler, Camilla knows mosquitoes play a role in the ecosystem, and she doesn’t want to starve all those frog princes out there, but she could really live without them.

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A series of copycat suicides, prompted by a mysterious online blogger, cause DCI Jude Satterthwaite more problems than usual, intensifying his concerns about his troublesome younger brother, Mikey. Along with his partner, Ashleigh O’Halloran, and a local psychiatrist, Vanessa Wood, Jude struggles to find the identity of the malicious troll gaslighting young people to their deaths.

The investigation stirs grievances both old and new. What is the connection with the hippies camped near the Long Meg stone circle? Could these suicides have any connection with a decades-old cold case? And, for Jude, the most crucial question of all. Is it personal — and could Mikey be the final target? 

 

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Their relationship was rocky at best, but they clung to its wreckage.

 He was a clever man; she understood, now, just how much so. There was value in keeping your cleverness hidden, rather than flaunting it.

 

My Review:

 

Jo Allen has produced yet another shrewdly plotted and slowly evolving mystery that kept me guessing. I enjoyed the characters’ personal stories as much as their puzzling cases and this installment was fraught with relationship ills for both the heart and family. Jude is a complicated character, as was the perpetrator in this piece, and they were well matched. But of course, the DCI always holds the final trump.

Scarred by a tragic past, eleven-year-old Jamie Walker chooses not to speak.

Consumed with jealous rage, Jimmy Gillespie is driven to violence.

And John Macintyre awakens from a vivid nightmare convinced he is going to kill.

Living high upon the Scottish hills, John and Sarah Macintyre enjoy a serene life until a televised news bulletin sends them on a desperate search for a missing child.

After finding the child and returning him safely to his parents, the Macintyres are approached by the local press, attracting both unexpected and unwanted attention.

But the aftermath of the media coverage changes the course of their lives forever, and events are set in motion that are joyful, heartbreaking – and terrifying.

 

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My Review:

 

This installment was far more tragic and complex with metaphysical elements than the earlier volumes, yet I found it just as gripping and shrewdly plotted. I’m typically rather lazy when it comes to reading this mix of genres due to all the world-building and the creation of otherworldly rules and skills, so due to my sloth, I seldom read them, but this one was well worth the effort and I’d gladly continue on with subsequent volumes if the author could be bribed to continue on.

The uniquely crafted and cleverly contrived storylines were engaging and actively building in tension and menace while keeping my curiosity primed. Yet I kept wondering why a policeman turned farmer living in the country and experiencing threats didn’t have a gun. I was fully invested and had several theories going while often holding my breath in foreboding dread as I was afraid of what was to be unearthed concerning Jamie, the vulnerable child with Selective Mutism, or was he? I worried there was a dark force around or within him as he had no discernible soul or aura to those who could see them. I never would have guessed his contribution to the conclusion of the story and found it quite appealing. R.V. Biggs is a wily one.

 

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Sarah wondered how the whole world could turn itself on its head with a few small words. How in the space of a few seconds, joyful moments could change to such devastating ones? She desperately wanted to say a million things… But her voice wouldn’t come, only the tears… there was nothing to say. Since they came from the soul, Hamish would understand her sentiments without the clumsy use of words, without the need to taint the feelings with adjectives.

 

Sarah sensed the strength of the voice but detected a tiredness within it. A voice that, she felt, could shatter glass if raised enough in volume, but one with a strained edge as if the owner were weary or disguising pain.

 

There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!

 

My Review:

 

I am fervently enamored with R.V. Biggs’s writing style and descriptive storytelling.   I seem to fall into his narratives all too easily and find myself extremely reluctant and quite vexed in having to extricate myself from his tales when my avid perusal is rudely and brazenly interrupted by such frivolous real-life issues such as the need for sustenance, employment, or sleep. His characters are as intriguing and compelling as the storylines they inhabit.   I am fully invested and raring to continue on with the third installment, Broken.

And, score! I have a new addition to my Brit Words and Phrases list with clever clogs, which Mr. Google informs, is a person who is annoyingly clever. I’m doubtful anyone could accuse me of that, as I’m just typically annoying. 😉

 

Though mundane, Sarah’s life is routine and well-ordered. But one autumn morning she sees a figure waving to her, the figure of a man more ghostly than real.

Several times during that same day he appears, but is the specter harmless, or are his intentions malevolent?

Disturbed and confused, Sarah endeavors to understand the mystery, to identify her unknown stalker.

But with each visitation, she becomes ever more bewildered, and as her orderly life begins to unravel, she questions the reality of all that she knows, and with mounting horror, even her own sanity.

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‘I told you yesterday you need to ask him to refer you for some proper tests. Y’know, brain scans and that sort of stuff. Mind you, if they did I’m sure they’ll find a bloody computer in there.’ ‘Well if they did a brain scan on you all they’d find would be handcuffs and a packet of condoms!’

  

My Review:

 

My introduction to R.V. Biggs has me rubbing my hands together with glee and eager for more. His man is a sly one and quickly pulled me into a most vexing vortex with his character’s absorbing conundrum and his compelling style of storytelling. His clever and tragic tale kept me guessing and postulating theories as to what had and what was happening to Sarah – possession, mental illness, time slip, amnesia, etc. Mr. Biggs craftily gilded his narratives with perceptive and sharply honed details that pulled keen visuals to my mind’s eye. I smirked, bit my lips, and nibbled on my cuticles as I worked my way through his compelling mystery. I am enamored with his skills and impatient to dive into the next volume of the series, Reunion, which is already locked and loaded on my beloved Kindle.

For once, things are going well for thirty-year-old Kerra Shaw. She has a fulfilling job helping small businesses in the local community, she is within a few minutes walk of all the people she loves best, and most importantly, she has finally got together with her childhood sweetheart, Ross.

It’s not all plain sailing, though, because they have to keep their relationship a secret. The feud between their families still rages on, and Kerra doesn’t want to pour fuel on its flame and risk losing everything.

But Kerra should know better than anyone that secrets don’t stay hidden for long in a community like Penvennan Cove…

An uplifting and feel-good romance novel for fans of Lucy Coleman, Jessica Redland and Lisa Hobman.

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As Granddad would have said of idle gossip: ‘T’aint right, t’aint fair, t’aint proper,’ and he was spot on.

I’ve had enough. I’m like a firework and the fuse paper has been lit. I’m about to explode and that thought scares me, but it also makes me feel free.

 

 My Review:

 

This installment feels to be the middle of an ongoing story although capable of being read on its own with a happy for now ending while knowing there will be more to the tale. The realistic storylines were slowly unfolding and effusively detailed while thoroughly setting each scene. Each story thread highlighted and best and worst of small-town thinking and small-town living with gossip being the main course of every resident’s meal with the type of social and family issues that are likely happening on any street in any community. The characters were true to life and individually quirky as well as flawed and varying degrees of irksome.