By: Caleb Crowe
ISBN: 9781837564026
Publisher: Inkubator Books
Publication Date: 06/23/2024
Format: e-book
My Rating: 3 Stars (ARC)
They’ve moved into their dream house. Then they meet the couple next door.
After a whirlwind romance, Megan and Nick move into the home of their dreams, a beautiful beach house.
They think it’s their happily ever after… until their neighbours return from a cruise.
Ron and Jackie are loud and obnoxious, playing their home cinema at high volume, and shattering the tranquility with their endless building work. To cap it all, they have a kennel with four dangerous dogs that bark and howl day and night.
They are the living definition of the neighbours from hell.
Megan finds she is pregnant, and what should be a blissful dream for the couple instead becomes a grueling nightmare. As their home turns into a battleground, their relationship starts to crumble under the relentless stress.
When Ron and Jackie lay claim to part of Megan and Nick’s garden, the young couple know they are in for a fight. But they have no idea what their neighbours really want - or how far they will go to get it.
Their nightmare has only just begun …
The Wrong Neighbour – the shocking psychological thriller perfect for fans of Freida McFadden, Lucinda Berry and John Marrs.
My Review
British author Caleb Crowe returns following his smashing debut, THE GIRL IN THE PAINTING, with his latest horror thriller, THE WRONG NEIGHBOUR.
Stepping into a realm much darker and more sinister than his previous novel, Caleb Crowe delves into the underbelly of humanity. A couple, Megan and Nick, embark on a journey to their dream home, only to discover their next-door neighbors are pure evil and despicable. Their dream home quickly transforms into a nightmarish prison, a place they cannot seem to escape, driving them to the brink of madness.
Welcome to the neighborhood! How far will you go when pushed to your limits out of desperation?
About...
A couple, Megan and Nick, are driving from Manchester to Whales to their new dream cliffside home on the coast in a little cove, Dreamer's Cove. They were sold the home by Peter and Gavin they met at a party thrown by Meg's friend Pippa from school.
Meg was unsure about this house as they could not afford it, and it was further out, but Nick pushed it. Little did they know what they were getting into.
Meg is a jewelry maker and works from home. She recently came into money with her parent's death and then a divorce. She and Nick were living together. Nick says she has to trust him. Life was too short to be cautious he said. Except Nick is hiding things from her she later discovers.
When they meet their neighbors, everything changes, and their lives will never be the same again.
Ron and Jackie Evans are the kind of neighbors you hope to never meet. They are crass, unrefined, rude, insensitive, loud, obnoxious, violent, and confrontational. They only live there because they won the lottery and do not fit in.
The loud noises, weird visitors, notes, constant construction, and vicious dogs barking all hours of the night were out of control. Then there is building things on their land and a runover from a septic tank. Plus, Ron is downright scary and mean, plus the vicious dogs and strange actions.
But they cannot afford to move since they have money invested in the house nor can they afford an attorney. Nick is going into town all the time, leaving Meg alone to deal with this.
Jackie seems okay, but look who she is married to. But is she evil, too? Soon, the stress of the neighbors causes stress in the relationship, and then she finds out she is pregnant, which would not be worse timing. She is obsessed with finding out more about these neighbors and stopping the madness.
They try to resolve the issues; however, nothing is done, just gets worse. Nick is acting strange, and he has secrets from Meg, and she is finding herself driven to insanity, ready to murder Ron and Jackie.
How well do Nick and Meg know one another? What secrets life behind the neighbors? How will this nightmare end? Who will die, and who will be left unscathed? What are people capable of when pushed to the limit out of desperation?
My thoughts...
Even though I enjoyed Caleb Crowe's debut, unfortunately, THE WRONG NEIGHBOUR was not my cup of tea. There was no literary fiction here. I disliked all the characters, too much violence, gore, horror, and dislike any books with people training animals to kill and be violent. There was no good. All evil. This book was so different from the first; it was hard to believe it was by the same author. There is nothing wrong with the writing, it was the subject material and content.
In addition, no pregnant woman would be capable of such acts. Yes, there was a twist, but it was all too violent, turning into horror (which I do not care for the genre), and too unbelievable and should come with major trigger warnings. Also, there was no dark humor, but again, it was bleak, dark and unenjoyable. Nothing the characters did was thought out, and they were very impulsive, making crazy, delusional decisions. I did not sympathize with any of the characters.
I look forward to reading the author's next book, where I hope we get more of the type from the debut.
Thanks to Inkubator Books and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy for an honest review.
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 3 Stars
Pub date: June 23, 2024
About the Author
Caleb Crowe is a British writer of psychological thrillers, and is fascinated by stories where extraordinary things happen to ordinary people, and the mundane is transformed into the menacing.
He’s afraid of the sea, fearful in the countryside, panicky in large open spaces and terrified of small, confined spaces. He finds eerily quiet villages and bustling impersonal cities equally unsettling. There’s nowhere, and no one, that doesn’t possess some kind of dark, brooding anxiety just waiting to have the lid prised open and turned into a twisty, suspenseful, nerve-shredding story.
He lives in Manchester with his partner, two children and two cats, who probably have their own mysterious agendas. Whether he's navigating the urban jungle or wrestling with the daily challenges of family life, Caleb draws inspiration from the unpredictability of everyday existence.
