The Mother Next Door by Tara Laskowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thank you to the publisher, Graydon House, for providing me with an ARC of The Mother Next Door in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Gist
The Mother Next Door was supposed to be part of the Fall Reads Blog Tour that I completely missed. I was swamped with work, stress and aching muscles, but was still convinced I would have enough time to participate in life. Well, hindsight is always 20/20 and my current self can only sympathize with my past self trying to ignore the obvious.
Anyway, let’s see if I can remember enough of The Mother Next Door to come up with a decent review.
The Details
Mothers that run the community. The popular group sans high school hallways. Claws underneath their white gloves. An upper class, squeaky clean neighbourhood where everyone knows everyone and no secrets stay hidden. Sounds like a good premise for a mystery/thriller/suspense story, right?
Right. The Mother Next Door unfolds slowly with a newcomer trying desperately to capture that feeling of belonging. Of having made it. Having achieved that certain social status. Because, apparently, that’s all that matters in life: social status.
Truth be told, I wasn’t a huge fan of the protagonist. She comes across as self-centred, entitled and a little out of touch with reality. No wonder, if she is only focused on achieving some make-believe goal of fitting in.
Regardless, the mystery part of The Mother Next Door was very enjoyable and kept me hooked until the end.
The plot is straight forward and easy to follow from the beginning until the end. I almost wanted to know more.
The writing is good. It sucked me into the story and makes it easy to imagine the neighbourhood and those shifty, judgmental looks one gets from their neighbours.
The Verdict
Overall, I liked it. The Mother Next Door is entertaining, intriguing and suspenseful.
I would recommend it.
