Better a good neighbour than a distant friend, but what if the neighbour isn’t a good one?

Synopsis

Love thy neighbour or fear thy neighbour?

For myself and Lauren, my 10-year-old daughter No3 Beech Close was to be our refuge after two years of hell nursing my sick mother.

In need of a fresh start and wanting to distance ourselves from the bad memories of my mother’s house we moved to Beech Close, a small cul-de-sac of six houses situated around a picture-perfect green.

It seemed perfect but I had underestimated the secrets that this tightknit community shared.

Within hours of moving in my next-door neighbour Valerie made it abundantly clear we were not welcome.

I soon discovered that Valerie hadn’t welcomed the previous occupant either and she’d since disappeared without a trace.

Had I put myself and my daughter in danger moving to Beech Close?

Which neighbours, if any could I trust?

And how far would they go to keep their secret?

My review

Shelly and her 10 – year – old daughter Lauren need a fresh start after Shelly has been taking care for two years for her sick mother.
That need and the desire to get as far as possible from the bad memories, brings Shelly and Lauren to Beech Close, a small cul-de-sac of six houses wonderfully surrounded by the green.
But what Shelly didn’t expect is to find herself in a very close and tightknit community, filled with secrets and deception.
Her neighbour Valerie has made it more than obvious that they are not welcome in Beech Close. And when Shelly learns that the previous resident of her home didn’t get along with Valerie and now has actually disappears, Shelly wonders how far the community goes to keep each other’s secrets…

I have not moved myself a lot of times, but the times I did, I did wonder what kind of neighbours I would have. And I can say that I count myself lucky as I got along very well with each of them. Obviously, there are sometimes a few issues, but nothing terrible.
So reading a book where the main character moves in a neighbourhood with all suspicious characters in their own way, made my skin crawl…

I cannot say that I liked any of the new neighbours, they all acted in a way that made me very wary of each and every one of them.
And it made me feel sad seeing that the fresh start Shelly needed so much slowly turned into a real nightmare.

Because it’s not only Valerie and her very obvious dislike of Shelly and Lauren, but also the whispers of all the others making feel the two more out of place and made them feel even more of not belonging to the neighbour.

Taking in account what Shelly and Lauren already had to endure in the past, and with even more dark secrets revealed from Shelly, made me wish that they could finally start a new, beautiful chapter in a neighbourhood that would seem to tick all the boxes.
And thanks to those secrets being revealed, I could understand Shelly’s behaviour much better. At moments I couldn’t match Shelly’s character with her actions. But with patience I started to understand Shelly better and I could see the complete picture.

Shelly is a wonderful mother, she does whatever she can on her own in raising Lauren, even if it isn’t always as easy. And just in the grand finale we see how far that love and protectiveness goes.
And Shelly is also a lucky woman with having such a great best friend in Josh. He is always there for Shelly, and Lauren too, on a deeper level of just friendship. I felt that they were more a family than just best friends.

The author manages perfectly to create so many cobweb all interlinked but also creating such a chaos that just like Shelly, I didn’t know who was trustworthy and who wasn’t. Every moment that I thought I had figured it all out, something else was being revealed, making me throw my theory away.
There are several creepy moments, making me watch my back myself, or even looking suspiciously at my own neighbours. This is for sure not a book to read if you are a little bit paranoid. But it’s also a good book to show you that trusting your instincts is never the wrong thing to do.