Title: The Couple Next Door
Author: Shari Lapena
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: 14 Jul 2016
Page Count: 302
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery
Rating: 5 
Description..
‘You never know what’s happening on the other side of the wall.
Your neighbour told you that she didn’t want your six-month-old daughter at the dinner party. Nothing personal, she just couldn’t stand her crying.
Your husband said it would be fine. After all, you only live next door. You’ll have the baby monitor and you’ll take it in turns to go back every half hour.
Your daughter was sleeping when you checked on her last. But now, as you race up the stairs in your deathly quiet house, your worst fears are realized. She’s gone.
You’ve never had to call the police before. But now they’re in your home, and who knows what they’ll find there.
What would you be capable of, when pushed past your limit?’
What The Fuck. I just need to get this off my chest, why, WHY would you leave your baby at home on its own to go out. Who in their right mind would do this? No matter what age they are, you do not leave a child on its own in a house. Fuck me, i don’t even leave my daughter downstairs on her own for more than five minutes and shes nearly 5! I just cant get my head around it, what mother would do that.
OK, so now that’s out in the open. This book was meeeeental. Like holy crap i didn’t know what was going to happen next, one minute i was like yes it was him, then i was like no maybe not. I just couldn’t stop reading it. One day, one day it took me too read it, i could not put it down. Each page was fill with drama, each page kept me wanting more.
So it starts with the couple arguing about going out because the babysitter cancelled last minute, the Father wants to go, the Mother not so much. She wants to stay home with the baby, he wins in the end and they both go next door. Every half hour they check on the baby and at One-ish they go home to find the front door open, and the baby gone.
“Who goes to a dinner party next door and leaves her baby alone in the house? What kind of mother does such a thing? She feels the familiar agony set in – she is not a good mother. So what if the sitter cancelled? They should have brought Cora with them, put her in her portable playpen. But Cynthia had said no children.”
This book made me so angry. So sad that anyone would do something like that. I couldn’t believe what i was reading half the time. I have never read anything like this before. I as a mother just felt so sick, i wouldn’t know how i would cope if that ever, ever happened to my little girl. After the disgust i felt for the parents, i felt so sorry for Anne. She blamed herself so much, she knew she done wrong, she was so scared.
“They will be judged, by the police and by everybody else. Serves them right, leaving their baby alone. She would think that, too, if it had happened to someone else. She knows how judgemental mothers are, how good it feels to sit in judgement of someone else.”
The twist and turns of this book was crazy, I’ve never read any work by this Author before but i definitely think i will now. Shes an amazing writer. And i look forward to reading more, if she has any other novels out.
You need to read this, even if its not something you usually go for. I love my romance books, if it doesn’t have at least a little romance in then i get bored and not enjoy it. But not this one, this book, wow.
My Reading Corner93 