This just wasn't for me. I think the format of the book was cool but the writing wasn't for me. It felt familiar as a story and didn't keep my interest.

Jack and Syd have found the house that Syd thinks of as her dream house, and Jack is also persuaded. That is, until strange things begin to happen, beginning with odd findings in the attic and a helpless little girl in the building across the way who seems to be a victim of parental abuse.

The plot is unusual in that Syd tries to outsmart her own abusive parent who has haunted and taunted her all her life, even in her new home. The suspense in the novel is in the how and when this could happen.

The abusive fathers in this book seem all bad, stock characters, and there is no explanation for their evil personalities, especially for Syd's father. Not even an explanation or hint of possible mental illness. They seem to be evil personified.

I could not get into this book, sorry. Trying to clean up my netgalley. Didn’t realize that I was forgetting to leave reviews on netgalley itself, My apologies.

MY INCEPTIVE ASSERTION.

Fear begets worry; worry begets doubt; doubt begets anxiety; anxiety begets paranoia.
Low self-esteem begets self-hatred; self-hatred begets depression; depression begets self-pity.
Enemy-centered begets hate; hate begets anger; anger begets rage; rage begets revenge; revenge begets a murderous spirit.

A nation divided against itself will surely fall. And a man's enemies will be those of his own household.

MY EXAMINATION.

On the pages of this eerily alarming and slow-boiling psychological thriller, the reader becomes both judge and jury as its two twenty-eight-year-old starring leads take the proverbial stand to testify inside the courtroom of its covers. Ladies and gentlemen, meet our top-billed defendants, Jack Walsh and his girlfriend, Sydney Baker. Jack and Sydney will each render their statements detailing the London fog of evil that commenced encountering their lives only a short time after moving her, not his, but her dream home.

JACK.

Jack testifies first. He gives a choppy description of what led up to the death of their next-door neighbor, the loathsome Sean Payne. Payne was the despicable and savagely abusive father of Elsie Payne, the young girl who threw herself in front of the speeding train—right before the terrified eyes of Sydney.

It all began after Jack and Sydney purchased the house, which they suspiciously won at a bargain price, outbidding even all of those other couples laden with more attractive financial means. While not an immediate favorite of Jack, the old house—sold to the young partners by an elderly gentleman named Patrick Bernard Winters—is infused with an uncanny and cold inner spirit that betrays its warm and welcoming physical beauty. And not long after they move in, Jack and Sydney soon begin to detect that smell, a distinctive aroma that only intensifies in pungency as the days wear on.

Once that smell becomes too annoying to tolerate any longer, Jack goes on to conduct a thorough investigation into the source of the strange odor, ultimately locating the culprit in their lonesome attic: a dead, rotting cat—with its legs broken. Of course, the findings are enough to make his blood run arctic because the windows upstairs in the attic were supposed to have been sealed shut by the previous owner. So how on earth did the cat manage to penetrate the attic space in the first place? For such is a task deemed virtually impossible—at least by his logic.

The slightly passive leading man also finds some other items laying only a breath away from the decaying carcass of the cat: a shoebox filled with a variety of knick-knacks, including the head of a doll, that more than likely would have been those personal effects of a little girl; however, there is only one problem. The elderly Patrick Bernard Winters—who, by the way, quickly sold his house to Jack and Sydney to flee to Perth, Australia and into the arms of a woman he met on the Internet—did not have any children or grandchildren. And this fact leads Jack to suspect what? Well, he does not know what. He certainly will not tell Sydney about any of it, especially not about the dead cat with its legs broken, as that one detail alone would freak her out henceforth. Even so, his perplexing discoveries—disgusting and otherwise—start to gnaw at his mind. And he is intent on unraveling the creepy mystery behind them.

SYDNEY.

Emotionally broken as they come, Sydney Syd Baker is the product of a tumultuous upbringing. And her entire body shows it. Sydney has many scars, both emotionally and physically. And she is still battling with a myriad of demons, including the one called drug abuse. Sydney met her beau, Jack, at a social workers conference. And as fate would have it, the emotionally wrecked couple soon falls head over heels in love. After only three months of dating, they were already making plans to move in together.

Neither of them wants to meet the family members of their partner. And that understanding is just fine with Sydney—whose father had been her hater, her batterer, and her scoffer for most of her life anyway. Sydney was a phenomenally disdained and abused child in the domestic setting: her father was her homegrown terrorist, and her mother stood only for submissive cowardice. Through it all, her little sister Jessica could be nothing more than an eyewitness. That is, until she died—compliments of suicide.

That is why Sydney could relate to the chain-smoking Elsie Payne, even finding camaraderie with the thirteen-year-old.

ELSIE.

Elsie Payne is a second chance for Sydney Baker to vindicate herself. Even from the very first day she saw the little girl from across the housing row, Sydney has felt an instant connection to Elsie. The little girl reminded Sys of Jessica. Her kid sister, the late Jessica. Sydney is regretful about the death of her sister. And she spots a kindred spirit in Elsie. With time, she forms a trusting bond with the sad and hopeless child. To Sydney, Elsie is a carbon copy of Jessica. And now, knowing of her horrifying quandary at the heavy, harm-inflicting hands of her angry and abusive father Sean, Sydney knows that she has to save Elsie for the sake of saving her former self—and her dead sister, Jessica. And once Sydney makes it up in her mind to rescue the helpless Elsie from her unhinged reality, nothing can prevent her from doing so. She even recruits Jack to help her—by way of involving child services. But the rabbit hole leading down the Hadean portal that is the life of Elsie goes seabed deep. And once Sydney and Jack dive into the turbulent rapids, neither one will resurface without mangle—be it spiritual or physical.

Desperately treading tempestuous waves in her new role as a savior, Sydney is waiting to board the morning train for work when she witnesses blood-curdling horror before her eyes. Young Elsie Payne casually steps off the train platform and directly into the path of a speeding locomotive.

On impact, everything goes pitch black, even the hearts of men.

NO REST FOR THE WICKED.

Just when Jack and Sydney thought the torments of their past lives had plummeted into the abyss of eternity, the same demons reemerge from the billowing smoke of eradication to hunt down their former acquaintances through relentless pursuits. The old demons are back to steal, kill, and thoroughly destroy the souls of both Jack and Sydney. And with these old foes settled in for the fleshly score, the heinous murder of Sean Payne is to be the least of their concerns. That is until they both become the prime suspects.

THE ASSEMBLY.

Although Jack Walsh and Sydney Baker carry the magnitude of this shadowy psychological thriller with their tremendously stellar performances, the two stars share the spotlight with a solid cast of bit players who each annex even more profundity is his and her right. These include the following:

• Bartol Bart Novak is a social worker and the best friend of Jack. Regardless of their friendship, Bart is the man with whom Jack believes Sydney is having an affair.

• Sabeen, Ali, Amira, Hakim, and Kalila are a family of legal (and illegal) Iraqi refugees about to be evicted from their bedsit for overcrowding. Jack brazenly intervenes on their behalf.

• Karen Leigh is an attractive redhead and the Detective Inspector who enters the plot to investigate Jack and Sydney for the implacable murder of Sean Payne.

• DC Grainger is a professional colleague of Karen Leigh and the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson of this plot.

• Evan Cohen is the corrupt, deceitful, and lowdown estate agent from whom Jack and Sydney purchase their new house of ill repute.

While Mr. and Mrs. Walsh (the parents of Jack) and Mr. and Mrs. Robinson (the parents of Sydney) have speaking roles on these pages, only one-quarter of them is deserving enough to have been appointed a name: Penelope, the mother of Jack.

MY CESSATION.

Immediately recognizing the tell-tale symptoms of feeling emotionally-drained, tensely frustrated, and aggravated, I determined that The New Neighbors was at first suffering from psychosomatic cancer, considering the feverishly slow pace at which the complex storyline moved in its earlier stages. And with all due respect, constantly putting the narrative down to give it a rest became quite an unchallenging activity for me. Notwithstanding, the novel would, in its own sweet time, redeem itself admirably.

Proven benign, the annoying literary tumor that plagued this novel at the outset dissipates. And the storyline, originally frail and weak in structure, suddenly gains a few extra pounds of muscled momentum and comes out swinging on the reader like an undisputed heavyweight champion—determined to land as many compensatory uppercuts on the same as it possibly can.

True to its rendition, the grand illusion of its conclusion is somewhat reminiscent of the legendary Alfred Hitchcock and his ingenious brand of chilling suspense. Of course, I would not go so far as to declare it the Rear Window of mystery thriller fiction, but one thing is certainly clear, and that is that the effort took its inspiration from those timeless Filmworks directed by the storied Master. And because of its Hitchcockian character, The New Neighbors—in the end—managed to stave off what would have perhaps been a much lower rating.

If truth be told, this literary puzzle of a two-part psychological thriller impressed me in its final rounds, cleverly pinning me against the ropes while punching my psyche with blow after blow of page-turning and pulse-palpitating perturbation. Yes, in the end, The New Neighbors, authored by Simon Lelic, respectively, got medieval on yours truly. And there is no singular devotee of its respective genre to whom I would not inordinately recommend it. However slow its dreadfully teasing start, the London-set fiction comes alive remarkably after a while, commanding its dignity and proudly shutting down the would-be critical naysayers of mind.

As I tip my cloché to the narrative, I stand humbly corrected. Consider The New Neighbors recommended for your reading pleasure, dear reader.

Enjoy!


REVIEWER’S NOTE: It is my kind pleasure to thank Berkley Publishing, as well as NetGalley, for the advanced review copy (ARC) of The New Neighbors in exchange for my honest review.

Analysis of The New Neighbors by Simon Lelic is courtesy of Reviews by Cat Ellington.

Date of Review: Friday, April 6, 2018

This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand, I was thoroughly drawn into the story. I couldn’t wait to see how it ended and I had no clue how everything was going to tie together at the end. So in this way, it was fantastic, Also the writing was superb, Told from two perspectives, I really felt like I was hearing from both characters. The styles of writing were realistically different.

That being said, the ending is just something I can’t quite be okay with, I’m not saying that some people didn’t get what they deserved, but the way it happened just isn’t something I can condone even in a fictional story.

The writing style in the beginning is pretty tough to deal with. The first half is written journal style, with entries by both Jack and Syd. The first few chapters are all over the place, with each writer telling very different stories. They eventually do get to where they're telling kind of the same story. The second half is much easier to follow as it was written more in the present and follows the events of the journal. It's a far more cohesive story. There are plenty of twists in the second half that kept me interested. I'm glad I stuck out the tough first half. The second half was completely worth it.

I loved the setting and the premise of this thriller but I struggled with relating to the characters. While I did finish the novel I found it rather unbelievable at the end. Not sure I’d recommend it.

This is the first book I have read by Simon Lelic but it will not be the last, This London thriller was amazing. I could not put it down and have recommended to many others. Thank you for the advanced copy, NetGalley and the Publisher.

This is a DNF for me. I just wan;t invested in the characters and put it down about a 1/3 of the way through.

This book is a lot to take in, with so many twists and turns you' as the reader are left hanging on the edge of your seat for dear life. I loved the opening of The New Neighbors. It grabbed my attention immediately and kept me wanting more with each page turn. Lelic gave us so much more than anticipated based on the synopsis. It's dark and will leave your mind on the brink of "what the crap" for most of the story.

The writing style is unique in an unusual way that really helped me relate to the story a little bit more. Overall, I loved this book.

This book was a great read from beginning to end. I did find some parts of the story to be a bit slower paced but then it picked right back up again. A young couple move into their new home together. Syd and Jack are excited and love their new home. However, things aren’t what they seem and the couple soon find themselves being watched by the police for a crime…murder… Are they innocent? Or did they have something to do with it?

There are a lot of twists and turns that will have you on the edge of your seat and keep you guessing as you read through the novel. I enjoyed the thrills and chills in this novel, and would recommend it.

Many thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy, and many apologies for the tardiness of my review. I don't know why I delayed my reading of this, but it was well worth the wait.

Jack and Sydney have purchased a house together, fulfilling a dream. The house was, shall we say, too good to be believed, with the deal they were given against other higher bidders. Almost as if a higher power wanted them in this house at this time. Creepy things start to occur, beginning with a discovery in the attic. Excursions into old attics always give me chills. Then noises in the night and other mysterious happenings, not to mention an a$$hole of a neighbor, set against Jack and Sydney each telling their background stories, kept me riveted. I finished it in two days.

I would seek out recommendations for reading this author again.

Reviewed at Criminal Element (http://www.criminalelement.com/review-the-new-neighbors-by-simon-lelic/)

Jack Walsh and Sydney Baker are a happy-ish couple when they finally find an affordable home in London. It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but after viewing and making rejected offers on no less than 12 other places, it’s hard to resist. Jack claims it was creepy and he didn’t really like it from the outset, but Syd did, and he wanted to make her happy. Hindsight is a funny thing, though. Little matter because they made an offer, and to their shock, they were approved. Turns out the owner liked the “sound” of Jack and Syd and gave them the house at a nearly $20,000 discount. Upon move in, one of the first things Syd and Jack notice is a certain smell, and although both agree that the underlying odor is a bad one, they look at it a bit differently. Here’s Syd’s take on it.

There were smoke smells on top of drain smells on top of book smells on top of something coming from somewhere that was vaguely floral. The jasmine, possibly, from the overgrown garden. And remember, it wasn’t as though we’d moved into an empty box. You know that smell when you walk into a library? Or a museum full of curious but empty of people? An old place, not one of those Millennium-branded buildings. It was like that, like a thriving marketplace of memories, where all the good smells mingle with the bad. The sweetness with the sweat, the sewage with the sage. Everything seemed … interconnected. The way an ecosystem is. So the point is, I really can’t tell you when I picked that one smell out from all the others, when I first noticed that coming from somewhere in the house was the scent of…

Jack’s take isn’t quite as eloquent. It’s death that he smells, and there’s a good reason for that. He tracks the odor to the attic where he finds a dead cat. It’s a disturbing discovery, but not because it’s dead. It’s in a strange place—one that would be hard to get to—and its back legs seem to be broken. He chooses to tell Syd that the dead thing was a pigeon, not a cat, by the way. Syd sure is lucky that she’s got Jack to save her from her own delicate sensibilities, because if it were me, I’d want to know if there was a dead cat with weird injuries in the attic of my new house.

But that’s just me.

Jack makes another odd discovery in the attic too: a box full of children’s toys, specifically stuff that seems to have belonged to a little girl. But, as far as Jack and Syd know, the owner didn’t have children.

Then come the noises. Jack isn’t sleeping so well. He wakes up one night, sure he’s heard something, but a search of the house turns up zip. When he gets back in bed, Syd utters something that chills him to the bone:

“Your hands are cold,” she muttered.



When I looked at her, she hadn’t opened her eyes.



“What?” I replied, turning more fully to face her.



She snuggled deeper. “Your hands,” she mumbled again. “When you touched my cheek. They’re freezing.”



She rolled onto her front then, and all I could see of her after that was the messy protrusion of her hair. I sat there, staring, my lips parted, and felt a drumbeat building in my ribcage. From feeling exhausted I was suddenly once again wide awake. You see, the thing was, I hadn’t touched her. Not when I’d got up, not when I’d come back into the room. Whoever’s hand she thought she’d felt—it wasn’t mine.

Things really escalate when Syd starts to hang out with the next-door neighbor, Elsie Payne, who’s only 13. They share secrets and cigarettes. When her father finds out, all hell breaks loose, and he takes it out on Jack. Then, there’s the body that turns up on their property and the knife that’s missing from their kitchen. Jack and Syd begin to spiral from there.

If you like a book that takes some unexpected turns, you’ll be delighted with this one. The back-and-forth narration between the two is a lot of fun. Are they unreliable narrators? Of course, they are. But Jack can a bit of a jerk. He doesn’t tell Syd important things (although Syd is guilty of this herself) and constantly points to Syd’s drug use to explain why she might have memory/other kinds of thought-process problems. It’s not cool, especially since it’s bogus and also a horrendous time of Syd’s life that she’d really like to forget. Nothing like your significant other reminding you of all the horrid things you’ve done, especially things borne of emotional pain. But Syd’s no saint, and she’s carrying around a huge secret that is brought to the surface by her friendship with Elsie.

Secrets are at the heart of this tale: family secrets and secrets that spouses keep from each other. Simon Lelic builds suspense like a pro, and although you may not fall in love with Syd and Jack, you’ll sympathize with them in different ways. Buckle up for a harrowing ride. Lelic is an accomplished author, and if you haven’t discovered his work yet, this is a great place to start.

I was unable to finish this book. I do not think it had anything to do with the writing or author, I was simply inundated with thrillers of the same plot, he said/she said writing.

As a thriller junkie, I could not wait to read Simon Lelic's The New Neighbors. I came away feeling less than impressed. I felt it lacked character development and included so many details that the reader could do without. The premise was even a little too far-fetched for me.

This was my first time reading this author and it was a good read! At first I was a little confused because the story seemed to be a little over the place and it would time jump as well. As the story progressed it really held my attention and I loved the how everything played out. I really didn’t expect the outcome and that revelation took me by surprise, which I loved! The last few chapters were really suspenseful and had my heart racing. Even though the beginning started out rough this ended up being a good suspenseful read!

Hmm.....

The New Neighbors was an interesting psychological thriller, told in 2 parts and 2 POVs. The first half of the novel is basically Jack and Syd writing their version of what "happened" (aka the MYSTERY), each telling their own side of the story. The second half is what results from that.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy this book per say, but I am saying this was quite a slow buildup. It took me a while to read it, and I don't mean just because of my never ending book slump. Though, obviously, that was a factor.

To me, there wasn't much of the "thrill" in the psychological thriller portion. There are some definite deep seeded issues that Syd deals with throughout the book and you cannot help but to feel for her. A girl who was mistreated by the system that was supposed to protect her. I admired her survival skills and the fact that she didn't let what she went through (all the horrible atrocious things) affect how she treated others.

Trigger Warning: This book contains mentions of rape, as well as deep psychological and physical abuse.

Does this review make sense? I don't make sense. I am in a severely caffeinated deprived state. Oh well. This is the review you get. The end.

This is the ultimate you-never-know-what’s-going-to-happen-next thriller. It’s full of thick tension and suspense, I was turning pages like mad to see what was going to happen next. And you really can’t predict this stuff, lol.

Syd and Jack get super lucky when they end up purchasing a home in London, despite not having a ton of money to spend. But Jack has a bad feeling about the whole situation and Syd ends up involved in dispute with some neighbors - the consequences of both situations blow up in ways they never could have imagined.

It’s tricky to describe this book, because it is so big on reveals. Some of the things are just so shocking that I don’t want to ruin any of that “Gasp!” Moment for anyone. Basically, the house seems to good to be true...and it just might be.

I liked both Jack and Syd, they seemed like a typical young couple, trying to settle down and do “adult” things, but with some limitations - financial, emotional, etc. They were a couple worth rooting for, in my opinion. They also each had some subplots going on that added layers to the story, without taking away from the main storyline.

The outcome was great - it really was satisfying and tied up the loose ends nicely. You just have to suspend belief a little teeny bit, you know. It all works out a certain way because things go a certain way, and you just have to accept that that is possible. I know I’m really being vague, but it’s like when you read a story and everything just turns out a certain way, and would they do that in real life? Maybe not. Maybe something would have gone wrong. But in this story, it didn’t.

It’s not a dealbreaker or anything.

Bottom line: If you like suspense, you’ll love this book.

I will say, I got through this book very quickly. However, it was just a good book to me. Nothing totally bad about it, but nothing blew my mind. This story follows Sydney (Syd) and her boyfriend jack. The couple buys a house in London for a bargain and start to wonder how it happened. Some strange things start to go on and from there you find out why things are happening and why jack and Syd are telling the story in the first place.
What I liked most about this book, is that it was told in a unique way. Jack and Syd decided to start documenting and writing down what was happening to them. They even spoke back and forth to each other in their entry’s which I enjoyed.
I was not really a huge fan of either character to begin with. Syd, however, did grow on me. Syd does curse quite a lot in her entries. I am totally okay with cursing, but it seemed excessive. Jack honestly just seemed like a “meh” type of guy to me and someone that could easily be pushed over.
The plot of the story did jump around a bit, which led me to be somewhat confused at times.
I really enjoyed the character Elise, which you are introduced to within the first few chapters. I liked the depth she brought to the story and how I could see the way she impacted Syd.
The ending, was actually pretty good for me. Most the time I can see exactly how everything is going to play out, but I was a little bit surprised by what actually happened.
All in all, it was a good read and I am interested in reading more from this author.

While the premise was interesting enough, I was having a hard time getting through the beginning chapters. I didn’t like the joint journal format and I couldn’t stand one of the main character’s narration style. It just seemed too forced and unnatural.