A mesmerizing look at two divergent families in a North Carolina neighborhood undergoing gentrification and how money, race, and community can collide and merge. I was totally captivated by the characters and their dramatic story. Therese Fowler is an author I have enjoyed with her historical fiction novels. While I prefer to live in the past, she pushed me into the lives and struggles of modern characters and had me weeping by the end. Brava! NOTE: The book's release date was moved back to March 10th, but the publisher did not extend the archive date here, so my full review will not go live on my blog until March.

This is a book that really made me stop and think. It’s a story that I wish everyone would read and see it like it’s meant to be seen. It’s about a boy and about a girl. It’s about prejudice. It’s about someone not liking the word no or not getting what he wants. It’s about a man who thinks thoughts that no man should be thinking. It’s about a woman who loves her child, both mothers. It’s about a tree. It’s about the law, unjust in many ways. In terrible ways. It’s about hate and love. Life and death. Love and loss. It is one that will make you cry such hard tears. If you have a heart you will weep in a certain part of this story. Many parts for sure but one part in particular.
This book is written in such a way that you won’t want to stop reading for any reason. You will want to find out what is going to happen next. You will also wonder how some things are not seen. It’s about one mother who only wanted her daughter and herself to have a better life. It’s about a mother who has a son who happens to be biracial and will do anything for him. His dad died when he was just a toddler so his mother, who is black, raised him on her own. She sacrificed so much for him. It’s about neighbors. One family rich and one maybe middle class. It’s a story that brings so much. Like why is a biracial child consider black? Why not white? Or as should be both. Or just a child. Just a young man. Just a human being. It’s just not that way. Especially here in the south. There is way to much hatred in the south for a person who is not white. It’s quite sad and sickening too.
I had no idea exactly what this story was going to entail. I thought it was going to be about prejudice. But it’s much much more. The part about a tree is important. It’s like a focal point in this story for the events that will take place. It’s an old Oak tree that has been around many many years.
Quotes from this story: “It’s trite to say appearances can be deceiving, so we won’t say that. We’ll say no one can be known by only what’s visible. We’ll say, most of us hide what troubles and confuses us, displaying instead of the facets we hope others will approve of, the parts we hope others will like.”
“Why couldn’t we see one another as simply human and pull together, for goodness’ sake. The planet was dying while people fought over things like who was most American-or who was American at all.”
“This story isn’t a police procedural. It’s not a legal thriller. Is it a cautionary tale? We think it is-but we wish it weren’t.”
“Start here, please, in communion with one another despite our differences, recognizing that without start there is no end.”(this last one is my favorite)
This is a much needed to be read story.
Thank you #NetGalley #StMartin’sPress #TereseAnneFowler for the eARC of this book. This review comes straight from my heart.
A 5 star book and a very high recommendation.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martins Press for allowing me to read and give an honest opinion.

I was really excited to read this book. I really love the cover and I went without reading the synopsis. I have found great diamond in the rough.
The first problem with book is the neighbors (people without faces). I think I would have liked this book better without them. Sometime it was hard to know their opinions (or who was speaking) from the main characters.
I couldn’t connect with any of the characters.
From my understanding the author was trying to focus with racist and pedophilia but what lost my attention were all the unnecessary information (to many pages about different type of tree and bushes etc). The conversation where longer than needed.

What I liked: I thought Fowler writes beautiful. I just think this book just wasn’t for me. I will try book from her in the future.

This was a five star book that I will be recommending to book clubs as so as it comes out. It was the most original book I have read recently.

It is hard to put into words that adequately describe what a powerhouse novel A Good Neighborhood is. Told in three different parts, with alternating perspectives, Therese Anne Fowler's latest release is a cautious tale of both classism and racism in America. Narrated by "the neighbors" the story unfolds in a North Carolina neighborhood, where new-money Brad Whitman moves his family into a brand new home he built over razed land. Sharing a property line with Valerie Alston-Holt (an ecology professor) and her son Xavier, we quickly uncover biases the brash Brad harbors. Teenage step-daughter Juniper quickly befriends talented musician Xavier, a relationship that is the catalyst for the rest of the novel. Just how far is someone willing to go to exert their power and influence? This question and more are answered in A Good Neighborhood.

This book moves faster in the second half but the dots start to connect as Fowler weaves the storylines together, blending events from the past that impact the present and future. It is a well-written and heartbreaking story that is sadly still possible in modern-day America. I felt that there was a little too much focus on Valerie's ecology work, while it is important to the story, it did drag a bit in those passages-however the rest of the story moves along at a good pace. Definitely add this to your TBR pile!

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

The topics this novel approaches are hot ones! Environmental issues, race, class - it's all in there. The plot enraged me, let me say that! However, for a novel tacking so much, it delivered. Don't expect nice characters and a happy ending tied with a bow - it's not there.

The GoodReads synopsis says the story is told from multiple points of view. I disagree. There is one narrator always making observations as "we". The multiple points of view are in fact the chapters told focusing on various characters, not all at once. The narrator's unreliable, but at the same time it has a lot of intel on characters' thoughts and feelings. It makes little sense, but the constant references to "we" and "us" and things that happened later on helped create the mystery and suspense. I liked this We narrator, despite the far-fetched omniscience it tried to show off.

The build-up of the plot is not boring, although it's lengthy. When you think things unfold calmly and quite naturally for a small town America, that's when the narrator makes an allusion to what's coming next. In the very first few pages there's a mention of a funeral and things the neighborhood would find out about only later. That's suspenseful build-up in my book. But! The ending is rushed. I keep saying this about many books, but this one was RUSHED! Looking back on it, two days post having read the novel, I think this was the point: you start out normal, nothing you don't see in real life or hear on the news, but then everything speeds up! In the last 25%/ quarter of the book everything moves so quickly. I could barely keep up. Advice: don't read this part in pieces, but read it all at once so you can fully experience the shock of it all. Because shock I felt.

The characters are true to their nature. I can't say I have favorites; they are normal, every day people, you just accept them as they are. Julia is the weakest, in my opinion, because she seems more preoccupied with keeping a small, meak life, enjoying the finally found good, carefree life. By the time she wakes up to what's been happening around her, it's too late. I need to say here that the angle with Brad having sexual thoughts towards his step daughter is the sickest thing, no matter how I look at it. I am aware this could/ did happen in real life, but I wish this wasn't the direction it took. Then again, if this hadn't happened, the novel wouldn't have existed because this is the whole catalysis.

As for the themes, as I mentioned, there's everything. It's almost laughable to see so many threads woven together: environmental issues and a problematic tree; class issues; rape and paedophilia tendencies; racism and bias. That in the end the bad guy "wins" is infuriating and at the same time you see it coming. This didn't stop me from hoping for a different, better ending. Although I read "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas, this is the first novel that made me mad! Mad at the injustice, at the poor handiling of things, at the unfair treatment of full-rights citizens of a country that brags on its fairness and liberty, at the white supremacy that's still high and mighty. As a white woman in the XXIst century, I'm mad. Unfortunately, I don't think my feelings make a difference in the lives of real people. Although this is a novel, everything it tells could very well be the reality of somene in US. And isn't that maddening?!

Despite the heavy themes and the way things unfolded, the novel is engrossing and entertaining. Not in a feel good way, obviously, but in a keep-you-interested-and-wanting-to-read-one-more-chapter way. I am glad I read this, and even gladder that it made me see things outside my comfort zone.

a complex, fast moving story of two families in a nice neighborhood. Interesting to read right after Ask Again, Yes.

This book was an amazing reflection on race relations in America right now. It uses a relatable teenage love to make you think deeply about the law, discrimination, false accusations, and feminism in a patriarchal society. The writing had me hooked until the end! The stark idealogical differences regarding race relations between the generations of adults/teens is prominent throughout. i highly recommend this book and think it will be a standout in 2020.

This is my third book by Fowler. I was not a big fan of the first book I read by her, Exposure (written under Therese Fowler) but enjoyed her last book, A Well-Behaved Woman so I didn't hesitate to give this one a try. Interestingly, this one has a lot of parallels to Exposure, with two young people falling in love over the objections of her father, objections that lead to terrible consequences.

We recently drove through older neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights. In some of these neighborhoods the location makes the property valuable enough that people will buy homes only to raze them and build new, bigger, more modern houses on the lots. I've often wondered what the people who have lived in those neighborhoods think of the new people who were too good to live in a home like the ones they have lived in for years, who build homes that don't blend into the neighborhood. So when I was looking for my final book of 2019, this one seemed like just the book for the moment.
"An upscale new house in a simple old neighborhood. A girl on a chaise beside a swimming pool, who wants to be left alone. We begin our story here, in the minutes before the small event that will change everything. A Sunday afternoon in May when our neighborhood is still maintaining its tenuous peace, a loose balance between old and new, us and them. Later this summer when the funeral takes place, the media will speculate boldly on who's to blame."
Not an insignificant part of the reason I liked this book was because Fowler has chose to have the story narrated by the neighborhood; not an individual but the collective neighborhood. It was a unique perspective that allowed the narrator to see everything happening but also be intimately involved. Fowler also seamlessly works in the history of her main characters, which is key to understanding why they act the way they do, particularly when things start to fall apart.

You know how I feel about novels where there author has tried to work in too many themes; they so often feel forced and unable to really explore every theme. In A Good Neighbor, Fowler has tackled race, religion, class, parenting, and how we live together. And it all works; nothing feels gratuitous.

For the most part, the characters are all fully developed and believable. The only exception, and it's really my only quibble with the book, is Brad Whitman. He practically rides in wearing a black hat that screams bad guy and, while Fowler gives him a background that might be meant to make us understand why he is the way he is, he never feels like anything more than "the bad guy." Which he absolutely is.

You think you know where the tension is going to come from in this book and then Fowler takes it in a new direction and really ramps things up. And then those last twenty pages just grabbed me. I'm pretty sure this one is going to bump something on my book club's list of books for the year. Maybe just so I can have them read the book club parts of the book, especially where Fowler calls the chatty part of the book club meetings as the "graze and gab" part. I loved that!

: I was honestly surprised by how much I really liked and appreciated this one. The author tackled some heavy issues; race and class to name just a couple and she did so in a really profound manner. It’s character driven and thought provoking and had an ending that while powerful and fitting, broke my heart.

A provocative and engrossing story that strikes on the topics of race, class, privilege, and the inequities of the justice system. I found this book to be all too completely relevant and painful in how accurately the author developed points that touched on race and convincing others what is truth. The characters were well developed; some of them you hated, some of them seemed naive, some you rooted for with all of your will. The story incites a myriad of feelings in the reader; and without doubt creates thought provoking situations and discussions.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A Good Neighborhood had so many layers. There was a beautiful love story. I was rooting for Xavier and Juniper from their first conversation. There were the conversations about race, environmental protection and about religious zealots. There were examples of horrible injustice and examples of good old boy networks using their leverage. There were descriptions of how to be a good parent and how to totally mess your child up for life. I don’t know which storyline will stick with me the longest but I know I will be thinking about this book for a very long time.

A Good Neighborhood is a book that brought out all of my emotions. Xavier and his mom, Valerie, live in a neighborhood that is in a transition period. People are buying homes, tearing them down, and building huge new homes on the lots. Valerie does not like change, and really does not like that her neighboring house has been destroyed and replaced by a monster-sized home with a pool. Valerie is concerned about the effect all of this building will have on the environment and existing trees, especially a beautiful oak tree in her yard. When Valerie's son and the teenaged daughter, Juniper, begin to hang out more and more, some issues arise. I really enjoyed this book. There were times where the story brought joy, heartbreak, pain, and peace. I highly recommend it, and look forward to reading more from Therese Anne Fowler!

This book crushed me (in a good way?) and if you need me, I will be in a book hangover for the foreseeable future. I loved the strong female characters and the social issues examined in this book. It’s a reflection of the times we live in.

This book was so wonderfully written, it makes you feel as though you are there in the story. The story is also so realistic, it feels as if it could happen in your very neighborhood

This novel takes place in Oak Knoll, a gentrifying neighborhood in North Carolina. The Whitmans, a white family of some renown (Brad Whitman heavily advertises his HVAC company), bought a “tear-down” and had a large house and pool constructed on the site. Neither Brad nor the builders gave a thought to the destruction of the all trees on the property, nor how it would impact trees in adjacent lots. Brad, in fact, doesn’t let much of anything get in his way when he wants something.

The Whitman’s next-door neighbor, an African-American woman with a dual Ph.D. in forestry and ecology, Valerie Alston-Holt, cared very much about the trees. The eighty-foot oak in her yard - the very reason she bought the house so many years ago - was damaged by the construction and beginning to show signs of distress.

This wasn’t the only source of tension between the two neighbors. The Whitman’s 17-year-old daughter Juniper (who had taken a “Purity Vow”) and Valerie’s 18-year-old mixed-race son Xavier were attracted to one another.

As the story progresses, the strains intensify as racism, class privilege, and sexual attraction all combine to create a horrifying denouement.

Evaluation: This is a compelling and tragic story that would be excellent for book clubs because there is so much to discuss. My only objection was the use of the first-person plural narrator (representing the other neighbors in Oak Knoll). This omniscient “we” knew all about the innermost thoughts and private moments of the members of the two families dominating the story. That seemed very unlikely.

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler hits the shelves on February 4, 2020! Run, don't walk, to pick up your copy. You will read it quicker than the time it takes to drive to Barnes and Noble. Thank you to Net Galley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book quickly topped my list for favorite new release of 2020. A cross between Backman's Beartown and Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies, this domestic suspense novel centered around an affluent neighborhood is incredibly thought provoking. The synopsis grabbed my attention when I was scouring Net Galley one evening months ago, but I did not expect it to be so gripping and suspenseful.

A Good Neighborhood follows the residents of Oak Knoll, an affluent neighborhood in North Carolina, and is narrated by a Greek chorus. Valerie and her son, Xavier, meet their new neighbors, The Whitmans, and the story slowly unfolds from there. Valerie is a professor of forestry and ecology and is passionate about the environment. Brad Whitman is a prominant business man and owns an HVAC business whose commercial advertisements have made Brad a D list celebrity in Oak Knoll. Valerie and Brad bump heads when a lawsuit is filed by Valerie against Brad for the construction of his house which is killing her precious oak tree. On top of it, Brad's step-daughter seems to be falling for Xavier. The perfect cover of the Whitman's slowly falls away, revealing underlying problems that are not always seen at the surface.

The narrative style of this book was unique and reminded me of Backman's Beartown. It was also similar in a way that there is an event that rocks this small, nosy neighborhood and every resident has something to say about it. Each chapter left me wanting more and I flew through this one quickly. A Good Neighborhood touches on class, race, and star-crossed love. The characters and their stories are probing, provocative, and suspenseful. A strong, well written new release that I am honored to have read. A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler is my first five star read of 2020. If this is how my reading game will be this year, I will be one lucky bookworm, because I am off to a strong start!

If you are a fan of Beartown and Big Little Lies, I am sure you will enjoy this one as well. Pick up your copy on 2/4/2020!

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It's a fast-paced and engrossing novel, but it's a difficult one to read. I had a sense of dread almost immediately, and while this is an appropriate reaction to the unfolding plot, it makes for a stomach-churning experience. I can't say any more without spoiling the book, but know that this book will make you uncomfortable and angry. Definitely worthy of discussion and processing.

Imagine your neighbour, a much older amiable woman, popping into your kitchen for a cup of tea per usual, chatting the boring summer hours away, going about everything near and far. Then suddenly a tree stump in your yard reminds her of the tree that once stood there but was cut down way before you moved into the neighbourhood. And just like the tree stump recalls the image of the tree, the tree itself recalls the family that used to tend to it and a string of reminiscences starts to unspool.

This is exactly how the book felt. Told from the viewpoint of one of the residences of Oak Knoll, the narrator bears witness to the story of the Aston-Holt family, an ecologically-conscious middle-class biracial family, and their neighbours, the Whitmans, a much more privileged white family. Predictably, clashes arise where issues of race, environmentalism, social justice are at the root. We find that the "Good Neighbourhood" is nothing more but today's America.

The story is poignant and heart-wrenching. The only scruple I had was that sometimes the narrator shifted gears from telling a story to social commentary. I am not trying to make light of any of the issues discussed; I am simply criticizing the technique. I wanted the characters to be involved more rather than hearing the "Good Neighbour's" opinions. There were parts when I felt the narrative was bogged down by the commentary that was more fitting to a non-fiction project rather than the middle of a story. Nevertheless, the book's message remains clear and timely. Combining the issues of environmentalism and racism was smart and original.

Many thanks for NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

Quickly I realized this book is not for me.I had a really tough time following this story. I did not connect with the characters and I didn’t care for the third party narratives throughout. It’s my first DNF book of 2020. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this complimentary book. All opinions expressed are my own.