I finished this but I really couldn't get into it. The women all seemed the same personality wise so it was really difficult to keep them separate and remember which backstory went to which person, who their kids were and how they were related. This is not a problem I normally have. Not much even happened in the book, I kept waiting for the main story to begin and it never really took off. A vandal? Who cares?

When it comes to suburban neighborhood secrets and drama, this book totally hit the mark in the genre! The book takes place in Cottonwood and focuses primarily on to women and their families: Jen, who is managing son Abe Who recently had a violent outburst: and Annie, living a theoretically picture perfect life and who decides to befriend the neighborhood recluse and former woman about town, Lena. At first it seems like the plot is going to focus on Jenn and Abe, but the more we get to know the women of the neighborhood and the more Lena comes out of her shell, the more intertwined the women’s current and past histories are revealed.

The plot itself was a pretty slow burn, but once you hit 3/4 into the book it was impossible to put it down. The anticipation was heightened because as the book progressed, the chapters got shorter and shorter and we were only privy to small snippets of conversations rather than entire scenes.

I thought this book was so great and my only complaint was that there were many many supplemental characters who were very difficult to keep track of because we learned very little about each of them. I highly recommend this book! Thank you to Net Galley for providing me with a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I am not really a thriller reader, but I had heard a lot of buzz around The Neighbor’s Secret, so I decided to give it a try. I’m so glad I did! The plot revolves around a group of women who are part of a book club where they read suspense and mystery books. Then weird things start happening to the women in the club. Once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended, especially to readers who love suspense.

A light hearted murder mystery embedded in a busy neighborhood setting, I devoured this book!
This book was full of dark comedy, with lots of dark secrets.
Very enjoyable and a great read!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Flatiron Books for an advanced copy of this psychological suburban thriller.

Cottonwoods Estates is the perfect place to live, love, raise a family, join a book club and keep your secrets, secrets never to be shared. The Neighbor's Secret by L. Alison Heller is a thriller featuring the perfect place to live, with the perfect lives and the darkness that encompasses this eden and the lengths that people will go to keep their perfect facade.

The book has a good flow that doesn't bog down. The characters are well not diverse, but have quirks and foibles that give them a individuality on the page. The writing reflects this and is an ideal sort of beach read, or by the fire on a cold winter's day.

The book club in the novel is the make or break for a reader's enjoyment. From the titles chosen, to the theme food and decorations and the lengths that are gone to to make these events. Some readers will be smitten and wonder where has this wonderful book club been all my life. Others will go I'm so glad this is fiction, no one would so something like this.

This book is for fans of Liane Moriarty, Lisa Jewel and other authors who write of bad things in exclusive communities. There has been a lot of drama in the suburbs recently. but this one is enjoyable.

Three women in the luxurious neighborhood of Cottonwood Estates. Three women with secrets. How well do YOU know your neighbors?

Here we go again with another "drama in the suburbs". I'll be honest, this has been done to death by now and the market is just currently saturated. If you love these types of books (aka if you like Liane Moriarty, Shari Lapena, etc), you'll love this. But if you're looking for something new and interesting, hard pass. I mean, it was fine. But there are better books I could have been reading.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed this book, but if you are someone who doesn’t enjoy a ton going on in books, then this might not be for you. I liked the drama and mystery, but there were a lot of unlikable characters and povs. While this didn’t blow me away by any means, it was still a decent book.

Despite two homicides, I felt this was “light reading”… and that is not a criticism. I found the book to be entertaining. Perhaps it was the ladies of the book club who were presented with humor, yet quite realistic!

There are a couple of secrets to unravel here and as one reads there are hints of some impending catastrophe and one from the past is slowly revealed as well. A fast, well paced read.

I LOVED this book. I loved the neighborhood wives with secrets vibe. I enjoyed the book club aspect of it. I feel like everyone has met characters like these and they felt like they could be my own friends. The story was interesting and had some great twists. Completely engaging! Looking forward to more works from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron books for access to this ARC.

I was excited when I was ARC approved after skipping this book during BOTM. I enjoyed this. This was a slooooow burn, which usually is not my favorite. This story had a lot of characters in it, sometimes hard to keep track. I did not really have any attachments to any of the characters. Nonetheless, It was a nice read!

I thought the relationship between Lena and Annie was weird as hell especially as you get to the ending of the book. The revelation completely ruined my opinion of (no spoilers so) one of the women. It seemed creepy and damn near stalkerish. I did enjoy this fast paced read though. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was pleasantly surprised by this salacious thriller! I had trouble putting it down.

I loved how it started out with an unidentified narrator saying something crazy just happened... it kept me interested the whole way through. I was especially interested in Jen's storyline and her fear that she might be raising a sociopath. That was really different.

I knew something was up with the hit and run accident, and it was a great twist. I'm really happy to have read this book. What a great thriller to kick off spooky season!

Bummer. Is it because none of the characters were likeable - or perhaps because the multiple POV’s seemed muddled and needlessly sporadic - or maybe because the plot tried to be clever but fell short into trying to hard to be clever and twisty? Who knows. I had high hopes and this left me checking how many more pages were left in each chapter to see how much more there was to read - never a good sign. Clever premise with how each section starts with a book club selection - but what a bummer because that was my favorite parts of this novel - to see what they were reading every month. Thanks to Flatiron for the advanced copy. This one was a miss but I’m so grateful for the opportunity to read and review it.

The Neighbor's Secrets follows three women and the Cottonwood Bookclub where you discover early on that everyone has a secret that some are hiding better than others. This book reminded me so much of Big Little Lies but also Liane Moriarty! The reason I ended up rating it lower is that I found the third-person point of view to not work at some points of the story. Learning the secrets through the first-person narration for me always adds to the shock of the discovery of new information since you feel like you are learning that with the character. I definitely missed that at points in the book. Overall I thought it was a good read and will be interested in reading more by this author!

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

I haven't read a 5 star book in a while. I am super glad I picked up this one!

The Cottonwood Book Club meets once a month, with some really fun sounding themes. They are the mothers of the Cottonwood neighborhood, all with their own little secrets. Annie decides to befriend Lena, the rich woman in the biggest house. Lena was a big fixture in the neighborhood before a tragedy struck years before. This tragedy has had repercussions for a few of the neighbors. (It really is The Neighbors' Secrets) As they navigate motherhood, vandalism, secrets, teenagers, things unravel and we learn all the secrets.

I loved this book. I loved how it slowly unfolded and we got bits and pieces to make us wonder just what happened all those years ago and just what in the world was happening now. Then there was the humor! I laughed out loud a few times. The main characters of Lena, Annie and Jen were all thoughtfully written and so honest and real. I think they were every mother, all protective in their own ways. What won't a mother do for her children?

I am definitely going to look up her other books now!

Thanks to Netgalley and Flatiron for an advance copy of this book.

Cottonwood Estates is the place you want to live and raise a family in. Good schools, low crime - and wonderful neighbors. That's the setting for L. Alison Heller's newest novel, The Neighbor's Secret. I love this premise - it provides a wide open palette for the author's imagination.

The Cottonwood Book Club officially meets once a month, but they've got numerous email chains on the go, keeping a close eye on their neighborhood. The monthly book club email reminder is priceless - quite witty. I quite enjoyed them. (And truth be told - it's a club I would join in a heartbeat)

There's a slew of club members, but the book focuses on three of them. Lena is an older long time resident of Cottonwood. She has closeted herself in her home, but is convinced to join the club. There's an undisclosed secret in her past, one she skirts around. And that only whetted my appetite for finding out what it was. Annie too has a secret she's tucked away. But her focus is on her teenaged daughter Laurel - her behaviour has become worrisome over the last few months. And last is Jen. Her son Abe is troubled, more than she lets on or acknowledges. A vandal is now targeting Cottonwood and scandals are simmering.

Short flashbacks from the past gives the reader more of an idea how the present has been impacted. Heller does a great job of eking out bits of the secrets, dropping hints and clues that left me thinking I had figured out Lena's past. I'm happy to say that I was not completely right about the final reveals. I'm always glad when I can't predict endings.

The suspense was not as high as I had expected going in. Yes, there is some, but the focus is more on the relationships between mothers and children, wives and husbands, friends and acquaintances.

The Neighbor's Secret is a well written, slow burning tale that will ask you - how far would you go to protect the ones you love?

The Neighbor's Secret by L. Alison Heller is a tense novel following a group of women in the same book club that live in the suburb of Cottonwood Estates. The book circles the women as they deal with the daily struggles of parenting to more sinister events, and how these women put up facades when at book club. However, tensions rise when a vandal starts escalating in violence and begins targeting some of the women in the book club. And when a new addition to the book club is added, secrets begin to be revealed.

I was immediately intrigued by this book's premise and suburb women behaving badly is like popcorn to me. Initially, I was expecting something that was closer to a thriller, however I want to warn any reader's this is NOT a thriller. Instead, it is a taut novel exploring the tense relationships between these women and their families, and the secrets each woman carries. I thought that although this book was tense throughout, it was consistent that it didn't quite grip me in the way I expected. I always found some parts repetitive as similar situations kept repeating, especially with the character Jen and her thoughts about her troubled son Abe. However, the plot did leave little hints throughout the book that keeps the reader curious to keep reading.

I enjoyed being able to see the perspectives from multiple characters and to see how they read the other women in the group. However, I think it would have helped the book to reduce some of the extraneous perspectives that happened in the beginning. I found the ending interesting and I think it made sense why the women remained silent about certain secrets, but I did find the pacing a bit fast. Regardless, this was a fun novel with complicated characters that kept you turning the pages!

Many thanks to the publisher Flatiron Books and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

While I really liked this book, I really wanted to love it. It starts out with a mystery and a body. We really don’t know much more than that. But then it switches to more of a neighborhood drama. Everyone in the neighborhood book club is keeping a secret. This book is compared to Big Little Lies and the big difference to me is that this one reads more like a women’s fiction book and the suspense is secondary and really missing the tension.

But I did enjoy the story, but wish it was more heavy on the suspense/tension. I’d recommend this to anyone that loves women’s fiction with a mystery.

This one has more twists than, well, a pretzel! So many many secrets in Cottonwood, a high end enclave in Colorado, some of them toxic, some of them deadly. Jen's son Abe is troubled to say the least. Annie seems to have a happy life with her daughter Laurel, son Hank, and husband Mike but she's dealt with darkness. Lena's locked herself away in her beautiful home, estranged from her daughter Rachel since the death of her husband Tim. Then there are the others in the book club-Janine, Harriet, Priya, and so on. And Nan, the principal of Abe's new school. This takes place over the course of a year- the year that Laurel will graduate middle school- and comes to a crescendo at party hosted by Lena. So hard to review but trust that every time you think you know the secret, there's something else ahead. I went into this thinking with middling expectations and finished it with a wow. It's a fast paced and well done domestic thriller. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Great read.

First off, I want to talk about that beautiful cover!! It's gorgeous!

I was so excited by the premise of this one and couldn't wait to dive in when my request was approved.

Unfortunately, I found myself on the outlier island again with this one and didn't really live up to my expectations.

There is a whole lot going on in this novel. So many characters, family drama, multiple point of views, and random flashbacks that just make it overly confusing. I really found myself struggling to keep track of the timeline. I was invested in any of the characters.

The ending definitely seemed rushed and that twist at the end just didn't do it for me. This one had so much potential but it felt extremely flat to me.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend this one.

2/5 stars

Thank you so much to Flatirion Publishing and Netgalley for my car in exchange for an honest review.

Pub date: 10/5/21
Published to GR: 10/3/21