What a crazy ride of a thriller! Multiple time lines, a murder mystery, an unreliable witness to the events of thirty years ago, make this a great thriller! Saffy and Tom are gifted a cottage that originally belonged to Saffy's grandmother who now has alzheimers. When they are renovated 2 bodies are found! What happened to these two people? Can Rose remember with her alzheimers? I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

A digital ARC of this book was provided to me by NetGalley, Harper Perennial and Paperbacks and Harper Paperbacks. The opinions are my own and freely given.

Secrets, identities, long lost relatives and unprofessional practices are all wrapped up in this story.

The very beginning. Saffy is out in her garden while construction is being done to rebuild her kitchen when suddenly the builders come to say that they found what appears to be a skeleton buried in the back yard. This starts Saffy, the police and her mother looking into the history of the cottage, which was owned by Rose, who now has dementia.

Told from Saffy's POV and her mother Lorna in present day and flipping to Rose, (grandmother and mother respectively) writing a letter to her daughter, Lorna in 1980 when a new tenant, Daphne, comes to live with them.

There are a lot of characters/names thrown into this book. Mainly by Rose, and Saffy takes it as ramblings from the dementia, but are they real people that Rose once knew?

There is also Theo. Theo is a chef and the son of a doctor. The doctor is in his 70's and doesn't seem to have a tender bone in his body. Very stern and cranky. But what part does Theo play in all this? He's closer to Saffy's age and has never been to Beggars Nook.

This is a very intricately woven story of 2 woman spanning decades that intertwine with their 2nd and 3rd generations. Not so much a thriller, but I would highly recommend.

I got a digital ARC from NetGalley. Thank you so much!

My rating is 3.75 ⭐️

When I began this book, I thought I would love it. I usually like multiple POVs and short chapters. The story seemed interesting throughout but I felt like it kept switching between timelines and introducing too many new characters at once. At times, I felt confused and I had to go back and read something again because another name was mentioned and it was had to keep track.

Towards the end, the book really picked up though! My favourite part was the ending. It was truly shocking and unexpected!

Wow this book was so good! Not sure what I liked the most since I liked pretty much everything about this book. I loved the characters, multiple POVs and timelines, storyline, dialog, mystery and overall it was very entertaining.

Saffy and her boyfriend Tom find a couple of bodies buried in their backyard and they find out that they have been there for 40 years. They are told that is the same time that her grandmother Rose owned the property. Now they have try to figure out who they are, why they were killed and buried there.

This book kept me entertained the whole time and I had a hard time putting it down. I will definitely be reading more of Claire Douglas's books.

Thanks Netgalley and publisher for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you so much @harperperennial and @netgalley for the digital ARC

Judging by the Goodreads reviews I am in the minority on this one. I liked the overall story; but found it to be a little too slow and lacking any real tension. I figured out the ending pretty early on too, though there was one small surprise, which I didn’t think really added anything to the story other than extra characters. Maybe my expectations were too high because I really loved Just Like the Other Girls by this author. Read this if you enjoy slow burn mysteries.

“THE TROUBLE WITH LOVE IS THAT IT BLINDS YOU.”

It was the house of their dreams, until the bodies were found. When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with her boyfriend Tom, the last thing she expects is two bodies unearthed during housing renovations. When her grandmother Rose, who suffers from dementia, is questioned by police in her care home, secrets long since buried begin to surface. Secrets held tight for over thirty years.

I may or may not have gotten whiplash from the speed at which the twists were thrown into this story. 🥴 It took me a fair amount of time to get into it but wow, once I did there was no turning back.

The audio was good, with dual narrators which I always enjoy. The male narrator for Theo had such a strong accent that I had a really hard time understanding him. I had to really slow the audio down to even follow along, and I found myself just reading his parts unfortunately.

𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘰𝘵𝘦: “The sea, as much as she loves it, has always terrified her. It’s like a mighty beast, and you never know what mood it’s going to be in. It deserves respect.”

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Perennial and Paperbacks, Harper Audio, and the author for the ARC and ALC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you net galley.
This has to be one of the best suspenceful books that I have read in a while. It had everything I could ask for in a book - romance, suspence.
This is a story about 3 women (grsndmother, mother, daughter). Rose is the grandmother and she is in a care home. Saffron is the granddaughter who visits Rose every week. Lorna is Rose's daughter who lives in Spain.
Saffron has inherited a cottage on Skeleton Place. Saffron and her boyfriend Tom have moved in and start to do renovations. The work crew are digging the backyard and soon come across bones. The police get involved and start their investigation of who the bones belong to.
Rose memory starts to resurface of the 'crime' as Saffron starts to dig deeper into her grandmother's life.
Are the people who we love are actually who they say they are???
Read this book. Yes, there were allmkinds of twists which is what made me keep on reading .

The Couple at Number 9 was a very satisfying puzzle mystery with multiple points of view and alternating timelines. A granddaughter uncovers human remains at a cottage she inherited from her grandmother who has moved into a nursing home. The police begin an investigation and when it becomes clear that the bodies were buried when her grandmother lived in the house, Saffy starts to ask questions of her own. Her grandmother’s advancing dementia doesn’t help with putting the pieces together, but clues are revealed slowly, then increasingly quickly in the present timeline as the book goes on. We also see the events leading up to the burials through the grandmother’s eyes in the form of a letter to her daughter, Saffy’s somewhat estranged mother.

The family relationships are well written and believable, as is the mystery. The plot is fairly complex, but the short chapters and repetition from multiple points of view made it easy to follow along. There were quite a few surprising twists throughout the story that kept it interesting all the way through. I highly recommend The Couple at Number 9 to any fan of puzzle mysteries!

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for proving an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

H
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I don't even have WORDS for this book. I was addicted from the very start. We have a multi POV book, in which we're getting the story from multiple perspectives. I was frantically turning pages to find out what happened because I was STUNNED. When I got to the end I had to sit and think for a few minutes. My brain was going WHAT over and over and over again.

This book is mind bending in the best of ways. I loved how we get pieces of the story and the plot that link together through the different characters, and as they draw closer to the answers, the tension gets amped up. Douglas did this well -- she drove the story forward in a way that made sense and was interesting enough without being too complicated.

I really enjoyed the writing in this, and was FASCINATED with the mystery aspect. In a few moments we get a bit of back and forth between past and present, and it was brilliant. Honestly, I can't even believe this book. Definitely one of the best mystery books that I have read recently. It kept me on my toes and guessing. It also made me remember how much I enjoy a good mystery book.

I still don't know what else to say -- it's hard to when you don't want to give away the different plot points. This book is best read going into it blind.

Wow, twisty thriller. This story definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. This thriller is full of gripping scenes that leave you anxious and tense. Definitely recommend

Main Characters:
-- Saffron (Saffy) – 24 years old, 14 weeks pregnant, living with her boyfriend Tom in the cottage her grandmother used to own
-- Lorna – almost 41 years old, had Saffy at 16, was a bit of a wild child when she was a teenager, moved to Spain shortly after Saffy met Tom
-- Rose – 75 years old, living in a full-time care home suffering from Alzheimer’s, has increasingly fewer lucid days and begins to talk about things from her past that don’t make sense to the people around her
-- Theo – 33 years old, head chef at a nearby restaurant, married to Jen and trying to start a family, does not get along with his father, his mother died 14 years ago from a fall down the stairs

I was sooooooo close to figuring this out. Literally one piece that I missed. The author does such a great job of offering up a number of possibilities. Coupled with the fact that the person with the answers (Rose) is unreliable because of Alzheimer’s, the twists and turns make for an amazing thriller.

Saffy and Tom live in her grandmother’s former cottage, which Rose gifted to her daughter Lorna 10 years prior. Lorna doesn’t remember living in the cottage. Having always been a bit unsettled in life, she has been living in Spain but returns home when two bodies are found buried in the garden. Immersed in a hometown she doesn’t remember, Lorna experiences flashes of memories and tries to piece them together with her mother’s ramblings.

Theo is an unknown at the beginning of the book, having no real connection with the others that we’re aware of as readers. About midway through Part Two, there’s an “ah ha” moment, and as the story progresses, of course, we find out the complete connection.

Narration of the story alternates between Saffy (first-person), Lorna (third-person), and Theo (third-person) in the current day, supplemented by first-person accounts from Rose 30 years prior. What drives this story forward, in part, is the lack of reliability of Rose’s memories. And that’s what makes it so hard to figure out.

The notes I made while devouring the story touched on all but one piece, as I said. I was right on the cusp of figuring it out…and that’s what I loved about it. Pick this one up. You won’t be disappointed.

Another great and thrilling read from Claire Douglas. She knows how to ratchet up the suspense and keep you turning the pages. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a pulse pounding suspenseful read.

This is an absolute thrill ride of twists and turns. The multiple POVs are so fun to switch between and perfectly executed characters. Fans of Alex Finlay and Charlie Donlea will inevitably love this twisty crime thriller.

The synopsis sounded very interesting, but this book was not for me. The story is well-written, but it was a boring slow burn and I did not enjoy it.

Imagine finding out that there are skeletons buried in your backyard! What a shock! When Saffy and her husband decide to have some work done in the yard, the workers discover bones, and this discovery leads to Saffy and her mom finding out about soooo many secrets in their family! This was a good suspenseful story! I’m thankful to netgalley for my copy of the book. All opinions are honest and my own!

Promising synopsis and a strong start (finding skeletons in the garden is always exciting in a bad way), but I started losing interest over time. I wish it had been trimmed a bit to keep the sense of urgency going. This was my first book by Douglas, and I'd be interested in reading her other work because there were a lot of things to like about this one, even if I didn't love-love it.

Thank you to Harper Perrenial for a gifted ebook copy of The Couple at Number 9; I appreciate the chance to review a new to me author. This was a solid strong like as a mystery/thriller once I got into the pacing and style of the author. Those looking for a fast paced thriller won't find it here but there is a well developed plot and examination of the power of memory and trusting memory and secrets that come back to haunt. The pace was overall a bit too slow for me at times but that is me as a reader, it does not mean the writing was poor (it is not!) and the characters and plot were overall well developed and engaging. Indeed, the plot does have well executed twists and held my attention because of the timing of twists and plot development. Overall, this mystery for me felt more soapy and dramatic than suspenseful at times with twists and turns and character development but it did make for an entertaining mystery, a nice addition to summer reading.

I recommend this for mystery fans and readers who enjoy a book that has miniseries vibes. I appreciate the chance to support this book.

The Couple a Number 9 starts off slow... a bit rambling, a bit too involved in the lives of its characters without seeming to get anywhere. But stay with the book for about a third of the way through and the twists start coming one after another, keeping you utterly hooked. And then you figure out the extensive deep dive into the characters... because you can't understand what happened 30 years back without understanding how it shaped these people today. And you will never guess the end — even if you think you have it a number of times, the end is enthralling in the turn it takes. Definitely a page turner!

4 stars

You've heard of skeletons in your closet, but what about skeletons in your garden?

So begins The Couple at Number 9, a delightfully twisty mystery set in a small English village where long-held secrets are finally coming to light. Told through 3 different perspectives and two separate timelines, we discover along with our characters how the two bodies ended up at Number 9 Skelton Place and how the murders ripple through 3 generations of the same family.

I've made no secret about the fact that thrillers and mysteries have been hit or miss for me lately, but there is just something about the British mysteries I have been reading that has just made my heart so happy. This book, in particular, does a wonderful job of keeping the action moving, the reveals fresh, and the character relationships dynamic. I frequently found myself wanting to drop what I was doing and get back to reading this book and isn't that really the best endorsement you can get? I think so.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Paperbacks for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

I really liked this! It has that small English village cozy mystery vibe, with family secrets and a plot that keeps you reading. Definitely a page-turner that I enjoyed.