This was actually a really fun thriller. I enjoyed getting to know the neighborhood - although it was a little difficult at first to keep all the characters straight. I felt like some of the drama could be happening in my neighborhood - although hopefully not the murder! We didn't know who got murdered until the end of the book so it was really fun guessing about what happened and to who. This would make a great summer read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy. 4.5 rounded up.

Damaging Secrets, a desire for revenge, and dysfunctional people give rise to murder. The story is told mainly from Alex and her seventeen year old daughter Lettie’s point of view. Alex is the glue that keeps the neighbors together but spends too much time with her wine glass. Her daughter Lettie quickly learns that revenge is a two-edged sword. All the neighbors have a piece of the puzzle but it doesn’t all come together until a suspenseful end. I received a free copy of this ebook from the publisher through Netgalley. This is my honest and voluntarily given review. I really like seeing the story evolve and seeing how all the pieces come together. I will keep my eye out for more books by this author.

The Alton Road neighborhood is known in the surrounding areas for its wealth, arrogance, and the annual Memorial Day Block Party. This year, however, the block party takes a turn for the worse!

The Block Party is told from the perspectives of a mother, Alex, and her daughter, Lettie. It is quickly evident that everyone on Alton Road has secrets, ill intentions, and a taste for revenge. The main characters are determined to discover everyone’s hidden secrets.

I found this novel to quite interesting especially as it picked up pace in the last third of the story. The reveal of the characters’ motives, actions, and backgrounds was well done and I was eager to learn the conclusion of the story. I only had ish the beginning of the novel moved as a quicker pace.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the complimentary copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

🌟Review: The Block Party by Jamie Day🌟

The Block Party is set in an affluential neighborhood that celebrates every Memorial Day by having a block party. They have known each other for the longest time and then enter a new family. The new neighbors have secrets, and this causes a major upheaval in the neighborhood. But are they the only one with secrets?

A domestic suspense, this novel is medium paced and kept my interest till the end. There are several characters and several storylines intersecting with each other. The end ties everything well. I am not sure if I have any favorite characters as such, but at the same time, I like jaded characters that this novel portrays.

There are a lot of issues that this book takes a dive into. Secrets have a nasty way of exploding and especially if everyone wants to know everyone's business.

Thank you St.Martin's Press and Netgalley, for this book.

CW: Grief, loss of children, Miscarriage, rape, domestic violence, addiction, me too movement, attempted suicide

The Block Party
By Jamie Day
First of all- I LOVE this cover!! It definitely drew me in and screams domestic summer drama. Thank you so very much to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for the gifted arcs and the chance to read an early copy of a 2023 summer blockbuster!!
Out TODAY- July 18, 2023
Synopsis-
This summer, meet your neighbors. The residents of the exclusive cul-de-sac on Alton Road are entangled in a web of secrets and scandal utterly unknown to the outside world, and even to each other. On the night of the annual Summer block party, the neighbors hear gunshots ring out.
Alternating between different points of view, we go back a year leading up to the block party and find out why a murder between neighbors becomes possible.
Everyone's secrets are laid bare and there are plenty of plots twists to keep the reader entertained.
I loved the idea of this book: upity suburban neighborhood, the annual Memorial Day cookout, secretive neighbors, a unexpected murder... a suspenseful who-dun-it!
Unfortunately it fell a little flat for me. I found the characters a bit dull, the pace of the story slow, and the mysteries just not that mysterious.
BUT i believe I'm in the minority, and I have seen lots of great reviews! Definitely give this one a try if you love domestic drama and summer thrillers!!

This book had me invested from the beginning and certainly kept me guessing. There's a lot going on at the Alton Road block party. Several characters and many interweaving plot points.

The POV switches between Alex, the organizer of the block party, and her daughter Lettie. It also starts off in the present at the block party, but then goes back to the events of the year leading up to it. With little snippets of the present mixed in.

Most of the characters were pretty unlikable, but I think that's what makes these types of domestic suspense thrillers so tantalizing. This one most definitely had me hooked all the way through.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The Block Party tells the fascinating story of a picture perfect neighborhood that proves the adage that looks can be deceiving. Author Jamie Day tells her story from multiple points of view and her characters are very intriguing. Alex and her college bound daughter Lettie are at the core of the plot and they become involved in many surprising neighborhood conflicts. This novel is filled with entertaining twists and turns . The Block Party will definitely hold your attention and arouse your suspicions about your own neighbors !

I wanted to like this book as I love family drama. It was just too much for me. Too many characters with too many issues, none of which were developed enough to make them come off the page as someone about whom I cared. The Block Party focuses on a row of expensive homes in a tony suburban neighborhood. Interspersed in the story were internet posts about the neighbors written by others who lived in smaller homes. It was a little much, but that is what NextDoor is really like.

The list of characters and issues : There is a brooding teenager, a possibly abusive newcomer, his possibly abused wife and their bad-boy son, a couple of cheaters, a gun toting moron frat-bro husband, a widow on only fans whose rich husband fell off the side of a ship, a mean teen who is abusing drugs and sleeping with a married man, a few busybodies and a salesman selling pest services who is called Bug Man. Bug Man makes some of the rich people very angry and is purpose in the book???? I’m still shaking my head.

I rounded this review up!

How well do you think you know your neighbors? Probably not nearly as well as you think. That’s especially true of the people of Alton Road. You see everyone has secrets, but secrets don’t remain buried forever. The Block Party is a wickedly entertaining domestic thriller that hooked me from start to finish. This will make a great summer beach read. Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for access to an eARC of Jamie Day’s The Block Party.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-block-party-jamie-day/1141976615?ean=9781250283191&bvnotificationId=4628f84d-25f1-11ee-a167-12d9c98a7193&bvmessageType=REVIEW_APPROVED&bvrecipientDomain=gmail.com#review/253323865

See, this is why I don’t go out.

Thriller, domestic suspense, dual timelines. This cul de sac pretty much has it in for everyone but it dragged on a little for me. I had a tough time with Lettie, the high schooler and even tougher time with her Mom Alex, slowly succumbing to her alcoholism. And throw in a murder for good measure.

Block Party is a solid domestic drama debut from Jamie Day - and it is definitely a good pick for a summer read!

The upscale homes on Alton Road look perfect from the outside - but inside, each family hides secrets and lies that will impact the entire neighborhood… eventually resulting in a murder at the annual neighborhood block party. The book chronicles the events of the year leading up to the murder, and is told from the perspective of Alex (3rd person POV) and her daughter Lettie (1st person POV) as they slowly begin to unravel the secrets that their neighbors are keeping - while trying to keep their own hidden.

This book started off very slowly for me - I actually put it down and returned to it a few weeks later. But once I hit the 40% mark, I felt really invested in the characters and I couldn’t wait to find out what happened to them. This is more of a character-driven drama than a thriller, so there weren’t really any twists but there were definitely certain elements of the plot that I didn’t guess while reading them. It was really unique how the book was told from both an adult and a YA perspective - it took a bit to get used to the switch in POV but I ended up really liking it.

My favorite element of the book was the super fun commentary provided by glimpses of the town Facebook group/message board - it made me laugh because the posts were exactly what I feel like I experience in my own town’s page on a regular basis!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the ARC!

You know that book about the close neighborhood where everyone is besties with everyone around them even though they have so many secrets they barely know each other. Sure. You know it. Their kids are weirdly all connected even though they don’t like each other much. Their all sterotypes like the end of The Breakfast Club. And one of the moms general drinks wine like a marathon runner drinking water. You know it. This is it. Again.

There are no likeable characters here. The story is OK. There are some final scenes that bring the whole story together. It’s light summer murder reading. Which is so weird to say. But you’ve read this book. You know.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/ 5 Stars

Happy Pub Date to Jamie Day and The Block Party! Thank you to St, Martin’s Press, NetGalley, and Jamie Day for allowing me to read an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) for an honest review!

I’ve been looking for a good thriller that keeps me both engaged and guessing until the very end. And boy, did Jamie Day deliver by providing me with the debut novel I didn’t know I needed! I suggest reading this book soon because I have no doubt that it will be picked up and made into a series. You’ll want to be ahead of the producers. Plus, we all know that the book is better than the show/movie!

I’m so thankful 🤗 that I was able to complete this book 📖 as a Buddy Read with friend, Raven, who was also approved for this ARC.

The Alton Road annual Memorial Day Block Party started with a bang 💥….two to be exact. Neighbors from nearby streets immediately hop on the neighborhood’s electronic distribution list and start asking questions and making assumptions. Cops 👮‍♀️ arrive to manage the crime scene and begin investigations. The storyline travels back in time and brings you to modern day so that you can help determine “whodunnit” and why.

Day’s writing is superb and character development is on point. She has you believing that every neighbor on Alton Road knows something about one neighbor while having it out for another. She keeps you guessing all throughout. The women in the book are flawed but genuine and strong. They are simply humans struggling with their emotions, justice, and their conscience. Will the neighbors of Alton Road make it out alive? That’s for me to know and you to find out!

Themes:
🍷 Dependency on alcohol
🔍 Stalking
⚠️ Sexual Assault and Misconduct
💔 Broken Relationships
😈 Revenge Plots
💰 Blackmail
🤫 Secrets
💊 Mental Health
🧬 DNA Results
🦂 Betrayal
💭 Multiple POV

I enjoyed this book a lot!

This book reminded me of Such A Quiet Place at times. They both feature a party as a major plot point and utilize a neighborhood chat board.

There is tons of neighborhood drama and some twists that kept me on my toes.

The timelines could have been defined a little more concretely. There were times that I wasn’t sure if I was reading in the past or the present because the block party was an annual thing.

I also kept getting a couple of male characters confused with each other for quite awhile. They were very central to the plot, but I didn’t feel like we saw enough of them to solidify who they were to the story. Or maybe I was just not paying close enough attention.

There were some parts of the story that I didn’t personally love, but I did think that it all came together well in the end. Check TW/CW because some content could be heavy at times.

This cul-de sac neighborhood's block parties are everything and more! Throw is murder, secrets, lies, abuse, drugs, alcohol and more and mayhem ensues and now you have a party worthy enough to have a community blog write about it and it's residents. While I found this book to be slow and drawn out in parts it was still full of twists and turns that made you want to read faster.
Thank you to Netgalley, St Martins press and the Author Jamie Day for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review .

The residents who live on Alton Road hold an annual block party every summer. The entire block turns out, and it is a huge bash. This year it will definitely be one to remember, because on top of the fun, and the usual drama that goes on, something else happens... someone gets murdered.

The story is told in alternating chapters between one year before, and the day of the block party, as well as feeds from the local online gossip app. First. let me say that the gossip feeds were hilarious. You could have changed the names and the topic and the sniping on there would have sounded just like the local Nextdoor feed that I refuse to read the comments for. Then there were the residents of Alton Road. .You know they say you never truly know what goes on behind closed doors. Every single house on Alton Road had at least one (and most had more than one) secret that it was harboring......and boy were those secrets juicy. This book would make the perfect beach or pool day read. Have a nice tall glass of something cool to drink by your side and you will be set, because once you crack this book open, and start delving into everyone's secret lives, you aren't going to want to put it down. I guarantee it.

Secrets and treachery surround the seemingly happy residents of Alton Road. A shocking murder the night of the annual block party brings everything to light.

The Block Party is a stand-alone thriller. This suspenseful novel will have readers second guessing throughout with all of its wild twists.

I liked the author’s use of the neighborhood chat to break up the drama and to add background information on the residents. Each of the households has such a unique side story. I was invested from the very first page.

If you’re in the mood for a murder mystery and looking for something with a summery vibe, The Block Party may be just right for you. I will definitely be looking for more books from Jamie Day in the future.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press!

The perfect summer read! A twisty, fast paced thriller that grabs your attention from the start until that surprise ending!!

Drama, drama, and more drama!! And I was here for it all!! It’s that one block party you wish you weren’t invited to but could watch everything as it was all unfolding behind the scenes kind of view. The conclusion of this debut book was great! I can’t wait to see what this author does next! The audiobook was engaging and truly brought all these moving pieces together!

Thank you to NetGalley, St Martin Press and MacMillan Audio for an ARC & ALC in exchange for my honest review!

What a wild ride this book took me on! It had a lot of interesting characters and I really got sucked into the neighborhood drama of it all. I loved the ending, it was a great complete circle and I had NO clue what was going to happen. Bravo.

Happy publication date 7/18/2023 ! Thanks Netgalley , author Jaime Day and St.Martin’s Press for sharing the ARC.
Engaging debut novel, i would classify this more as domestic drama with twists and reveals instead of a thriller . It’s all about Messed up family dynamics, teenage drama , all living in the same street on a upscale neighborhood offering drama and gossips galore . Narrates from mother and her teenage daughters perspective the story goes back and forth between an event that transpires on Memorial Day to all the way a year before which explains what lead to the present moment.
If you likes shows like Desperate Housewives or books like Little Fires Everywhere this would be a perfect pick for you . Do not go into this expecting it to be a suspense thriller , while there are certainly elements of twists and reveals its party of story telling that you’ve got to go through in the entirety.
It’s a 3.75 / 5 star read for me .