**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Jamie Day for an ARC of this book!**

Neighbor (noun): A person in relation to his fellow-men, regarded as having social and moral duties toward them. (The Century Dictionary)

Though there are MANY definitions of the word neighbor, when it comes to THIS block and social and moral obligations?

Let's just say...they're in SHORT supply!

Alton Lane is a neighborhood full of deep pockets and deeper secrets, and the adjoining neighborhoods have no trouble calling them out online for their scandalous and sometimes snooty behavior. But when a MURDER takes place after one Memorial Day block party, all of the gossip is for once well-deserved...and NOBODY quite knows what happened...or who took the fall!

Alex is a mediator by day...and ends up being a natural problem-solver for the neighborhood by night. Her teenage daughter Lettie is out to save the world (or at least try) and they live with Alex's husband Nick, a seemingly perfect guy. When Lettie casts her eye on devastatingly handsome bad boy Jay Kumar, however, she may be getting in deeper than anticipated...and a bid for revenge on a certain someone may go a bit TOO far. Willow, another neighbor, is in the midst of a divorce. Alex's sister Emily lives on the block too with her husband Ken, not to mention gorgeous Brooke Bailey, each with secrets and tangled webs of their own.

One night, the four women of the aforementioned group get a bit tipsy and decide to play Two Truths and a Lie...and when widowed Brooke casually mentions that she killed her former husband as one of her statements, NOBODY knows whether to take her seriously or not. Is this the most dangerous secret of all...or could one of the OTHER women have an even darker secret under wraps....or are they the guardian of someone ELSE'S deadly secret?

Jamie Day had me engaged for a while...the first 25-30%, let's say. Although there was a fairly large cast of characters (and more than I felt were necessary honestly, even in a book about a whole neighborhood block) they had enough defining characteristics to keep them separate in my mind. That being said however, there was one through line with this cast....they were all sort of awful people. And on top of that, we got to hear about the character's traits OVER AND OVER to the point where I was almost rolling my eyes. Alex, for example, has a drinking problem...and not only will she acknowledge her heavy drinking to herself ad nauseum, but all the characters around her are constantly mentioning it too. Then there's daughter Lettie who's dedication to the environment, saving the planet, and curbing the effects of climate change are certainly admirable....BUT they didn't need to be repeated endlessly. It started to feel less like character development and more like the author didn't trust the reader to even be paying attention.

This does capture all of the trademarks usually found in Domestic Suspense. Since it does fit squarely in the genre, in that aspect, Day IS successful. Failing marriages, lies, divorce, affairs emotional alienation, bullying...this a veritable therapist's playground. (Well...in a manner of speaking). But where this book started to lose me was in its ridiculously LONG timeline where we have to follow these characters for an entire YEAR. I think tiny clips and blips from the past would have been fine, but there was no universe where this book needed to be this long. Even though it clocks in below 400 pages, with the uneven pacing and sometimes slow-moving plot, it felt closer to 500 for me. The twists weren't OVERLY predictable, but weren't too big of a stretch either and by the time they were revealed, I was pretty checked out anyway.

Much you like you can't choose your family, you can't always choose your neighbors either. And although I've lived in my new neighborhood for a little over a year now and still only know a few names...after reading about this motley crew, I think I'd rather be Home Alone....or rather Alone, in my Home! 🏠 😉

3.5 stars

This one pulled me in all different directions. There’s part mystery and a whole lot of drama. It made me grateful to not live in this neighborhood because it harkens back to high school drama but magnified. The good - well developed characters and a definite plot filled with intent and red herrings. The bad - I felt that a lot could be trimmed to help move the storyline along. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the read.

Thank you St Martins Press for this advanced e-copy of The Block Party. This was just an ok read for me. I really thought it was going to get extra juicy, but unfortunately it was a bit of a let down. Not saying there wasn’t some pretty devious things going on, both in the present and the past, but other than a few nail biters there wasn’t much else. The character development was what kept me going. I really wish it could have been tied up a bit sooner than it was. The story just drug out a little too long and was mostly pretty predictable. This had major potential, but didn’t hit home for me.

Wow! Alton Road is certainly full of surprises and interesting folks. You might see you or someone you know in these characters. You may recognize these real-life situations. Lettie is at a difficult phase in her life but I enjoyed watching her mature. Oh, those middle/high school years. The ladies of Alton Road have formed an unbreakable bond. How lucky are they? Course it wasn’t an easy road to get there. I loved the story line and the characters. I received this book from NetGalley, but my opinion is my own.

Small town suburbia has a bevvy of secrets and when you throw murder into them, it becomes a completely un-put-down-able combination. This is one of those clear an afternoon type of books. Jamie Day has created enough drama to keep you hooked. If you like that side of tiktok where people are dishing drama, this book is for you. Add as dash of murder, it's a perfect combo.

Thank you St Martin's Press for the galley!

DNF @ 60% - I really thought I was going to finish strongly in this one, but it could not hold my interest one bit. if I had finished it, it probably would have sat at around 2 stars because I appreciate the author and her research into this thriller. however, I just found the characters super unlikable (and not in a good way), and the plot was too weak to hold it together.

The Block Party, by Jamie Day

Short Take: You can stop looking, I’ve found your next beach read.

(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)

Hello Duckies, and welcome to the middle of summer! It’s that time of year when snow cones just mean melting and stickiness, going for a swim sounds like too much work, and will my jerkbutt neighbors EVER stop it with the fireworks???

Neighbor problems are just one blip on the map of problems Alex is facing. Sure, she has a killer career as a divorce mediator, but she’s paid well because the work does a number on her psyche. That would be a lot for anyone, but she also has a daughter who’s a delightful combination of sullen and angry, a sister whose obsessions are going to destroy her marriage, a touch of alcoholism that’s rapidly ballooning toward out-of-control, a capital-L Lifestyle in the best neighborhood to maintain, and a new neighbor who may be a victim of domestic abuse.

Plus, it’s her job to host the annual neighborhood block party, where, as the story opens, someone has just been murdered.

Our narrators are Alex, her daughter Lettie, and snippets from the neighborhood facebook page, and let me tell you, the author captured the weirdness of social media pages perfectly. Lettie and Alex are decent characters, if a little infuriating (I swear, they both make the wrong choice pretty much every single time).

I’ve seen a fair amount of criticism over the story being another Desperate Housewives knockoff, and I can see the similarities. You have the rich people with scummy secrets, the twists that are drizzled out at just the right pace, and a picture-perfect setting. And yeah, I suppose that to some people that’s a turnoff, and to be very honest, if I weren’t just coming off of the horrible, terrible, awful, worst-thing-I’ve-ever-read Behold The Monster, I might also have more issues with this one. But it was exactly the literary comfort food that I needed in that moment, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a Japanese Slipper, my new favoritest drink.)

Although it took some time for me to get into this book and learn all of the characters, it gradually pulled me in as it went along until I was completely hooked at about the midway point. There were many twists that kept my head swiveling back and forth.

Lies, secrets and cover ups were all part of the plot in this neighbourhood mystery thriller. Someone has died during the annual block party. But who? How? And why? The story goes back in time to a year ago, at the Memorial Day block party event when the newest additions to the neighbourhood are meeting the neighbours. When Emily catches her husband in a puzzling encounter with one of the newcomers, Mandy, this sets off alarm bells and leads her sister Alex to investigate further. The more she learns, the less she understands what is going on with these new neighbours. As things heat up, Alex will also discover things about her friends, family and herself. There is also a plot arc involving Lettie, her 17 year old daughter, and her plot for revenge against her former best friend. The story alternates between Alex and Lettie's perspectives.

This was a fun read full of neighbourhood drama and suspicions. I was given both an ebook and audio copy.

A gracious thank you to #NetGalley, and #StMartinsPress.

The Block Party by Jamie Day had all the betrayal and secrets of an episode of Desperate Housewives. It was a fabulously engrossing novel filled with upper class families with an extraordinary amount of drama. Affairs, substance abuse, depression, retaliation, stalking……this book had it all.
The fights within the families felt genuine and the gossip between neighbors was entertaining. The characters were well written. The scandals were believable. The storyline flowed seamlessly to an explosive conclusion that pulled it all together. I normally don’t care for a tidy ending but it works well in this case.
I predict that this book will be a top Book Club pick this year.

I am posting this review on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cu2v-TgLTIl/?igshid=YzcxN2Q2NzY0OA==

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5287919311

And Amazon

The Block Party by Jamie Day
Mystery suspense, dual timeline. Multiple POV’s.
There is a murder at the annual Alton Road summer party. Only the residents of the exclusive cul-de-sac are invited and neighbors outside the block want to know what happened and why. Going back one year, we meet the residents and gradually learn about their lives and more, their secrets.

🎧 I alternated between an ebook and an audiobook. The audiobook is narrated by Megan Tusing and Suzy Jackson. The performances of both were great with distinct voices for different characters. The emotional suspense came through clearly. The downside of the audiobook is the switch from present to past continuity so the reader / listener needs to pay attention to the time frame as well as the large cast of neighbors.
I listened to the audiobook at a speed of 1.5 which is my preferred setting.

Secrets are reveled slowly as the prior year connections are revealed. Most of the tension and suspense is in the last 20% of the story. For me the hard part was tying everyone together and keeping straight the mental and physical issues of the past and how they tied to the present. A complicated twist but I’m satisfied with the results in the end.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley and the publisher, Macmillan Audio.

<i>I received a copy of this story from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

OOF.

Congrats to the synopsis because that's the only compelling bit about this story. I thought I was getting a thrilling murder mystery but there's nothing thrilling and very little mystery here. Sure, there were some things that surprised me but the plot is predictable where it matters most. And the surprises failed to elicit any reaction from me because I didn't care about any of the characters.

I grew up on a street like Alton Road so the number of characters didn't bother me that much. But they were all rather lacking in depth. It was hard to care about any of them, Lettie especially. She was so annoying and weirdly self-aware in a way I don't think was intentional. Most teenagers don't think "I'm obsessed with this boy and maybe that's a problem." They think more like Riley: "We're so in love and we'll be together." Plus, some of the language used in Lettie's PoV felt dated (who says 'metrosexual' these days?!)

There were major, potentially triggering themes in this book that weren't entirely expected. And on the whole, they weren't handled well. It seemed like a lot of them were used to move the plot along and not grounded in the characters and their emotional life.

It was disappointing all around. I've read better.

I was so excited to read this book. Unfortunately it just wasn't what I was hoping for. I enjoyed the mystery aspect of it and how that was approached (keeping the victim a mystery and setting up multiple suspects). The plot was interesting enough to keep me reading but I just wasn't engaged with the story. It centered around 2 POV's: Alex & her daughter Lettie over one year, starting at the annual neighborhood block party. There were many other characters and sub plots involved (which I liked). I think the book would have benefited from more POV's. I would have liked to hear the additional character's stories through their own perspective instead of through the main characters' POV. I also think some of those subplots did not add anything to the story and could have been omitted or needed to be developed a bit more than they were. There was no character development, too much telling not enough showing, and too much predictability. I wanted more dialogue between characters and I wanted the conflict resolution to feel more earned. There just wasn't enough build up for me to understand how the conflict came to be and then resolved so easily. It was a solid storyline, I just didn't feel the emotions behind the characters, their connections, and motivations.

Also note: this book has a lot of triggering content so be aware of trigger warnings before reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Jamie Day for the opportunity to read & review this digital ARC. publishing date: July 18th 2023.

I love a good block party!!! Glad no one died at mine. This book had me turning the pages so fast to see what would happen. I love a good neighborhood drama and this didn't disappoint. The characters are all lovable ANDhateable.
Someone is murdered but we have to go back a year to find out all of the twists and turns to figure it out. I enjoyed guessing and changing my mind as to who did. This is a perfect beach read! Many thanks to the author, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

This is my first read by this author. I must admit that with the exception of teenager Lettie, one of the main characters, none of the other characters elicited anything positive or a connection for me. I am not a fan of teen angst, and there is a lot of it here. The story was about all these wealthy families that live on a cul-de-sac on Alton Road and get together annually for a summer block party. The reader gets acquainted with each family and each one harbors their own secrets.

What I did like was that each chapter is titled with the name of the person's POV - such as Lettie, and her mother Alex, etc. Which makes it easy to follow. However, I found the community blog that featured comments of what other neighbors were thinking about the ruckus from Alton Road disruptive. I don't think it added anything to the novel, and neither did the Bug Man.

The ending wrapped things up nicely, cleared up some issues. Give it a shot, it wasn't personally my cuppa, but maybe you will like it better than I did. The release date is today, 7/18/23. My thanks to the publishers via NetGalley for my digital review copy.

This is a tricky one for me to review because I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I liked the writing and I found the characters easy to follow. The description makes it sound like the majority of the book takes place at the block party but that’s not really accurate. The book flashes back through the past year leading up to the present-day block party so we see what the various characters have been going through all year. At first, I found the timeline a bit confusing because I wasn’t sure if it was switching back and forth between the last year and present day and it wasn’t specified for each chapter, but I figured out pretty quickly that we’re mostly in the past.
The story is told from the viewpoint of Alex, the planner of the block party, and her high school senior daughter, Lettie. It stood out to me that Alex narrates in the third person, while we get Lettie’s story in first person, but I couldn’t figure out the reason for writing it that way.
As described, we do know from the outset that something has gone wrong at the block party on Alton Road and we get some details through community message board. I thought was an interesting way to give the reader a few pieces of information but since the neighbours don’t know exactly what happened, neither do we.
Overall, there were some parts that stuck out to me as not really necessary but I don’t want to give spoilers. However, I will accept that they helped drive some of the character connections or traits. I was curious about the new neighbours the entire way through so that definitely kept me reading. While I didn’t guess the ending, I also wasn’t fully surprised by it and I appreciated that it all wrapped up nicely at the end and the reader isn’t left wondering.

Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Love the cover. If you like juicy neighbourhood drama this is for you.

For as much drama that is going on in this neighborhood, you’d think I’d fly right through the book. Instead, it took me way too long to get through this messy situation.

The story is told through alternating viewpoints which helps the reader understand all that is going on with these absolutely deplorable and crazy neighbors. I think maybe it made it too easy to figure out who was doing what and why, though. I wasn’t surprised at all when the different “twists” were divulged. It wasn’t necessarily boring - just kind of repetitive.

I think my favorite part was the neighborhood’s social media rumor mill. It was the only part that really rang true with me (as I belong to one and know how it can get and it’s quite scandalous at times). My husband and I often laugh while reading these posts - and that’s how this part of the book felt.

Other than that, it was highly unbelievable. It was entertaining though. If you like neighborhood drama, then this one’s for you!

Every summer, the residents of Alton Road throw a block party exclusive to their cul-de-sac. Usually, it runs smoothly. But this year, something tragic happened. Someone was murdered. Who was murdered? Why was that person murdered? Those questions would be tough to answer because Alton Road’s perfect facade has been marred by cheating, drug use, and domestic violence since the last block party. When the killer is revealed, it will change the lives of the remaining residents.

I was hyped to read The Block Party. Growing up in northeastern coastal Massachusetts and an upper-middle-class neighborhood, I know how close those neighborhoods can be. And how cliquey they are. But that isn’t what attracted me to the book. That was just a bonus content that I enjoyed reading. No, I initially accepted the invite because this book was getting great reviews and was in one of my favorite genres. I am glad that I did read this book because, oh man, it took me for a ride and a half. Put it this way, I couldn’t figure out who the killer was and was shocked when it was revealed.

The Block Party is a fast-paced book set in the fictional city of Meadowbrook, Massachusetts. I was pleasantly surprised that the author could keep the fast pace up. Why? The plotline was split between past and present with dual POVs of Alex and Lettie (also in 3rd person for Alex and 1st for Lettie). Having all that going on usually results in one or both storylines going on track. But, the author kept the storylines on track and the momentum going. I loved it!! I also liked the online forum that the author included when switching before past and present. Usually, it foreshadowed what was going to happen. I also love that she got the different types of people on those boards down pat.

The main storyline of The Block Party is the murder that happened during the present-day block party. The author then backs it up to last year’s block party and shows the events that led up to the murder. The author did a fantastic job of casting doubt on everyone involved in the storyline. I was astonished when everything came together at the end of the book. The murderer was the last person I thought it would be.

The secondary storylines added extra depth and intrigue to the main one. The author didn’t hold back on how dysfunctional these people are. Everything from adult/minor relationships to stalking to drug/alcohol abuse to mental illness is featured. These secondary storylines fed into the main one and gave me a list of suspects.

I didn’t exactly like Alex. Growing up around people like her made it difficult for me to form an attachment to her. But I did feel bad. She was under a lot of stress and had a lot of things on her plate. But, the book primarily focused on her and how she was directly connected to everything happening. Her issues were more of her own making than what Lettie was dealing with, which was more profound.

I liked Lettie, and I was rooting for her the entire book. She was passionate about different causes. She was passionate to the point where she vandalized a school and was turned in by her ex-best friend. The author formed Lettie’s storyline around that incident and the revenge she wanted. Once she took her revenge, Lettie was eaten up by guilt. There was a point in the book where I wanted to hug her and tell her to talk to her parents. I am going to stop right here because of spoilers.

The mystery angle of The Block Party was wild. I had zero clue who the killer was or who was killed. I did try to guess, but I wasn’t even close. The author did a great job throwing out red herrings and keeping that angle so twisty that I couldn’t figure it out.

The end of The Block Party was interesting. I liked how the murderer (and who was murdered) was revealed and the reason why that person did it. I also liked that the community page deleted the thread and had a warning aimed at one of the members (just like in real life). The epilogue was just as interesting as the rest of the book. The author gave updates on where the main characters were with their lives and how they dealt with the aftermath of everything.

I would recommend The Block Party to anyone over 21. There is language, violence, and nongraphic sexual situations.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review The Block Party. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

Wow, I couldn't put this exciting thriller down! Having the story told from the point of view of a mother and daughter made for an interesting read. Alton Road is a powder keg waiting to ignite. The twists and the final outcome really took me by surprise!

Happy Publication Day to Jamie Day for The Block Party! You know I can’t resist a juicy neighborhood drama—especially when lawn chairs, fireworks, hot dogs, ice cream, rosé, and kiddie pools are involved. Oh, and also murder!!! We all know that you can never ever completely know your neighbors, or exactly what’s going on behind closed doors, and this novel highlights that perfectly. Overall, this was an entertaining domestic thriller with a great pace, a dynamic mix of characters, and full of secrets, lies, betrayal, revenge, and twists galore! It’s definitely an exciting summer thriller that you can easily devour on the beach or poolside. The Block Party is out TODAY! I give it 4/5 stars!