Alex is planning the annual block party, but there’s more drama this year than normal, including a rumor about a murder.

The story is told from the perspectives of Alex and her daughter, Lettie. It starts in the present and then jumps a year back, until the timelines meet and we are given the context of the present day situation.

I liked this story, but it kind of dragged a bit. It caught my attention more at 60-70% but the middle part kind of lost me. I’m glad I pushed through because I wasn’t totally expecting the ending though.

A neighborhood annual gathering with lots of alcohol, miscommunication, etc. If anything can go wrong, it will. Too much like so many others.

The Block Party by Jamie Day
The Block Party
by Jamie Day
16207675
Leslie Beebe's review Feb 27, 2023 · edit
really liked it

The Block Party by Jamie Fay was a tangled web &it was fun to see what happened next to the neighbors on Alton Road . It kept my attention from page 1 until the very end. Great characters with many wecrets. It was fun to watch it unfold

‘Block Party’, by Jamie Day was quite a nice surprise. The book had many twists and turns and depicted the messy lives of five families living on a cul de sac in a upperclass Massachusetts neighborhood. Definitely worth adding to your reading list.

Talk about a page turner! This domestic thriller is one hundred percent stay up late/one more chapter messed up, chaotic fun.

The book starts out at the annual Memorial Day party on a wealthy neighborhood street. Just giving us a taste of that present-day party, it then jumps back a year to show us the events leading up to that day while interspersing comments from a present-day online community discussing and gossiping about what might have happened at that party.

There are so many great characters in this book. So many twists and turns. Part drama, part thriller. I can see this being an excellent summer read for many.

I don’t know if Jamie Day has any other books, but I will be reading them if so. And definitely sign me up for all future books. Get yourself a copy. You won’t regret it.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy.

Thank you St. Martins Press for the chance to read and review this book prior to release!

WOW- talk about a neighborhood I wouldn't want to live in! There is more than what meets the eye to everyone on Alton Rd and the Facebook community page is blowing up! My favorite parts were the comment section on their Facebook page- it actually made me laugh out loud a couple times.

The book starts present day and then the majority is spent reliving the past year. It is told from a main narrator's perspective and then one of the teenage girls' perspective. I'm not sure there was a benefit to seeing things from only Lettie's perspective, and am curious why the author chose that route. I think it would have been a little better with just a narrator or a full cast of perspectives.

I was hooked pretty quicky but then lost some steam about 30% in and struggled to really care about the characters. It did pick up towards the end and there were tons of twists and turns. I predicted quite a few of them because of some heavy hint dropping early on, but the reveals were still fun.

The whole time I was reading, I was imagining it playing out as a TV show and I'd definitely watch it if it becomes one!

Overall, I'd suggest if you're into a slow burn neighborhood drama! This book will be available on July 18th!

3.5 Stars

This one is an interesting storyline it has Real Housewives of drama mixed with teens like gossip girl vibes mixed with a bit of a mystery. Several families mentioned so it’s one to pay attention to took me a few chapters to get super into it but once I kept track of the characters it was a smooth engaging read. Multiple POV but storyline was interesting enough to keep me engaged a bunch of gossip, lies, cheating, drinking & murder! I like drama shoes and books so I was entertaining 🫣
So glad my neighborhood parties aren’t like this one

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read if you like:
🎈 neighbourhood murder mystery
🎈 dual POV
🎈 dual timelines

I really enjoyed the format of this story, which was part narrated storytelling and part messages between neighbours. It gives us a little tiny insight into the other POVs, and it’s also makes it more fun for me to read 💕
I love a dual point of view! It allows me to see 2 sides of the same story, and begin to put the pieces together slow. Even better this book is also a dual timeline! Again, I love a dual timeline because I have to figure out how all these pieces fit together before the reveal in the end.
I hated all of the characters in this book 🤪 but it was perfect because I never know which never could have committed the crime. They were all terrible and any one could have done it.
This book was really cool because the mom’s perspective was a thriller, and the teenaged daughter’s perspective was like a YA mystery. It was like 2 separate books in one, and I love both those genres!
I did not see the end coming! Which is the one thing I absolutely need in a mystery/thriller. An overall very enjoyable read!

The Block Party follows a neighborhood and the changes that happen in just one year. Murder, intrigue, lies – no one is who or what they seem. Follow the story told by two points of view daughter and mother and things start to unravel, and clues add up. Great characters that bring you right into the story. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

It took me awhile to get into this neighborhood mystery as there are so many characters and alternating narratives.
I stuck with it as it kept my interest. Ales is the main character and she has a drinking problem. Everyone knows it, and if they didn't, the reader sure does because it's mentioned on almost every page. It became very annoying.

All in all by the end of the book. I still couldn't tell you whom was married to whom or who their kids were. Except Jay & Lettie.

Thank You NetGalley & St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of The Block Party. In exchange for my honest review.
This is my favorite trope, a fast paced Cul-de-sac thriller because have all the tea and drama.
A Block Party that happens every Memorial Day. Cup-de-sac is where the most secret are kept. Everything was fun and fine until POP POP💥💥 and someone ended up dead! And the community page of meadowbrook is steaming with some hot gossip! This book had me in a chokehold i finished it in one sitting cause I’m nosy and wanted to find out who the murderer was! And i was actually surprised!!
There were many characters but i was drawn in all the way! This story reminds me of The Mother Next Door.

Alton Road. Beautiful houses. Picture perfect families. Money. Power.

And lots and lots of secrets.

Each year on Memorial Day Alex and Nick hold their annual Block Party. It’s filled with fun, music, drinks, food, and family. Except this year there’s one more thing it includes…murder.

As flashbacks happen throughout the story, readers learn about each family on Alton Road, and the secrets they keep.

This book had many twists and turns and the ending was not what I expected. I really enjoyed reading this, and seeing how each family’s secrets impacted not only their family, but others on Alton Road.

I was a little unsure of how much I was going to like it at first, but it really picked up as the story went along. I was convinced early on that I could tell exactly where the story was going and who would be the victim mentioned in the first chapter of the book, but the author did a very good job of making you believe the story is heading one direction, then flipping it on you.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I love a good domestic thriller but this one just didn’t do it for me. There were a few fun twists (one of which I predicted ahead of time), but ultimately it felt like the book drug on longer than it needed to 🤷🏻‍♀️ It probably did not help that I didn’t really connect with any of the characters either.

This one was good! A who done it one summer night and takes you back to a year before it happened and all the rivalries and secrets and drama. I like the back and forth. It was very easy to follow and loved the ending. This was my first time reading this author and would read again!

***Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. All opinions are my own***

2.5 stars

The premise: An annual block party turns deadly. Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone has a secret and a motive. Take Desperate Housewives’ Wisteria Lane and a dash of Big Little Lies, and you get The Block Party.

I so wish that I had enjoyed this more than I did because it started out with so much promise.

What I liked: There’s some cool diversity here in characters, and I think the way the secrets were revealed was well done. I was intrigued enough to finish it, even when tempted to quit, and I did enjoy the ending. Some of the twists were surprising and I didn’t see coming, which made me give the book an extra star.

What I didn’t like: The writing. Ooof. I struggled. The writing is not great. So clunky. So many adverbs. It was hard to trudge through. The dialogue was cheesy, the teenage chapters didn’t read realistic to me, like what an adult thinks a teen would say. Very cliche sayings and some of the comparisons to things were so bizarre when describing people/things/situations. There’s no prose or beautiful descriptions, no depth to the characters, no heart in the story. Just because it’s a thriller doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel anything for the people in the story. And I just didn’t.

You’ve got A LOT going on. SA, DV, blackmail, cheating, alcoholism…Every single trauma and trope is here. And you don’t really care or feel for anyone. No one is unlikable really, but you don’t like them either. It’s all a bit too much and yet not enough at the same time. Yes, there’s twists and reveals, but they are revealed soooooo slowly and there’s so much telling vs showing. The pacing is off. If one chapter leaves you with a cliffhanger that finally grips you, the next 3 will put you to sleep. At 70% I started skimming/skipping pages, and I think this could use a heavy dose of editing to slash the page count by at least 50.

There are 2 main characters and both of them are the least interesting in the book. I would’ve much rather one of the perspectives have been Brooke or Mandy, or Jay. Alex was just so boring.

Like I said, I do wish that I had enjoyed this. It’s no small feat to write a book and I’m sure the author worked so hard on it. I don’t doubt that many people will love this and consider it a page turner, sad it wasn’t me.

The amount of characters in this book was extremely overwhelming. The writing and narration was a bit juvenile for me and I found some parts to be unnecessary and too slowly paced.

This was a page turner! I would love to be on this block, snooping in on all these families. My own neighborhood is so boring!!!
This will be a great summer read. You will want to grab this book while hanging out at the neighborhood pool or while hiding from your kids when they should be napping.
The Block Party successfully surprised me multiple times and the twists and turns were excellent. Just when I thought I was on to something… I wasn’t.
Five star.
Highly recommend.
Thank you NetGalley for an early copy.
#Netgalley
#arc
#AddThisToYourTBRlist

The Block Party starts out with a Memorial Day party set on Alton Road, an idyllic block with seemingly well off neighbors, that ends in murder. The story then moves back in time and is told through alternating viewpoints of a mother and teenage daughter.

The Block Party has Desperate Housewives drama and secrets. I personally had a hard time connecting with the characters in this novel. The pacing and plot was a little slow paced for me, but it did pick up once I was about a fourth of the way into the book. The Block Party would likely be a good fit for someone who enjoys a longer, slow burning domestic suspense, such as Big Little Lies.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

Just when I thought this was going to be another book about a messed up neighborhood I was so pleasantly surprised by this book. Yes it’s about a messed up neighborhood but also about relationships, trauma, and a great deal of twists. This book was so enjoyable to read, a regular soap opera that folded out on the pages that kept me engaged the whole time. I loved the characters and how they were each so flawed and all growled so much.
Thank you Netgalley and to the publishers for allowing me to read this book.