What The Neighbors Saw wasn't so much about what they saw as what they did. Sam and Alexis move into the cheapest house in an elite neighborhood outside of DC. The house is basically a money pit and Alexis is always complaining about not having money, while she's home on her six months PAID maternity leave (who gets that?), her live in nanny, the new furniture she's buying, etc. I found her and most of the characters unlikeable. One of the neighbors is found murdered but that doesn't stop them from partying, drinking the afternoon away or sleeping around. The murder is solved by the end of the book, but the murderers aren't punished by the law and life goes on in the neighborhood like nothing happened. Truly makes you realize that those with the money make the rules and get away with everything. I felt the book bogged down in places, spent a lot of time fat shaming and couldn't decide what its main focus should be. The murder? The friendships? The drinking? The strange people? Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Whew! Deception, lies, betrayal.. and murder. It’s all that.. and more.. in a D.C. upper-crust neighborhood of gossipy, rich and entitled cast of characters. It’s very fast paced, and when a husband is found murdered it kept me guessing, to the very end, on whodunnit. And the dirty little secrets revealed inside this domestic thriller may have you blushing (it did me!) Who would of ever guessed I’d enjoy this deliciously wicked and addicting story as much as I did!!! Melissa Edelman is an author I’ll be keeping an eye out for. A stellar debut. 4.5 stars — 6/13/23

Much thanks to Victoria Cardoso at St. Martin’s Publishing for kindly sending me an advanced digital copy via NetGalley! All opinions are my own.

Not too bad! When Alexis and Sam fall in love with the worst house in the best neighborhood, they decide to make it work for their growing family. Thing quickly become more than they bargained for with the house falling down around them and a murder in the neighborhood. Alexis befriends Blair, whose husband Teddy was found dead on the trail behind their house. Alexis soon realizes she’s in over her head as she finds out that all of the neighbors have secrets.
I enjoyed this read, it was a little slow at times, but I plugged through to a decent ending.

A great weekend read for me!
This suspenseful read is told by two women in quick, alternating chapters. One has lots of money and prestige. The other is younger and still has small children to raise. Her husband is trying to make partner in a law firm and they struggle financially. They both live in a rich neighborhood named River Forest. Very Desperate Housewives and lots of secrets from several couples in the neighborhood. That part was fun!

Blair, older and richer, long-time homeowner and resident of the neighborhood, offers friendship to Alexis after her (Blair's) husband is murdered on a trail in the neighborhood. (not a spoiler, it's in the blurb). The two women become fast friends over lunches with wine at the pool and spritzers. Alexis is very insecure but really smart. She looks up to Blair and wants to be like her. She has given up her own law career to have children and start a family. Or at least she has put it on hold and Sam, her husband is chasing his dream. I didn't like him at all. You will soon see why.

I read this over two days on the patio with the spring weather especially appealing and have to say I enjoyed it. Good character development and I could relate to both women. Of course there is the mystery of the homicide and what actually happened on the trail that day. That wasn't what kept me turning the pages. Both women have big secrets they are hiding and I just had to know more.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy to read for review. I highly recommend it and will look forward to more by this author.

I liked the dual perspective of the book with the story alternating between Alexis and Blair. What the Neighbors Saw was a good read that kept me guessing until the end. A really good read.

Thank you to the publisher for an advanced copy of this book. This is my honest opinion.

My thanks to Net Galley and St Martin's Press for allowing me to review this arc.

Alexis and her family move into a fixer upper in an affluent DC neighborhood. All is well until her neighbor Teddy is found dead, drown in love a river. Alexis befriends his widow , Blair, and the story turns into a Desperate Housewives episode with the array of flawed neighbors.

This was a decent read but I thought it would have focused more on the whodunit instead of deviating to.all the neighbors problems. It took too long to reveal what happened to Teddy. However when it finally did, it was not something I saw coming. Not a bad read.

This split POV novel starts off in Alexis’s perspective, when she and her family move into a rundown, million dollar mansion in a wealthy VA suburb. After just a few months one of their neighbors is murdered- bringing Alexis back floods of memories from a traumatic event in her past, and leaving her wondering if this was the best place for her family to move.

Filled with secrets, neighborhood drama, and unreliable characters, this was an entertaining domestic thriller.

One critique, however, was that I felt that giving one of the main characters an eating disorder (which had no impact on the plot and was brought up multiple times throughout the novel) was just unnecessary? This along with some other comments about characters in the novel started to feel slightly fatphobic, when again this had nothing to do with the main plot of the story.

Overall I enjoyed this story and would recommend to fans of domestic suspense and neighborhood dramas!

Thank you to the author and Netgalley for my e-ARC to read and honestly review.

Alexis and Sam move into the worst house on the nicest block and are instantly immersed in an exclusive neighborhood of money and secrets. When one of their neighbors ends up murdered, the whole neighborhood gets upended. Alexis and Sam are also having marital issues, a huge problem being the house that needs endless work and costs outrageous amounts of money. As Alexis starts to play Nancy Drew when more strange things start to happen, she realizes she may have made a mistake in snooping.
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💭Thoughts💭
This book was not boring, but I honestly cannot come up with the point of the book. It wasn’t very thrilling at all and I feel like the purpose got lost in the drama of the neighborhood. There were so many things brought up and then brushed under the rug. I also thought some of the dialogue was really stilted and unnatural. All of the characters were super unappealing too.
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⌛️Favorite Moment⌛️
I would say my favorite moments were all the parts about motherhood. Alexis loved her babies and would do anything for them. As a new mom myself, it definitely made my heart happy.
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🎉 Theme Ideas 🎉
Alexis is half Honduran, so branch out and try some! They also enjoyed a LOT of wine and charcuterie. Play some tropical or reggae tunes as well- Blair’s summer party has a live band that stole the show.

This book was absolutely terrible. It was incredibly meandering and bogged down in boring details that didn’t matter at all. Every character was unbelievably selfish, rude, and ugly- verbal abuse galore. Then There were all of the story lines that didn’t really make sense, and we’re unnecessary, and there was so much weird body image stuff. Just a disaster all around. 1.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you St Martin's Press for giving me the opportunity to read this book pre release.

I want to start with saying this is not my typical genre of fiction but I did enjoy the story & Alexis's character.

Young up & coming couple buy a run down home in a very upscale neighborhood outside of DC.
They struggle with the home, with being parents of babies, keeping up with the neighbors & in their relationship as a married couple. I found Sam a bore & annoying.

The neighbors are an interesting group that you meet along the way & a major tragic event in the neighborhood is what kicks this story off & the book is a who done it!

Thank you to netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for a review.

The only likeable character in the whole book is the nanny.
So many deeply flawed characters. I didn’t like Alexis or Blair but their stories were compelling while Sam radiates small dick energy throughout the whole book.

Everyone in the neighborhood deserves to do some jail time tbh…

I liked it a lot. Some things felt extraneous but it was an overall good read.

What The Neighbors Saw doesn't seem like the right title for this novel. Ok, there is a dead body, so What The Neighbors Saw could be very important, but Teddy's murder is almost an after thought. Set in a wealthy suburb of D.C. the people living there are right out of central casting for a "Real Housewives" episode. Not content with their beautiful houses (often more than one!), happy children, and good jobs, they turn their attention to other pursuits-drinking too much and sleeping with the neighbors. There is a good story buried under the muck of What The Neighbors Saw-especially the back stories of Alexis and Blair (they even have "Real Housewives" names!). Both women have painful pasts that play into what happens-but how it might be connected to Blair's husband's death is vague until the end-and seems very farfetched. By the time we learn who is responsible for Teddy's death it feels like too much time has passed for it to matter. Given more time probing into Blair and Alexis's history would give What The Neighbors Saw more "credibility." Instead it just another telling of the lives of the uber wealthy, with a murder (or two!) thrown in.

Now THAT is a plot twist I’ve never seen before. The characters in this novel were brought to life so well for me, which made the story addicting. Sam is officially my most hated book-husband. I had my suspicions as to what the ending would be and I was only partially correct. That’s always a good sign for us thriller readers!

I was invited to review this title. I knew I should probably decline because I'm seriously burned out by "rich people behaving badly/the secret lives of suburbanites" domestic thrillers, but I used to live in DC and still have a soft spot for stories set in/around there. Unfortunately, my instincts were spot on here - this one was not for me. I very quickly tired of listening to people who could afford $1.5 million fixer uppers complain about money while having live-in nannies and drinking wine all day... (insert eye roll here)

I get that this is escapist fiction, but for me it just didn't resonate. I found myself irritated by the cast of generally unlikeable characters and the fairly formulaic (with extra ick-factor) rollout of secrets, lies, and murder that everyone seems to enjoy imagining behind the trees and fences of the suburbs... I just couldn't get into this one - even with suspended disbelief, I couldn't gin up the enthusiasm to care what happened to any of these characters. I think I'm done with this genre (at least for now).

Alexis and Sam have found their dream home in a dream location. The fixer upper they find in River Forest, an exclusive suburban community, is just what their growing family needs. But soon after they move in, a neighbor is murdered.

Alexis becomes friends with the widow, Blair, and slowly starts to learn the secrets that are being kept on their idyllic street. As Sam becomes more distant and abusive, Alexis struggles to find peace in their new lives.

The narration alternates between Alexis and Blair which heightens the tension as neighborhood secrets start to be revealed. The chapter subtitles are also helpful in establishing a timeline for the events.

As the end draws near, we’ve encountered almost every vice imaginable in this neighborhood, yet I was still surprised by the reveal and the resolution. Armed with this new information, I reread the book and enjoyed it even more the second time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This was another decent neighborhood/domestic thriller. To me, nothing overly stood out about this book positive or negative. I didn’t feel overly connected to any character and could guess who was at fault pretty soon in the book. I did like how it was all wrapped up.

This was a little too predictable for me. It was an okay storyline, but it wasn't that shocking of a twist to me. The characters were very unlikable too, so I didn't really care what happened to them.

I enjoyed this book about an elite neighborhood and shady neighbors! The book I read before this was super heavy and this book didn't make me GRIEVE for any of the characters. Perfect beach or pool read!

Alexis and her husband Sam are excited to be living in an exclusive neighbourhood, until one of the neighbours is murdered.

I usually like a good domestic drama but this was a no for me. It was veryyyy slow and often boring. The characters are not very likeable but I think that’s the point (although I absolutely hated Sam). Even though the ending was a surprise, it didn’t really pack a punch for me.

Thank you to NetGallery and St. Martin’s Press for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

What the Neighbors Saw didn’t work for me; maybe for a different reader it’s perfect with an unexpected twist. I feel like Adelman want’s readers to see Alexis as the sympathetic protagonist; she’s a minority that was raised in a single parent, low income household, married to a white man, in a neighborhood above their income, on maternity leave with two small children at home. Just reading this description would make her seem like someone you could sympathize with, right? Eh. She also has a live-in nanny, spends money like water, has meal delivery service and lawn people, snoops on her neighbors and despite not really having anything to do with her time seems perpetually exhausted and rumpled. And she just had to have this time and money suck house because it would look prestigious. Her husband is a self-absorbed jerk who does nothing to help, so at least Adelman wins readers to Alexis’ cause there. On the flip side is the always put together and prepared Blair with more money than she knows what to do with. Except her husband has just been found murdered. You would think that this book would be mainly about figuring out who killed him, which Adelman eventually gets back around to, albeit with an explanation that involved some ickiness I could have done without, but up until the ten percent of the book or so, it devolves into a story of neighbors behaving badly that a reality show would be proud of. If it felt like these incidents tied into the murder and made characters suspects it would be good red herrings. But no, it’s mainly just f****d up rich people. Alexis develops an eating disorder about halfway into the book - and when I say that I mean that apparently she’s had it for quite some time, Adelman just decides at that point to start including it, even though it’s totally irrelevant. But then, there’s so many things in this book that feel irrelevant that does it matter beyond the reader wondering why it’s been introduced halfway through the story? That’s the overall problem with this story; if it stayed focused on solving Teddy’s murder it could have been interesting; instead it became a game of rich people oneupmanship that I lost any interest in. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.