3.75 (?) stars

This was a fun, twisty story. There were really only so many ways it could go, considering the information that’s revealed pretty close to the beginning, so the ending wasn’t a huge shock; that being said, it was enjoyable and kept my interest. All in all, it was a pretty satisfying read.

The Mother Next Door, by Leah Mercer published the Feb 27th. This book takes you for a ride with all the twists and turns. I loved the narrator's voice but have to agree with the other reviews it was hard to determine when it switched characters which in my opinion made it hard to follow along. I enjoyed the storyline but felt as if it dragged out too much to get the point, but it did have twists that kept pulling me back in. I would recommend this book to those who love thrillers with lots of twists.

I couldn’t stop reading! The writing style kept me engaged in the story. There were some twists that I found very predictable but there were other big ones that I didn’t see coming. We follow the perspective of three mothers and one child. The different perspectives and background stories were intriguing. I appreciate when an author can put together a great story without any language and sexual content. Clean books are hard to come by these days.

I listened to this on audio and felt the narrator did a good job. I would have enjoyed it more if she used different voices to differentiate the three perspectives of the story. However, she did have personality and inflection which kept me engaged in the story.

Highly recommend!. Thank you NetGalley for an advanced audiobook!

ARC audiobook provided in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this narrators voice but had so trouble distinguishing which character was speaking since all the main characters are female. The story is about a group of four friends who’s kids go missing one day along with the mom carpooling them home from school. It was really interesting and took lots of turns! I could kind of guess where it was headed, but there were multiple other surprises that kept me intrigued. If you like psychological and domestic thrillers with unreliable narrators, you should check this book out!

The Mother Next Door by Leah Mercer was underwhelming. Due to the writing, I knew every. single. twist. way too early, making the book drag on because there wasn't any tension or surprise. I am usually able to enjoy the journey even if I know the twists/outcome, but Leah wrote in a way that didn't make this possible. I was saddened because I had really high hopes from the summary.

I was able to keep track of all of the characters, unless there was more than two being discussed or in the same scene. However, I liked no one. I love characters that are imperfect, like the women in this book, but something about them was just off-putting and I never connected.

Jasmine Blackborow was an okay narrator. I enjoyed her accent, but she spoke so fast that, unless I was completely focused and barely breathing, I missed things and had to rewind often. Her voice seemed to be the same for most characters, but Leah noted at the beginning of each who was speaking, which helped.

I was wavering between rating this 2 or 3 stars, but the incessantly long monologue at the end, recapping the entire book and all of its secrets, left me firmly at 2.

Thank you to Bookouture Audio for providing me with an ALC.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for gifting me an audio ARC in exchange for my honest review of The Mother Next Door by Leah Mercer and narrated by Jasmine Blackborow - 4 stars!

Lou is the perfect mother and neighbor - she's always willing to help out the mother moms by picking up their kids from school, So when Fiona arrives home and Lou hadn't dropped off her kids, she doesn't immediately worry because she trusts Lou implicitly. But as time goes by and more mothers are coming home to empty houses when Lou's kids are home with their dad, panic sets in as well as a huge impending storm. Then Lou's car is found abandoned on the road outside the woods, no one in sight. The moms start receiving texts that Lou will release their kids when they tell the truth.

The fear of not knowing where are children are is universal and relatable. The raging storm only added to the tension of that scenario. How well do we really know our neighbors or those people we entrust with our children? How well do we even know our spouses? There are a lot of secrets going on in this neighborhood. The story is told from multiple POV as we learn everyone's secrets, both present day and in the past. This was a well-crafted mystery that kept me intrigued from the beginning and was wonderfully narrated.

🎧 The Mother Next Door 🎧
Author: Leah Mercer
Narrator: Jasmine Blackborow
Genre: Domestic Psychological Thriller
Pub Date: February 27, 2023

My Rating: 3.75⭐

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for this early audiobook

Blurb
I glance over at Lou’s house as I pull onto my drive, surprised that it is still in darkness. Lou and the kids should have been home from school long ago. I should be preparing a delicious meal for my children as they tell me about their day. But Lou’s car is nowhere to be seen…The night is drawing in and Lou has still not returned.

How truly do you know your neighbor or people you trust your kids with..
... how far we will go to protect those we love the

This book grabbed my attention just a few chapters in.. i just had a slight issue with keeping up with the names of the characters... quite confusing but thats just in the beginning, that aside it was full of twist I did not see coming which was a welcoming surprise. I actually thought I had figured it out but I guess I was wrong at the end.

The narrator did a good job narrating this book that's full of secrets to keep you engrossed.

I hadn’t heard of Leah Mercer before and The Mother Next Door was my introduction to her writing.

The story is set in an affluent small town within commuting distance to London.

Lou moves to the town with her children and quickly settles into suburban life, the school-run and makes herself popular and invaluable to the other school mums.

One school pick-up Lou collects Fiona, Allison, Jasmine and Fiona’s children from school. She does not collect her own children that day - her ex-husband collects them. This would normally be any mothers worst nightmare to have her child taken. But, the mum’s are not unduly worried when they realise that their children are not home because Lou has become indispensable to them and believe that she wouldn’t do anything to their children.

The story unfolds from the point of view of the school mums Fiona, Allison, Jasmine and Fiona who all went to school together. Also from the point of view of Lou and finally from Fiona’s daughter, Tabitha’s, point of view. Some the women were quite simply put just awful and I didn’t warm to them at all, but I don’t think that you are supposed to warm them!

There are lots of twists and turns and secrets from the women’s childhood that are slowly uncovered. I won’t say anymore to avoid any spoilers.

I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, I think that Jasmine Blackborow was an excellent narrator had a great range of voices for the all the different characters.

Thanks to the publishers, Bookouture Audio, and NetGalley for making this audio-ARC available to me for a fair and honest review.

The Mother Next Door got me. This was a well written suspense thriller using my favorite trope - domestic life with untrustworthy friends. This was also an interesting listen because I absolutely knew the ending. Zero doubt at all in my mind, but I kept listening because I had requested this on Netgalley and owed it to the author. Turns out, I'm not as smart a Miss Smarty Pants as I thought and the ending completely floored me. So, maybe I shouldn't be so quick to draw conclusions.

Author Leah Mercer is new to me, and the ultimate compliment I can give as a reader is I will now be looking at any other books she has written.

Narrator Jasmine Blackborow kept the story moving forward and has a compelling voice. She did well.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for allowing me to listen in advance of the 2/27/23 release date.

The Mother Next Door is a gripping psychological thriller that had me completely engrossed right from the very start. You trust one of your very dear friends to collect your children from school, yes of course you would. You’ve been friends for many years and the idea of something happening on a school pick up wouldn’t even occur to you. Well this is what happens and we hear the POV’s from the mothers involved. I will admit to finding all the different people and their roles in the story a little confusing at first but I soon settled down and got to grip with all the characters. Like many psychological thrillers I ‘think’ I know how everything is going to develop but in this book I was proven wrong a number of times. This to me is the sign of an excellent author when they completely out manoeuvre you ! So for me this book is an excellent psychological thriller that i highly recommend. I loved listening. To this on audio and I found the narration excellent .

Three mothers have entrusted their good friend, Lou, to take care of their children after school one day. When the day wears on and the children don't come home they start to panic. Surely nothing bad could happen to them whilst they're with Lou? But as we read on, we learn that the three mothers all have a shared secret, buried deep in the past but it seems to be the secret to getting their children back.

The Mother Next Door was a gripping, rollercoaster of a read that I whizzed through! I have to admit, I found the beginning quite irritating as it was repeated SO many times what a good person Lou was. However, it certainly got better from there and I quickly became invested in finding out the web of lies surrounding the mothers.

The book was well written and, with each chapter told by a different character, I felt that I really got to know them.

My thanks to NetGalley and the Publishers for sending me this ARC in return for an honest review.

This is a general fiction/psychological thriller, which I enjoyed listening to.

The story is about Mums Lou, Fiona, Alison and Jasmine, as well as their partners and children. Lou has picked the other Mums' children up from school, but she hasn't brought them home, and her car has been abandoned. So where could they be? Lou eventually uses one of the children's phones to send each Mum a message to say that she will return the children once they tell the truth. We are then left wondering what this truth is, and what has happened in each person's past to cause Lou to act this way. I was eager to keep listening to find out what would happen next.

The narrator of the story was great, and she did a good job at keeping up the tension and suspense.

Gripping and full of secrets, this book will keep you engrossed. Highly recommended!

Many thanks to the author, narrator, publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book.

Lou is a great friend and trusted confidant to Fiona, Allison, and Jasmine. So much so that they all trust her with their most prized possessions, their kids. Turns out Lou isn't what she seems and the 3 mothers are living their worst nightmares as Lou kidnaps their children and blackmails them into telling their darkest secrets.

This story was pretty predictable and I was able to guess what was going on pretty easily. I got confused multiple times as it jumped around from POV to POV making it hard to keep up, especially in the beginning. There was also a lot going on in this story. Storms, multiple secrets, marital problems, multiple povs, etc. Lots of "twists" that weren't really necessary. I did enjoy the narrator's voice and performance, but I did found it to be a bit slow and speed it up to 1.75 to listen.

A group of three mums at the school all rely on one of the other mums to pick up their kids from school and, because she is so reliable, they think little of it when she is late dropping their kids home. However, as time goes on, it becomes apparent that something has happened. Where is Lou? Why was her car found abandoned? And why are her own children safe at home when the other children are still missing? The premise of this story is great and would have built the tension nicely, but the characters are not easy to distinguish from each other, apart from Jasmine who is an absolute caricature of a yummy mummy. The ending of the story got extremely overblown and silly, and on so many occasions I found myself wondering "who would do that?" It didn't ring true. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, the story was entertaining, but I wouldn't rush to recommend it to all of my friends as a must-read.

This was my first netgalley audio book and I was overall impressed with it as I went in blind. The narrator made this book portraying all the characters as it is told in multiple povs. This was an interesting and gripping story but for me was a bit predictable. It is however a quick listen and enjoyable. Huge thanks to netgalley and bookouture for sending me this arc in exchange for my honest review.

When the uber reliable mom next door, Lou, who often picks several neighborhood kids up from school, does so but then disappears, kids in tow, the panic is a slow boil. Surely, they had car trouble and will be home shortly. Maybe there was a miscommunication, and everyone was supposed to pick the kids up from Lou's. Hours later though, police become involved, and Lou's car is discovered off the road. As if the scenario isn't scary enough, the missing children's mothers begin getting ominous text messages from Lou..... telling them to confess and tell the truth if they want their kids back.

This should have been a really tense story, but right off the bat you're introduced to Lou, her ex and their kids, Fiona, her husband and their kids, Alison, her husband and their kids, Jasmine, her husband and their kids and it was just way too hard to keep track of. None of the characters had kind of style or personality that made them stand out so instead of being sucked into a scary story (I'm a mom, I would be freaking out!), I was struggling to stay on top of which characters were being talked about.

In any case, as the story progresses, the way the women hide various things from the police almost lost me. No mom whose child has been kidnapped, even by friend, is going to do ANYTHING that might cause the police to waste a single second looking for their child. You're just not. Additionally, the twist at the end is so unbelievable I turned the book off for several days before I finished the last ten percent.

I really wanted to like it but this was all over the place and unrealistic for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
This was an interesting one. Lots of twists and turns and questions. I was able to make some guesses about Lou and what was really going on and was right about some but not all. Definitely some surprises at the end.
Narrators did a good job as well.

This was quite similar to The Dinner Guests, just in an alternate setting, so I wasn't really intrigued or pulled into the story.

The narration was very good, however.

Thanks for the ARC!

Book Title: The Mother Next Door
Author: Leah Mercer
Narrator: Jasmine Blackborow
Publisher: Bookouture Audio
Genre: Domestic Psychological Thriller
Pub Date: February 27, 2023
My Rating: 4.3 Stars

Story is told from the POV of Lou, Fiona, Allison, Jasmine, Fiona, and Tabitha-Fiona’s daughter

Story is told in present day but there are flashbacks to when the friends were young.

Present Day: Lou, is new to the neighborhood, she is super friendly and has already proven to be very reliable. She and her husband are divorced and share custody of the children. Her children go to the school near her and since she picks them up from school she is volunteers to help her friends Fiona, Alison, & Jasmine with collecting the children from school as well as child care if needed.
One typical afternoon Lou was supposed to collect the children after school and drop them off at home. Only something happen as the children don’t make it home although the school reports seeing Lou pick them up. Lou is also missing. MIA.
Allison is out looking for her daughter and spots Lou’s car on the side of the road near a wooded area only it is abandoned with the children’s things as well as Lou’s cell phone left in the car.

As the secrets are revealed, we readers are sure we know why Lou and the children are missing but don’t have details yet!

The Wow Ending had me considering round up.

There is a sad lesson is bullying. Since this was an audiobook there wasn’t an Author’s note.
Many times when authors tackle tough topics they offer some references; in this case, I was hoping for some resources for those who are bullied, also those dealing with so much guilt it has led to depression.
Audiobook narrator is awesome at performing all the characters. Her portrayal of Jasmine has us hating her and her bulling.

Want to thank NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for February 27, 2023

Gripping read. Both author and narrator had me gripped from start to finish. Highly recommend.

Defo a fab holiday read 😊