I liked this book. There was a lot going on and I found the twists to be predictable. Everything did come together nicely in the end.

A thriller with a super natural twist sign me up!
This one also added a love element that I wasn't sure if it'd work, but it sort of did. Also involved some characters you love to loathe!

I want to Thank Maia Chance, Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a chance to read this book

It was a interesting read but for being a thriller it was kinda slow paced. But it still had that twisty meld to it.

The Body Next Door by Maia Chance is a suspenseful, gripping tale that keeps readers on the edge of their seats from start to finish. The story follows Hannah McCullough, a seemingly perfect woman with a picture-perfect life—two kids, a millionaire husband, and a luxury-filled existence. However, beneath the surface of her idyllic life lies a dark secret, one that she has buried deep—until the discovery of a young girl’s body near her vacation home on Orcas Island forces her to confront the past she’s tried so hard to escape.

As the investigation into the body intensifies, Hannah finds herself unraveling a web of secrets—about the girl’s ties to an apocalyptic cult, her marriage, and her own buried memories. The tension builds as her perfect facade begins to crumble, revealing cracks in her relationship with her husband, Allan, who doesn’t understand why she’s risking everything by digging into matters she shouldn’t.

Chance expertly crafts a mystery with complex characters and a story full of twists. The suspense is palpable, as readers follow Hannah’s journey to uncover the truth while dealing with her own guilt and the shadows of her past. The addition of three strangers with shocking secrets adds even more intrigue and depth to the narrative.

The Body Next Door is an enthralling read, filled with suspense, secrets, and the unraveling of a seemingly perfect life. It’s a compelling psychological thriller for fans of dark family dramas and unexpected twists.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing | MIRA for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I give this book three Stars because, while I generally liked it and found the mystery intriguing, it felt like the author tried to squeeze too much into one book. Topics including identity fraud, the power of the wealthy in society, religious cults, child abuse, and murder are all involved in the story and it starts to muddy the central mystery and pull away from the character development (which is strong!)

I will definitely look for future books from this author and hope that she continues to write intriguing characters while also streamlining future novels.

The Body Next Door by Maia Chance is filled with culty vibes and it is one of the few thrillers I have read with a magical realism element quite like it. I thought the two blended quite nicely (thriller + magic) and it definitely added something extra to the storyline. I did not find the characters to be all that loveable, but they are carrying plenty of secrets and there is a large cast with a few good apples in there. It’s hard for me to convey all of my feelings without giving anything away, so let’s just say the magical aspect got weird in some respects, and the point-of-views were maybe not all necessary.

To be fair, the audiobook has a full cast, and it made me appreciate all of the various viewpoints just a little bit more. Emily Lawrence, Teri Schnaubelt, Eric Yang, Pete Cross & Gabriel Vaughan all did an amazing job with their narration and I loved each and every one of them. They each fully embodied their character and made for an excellent listening experience. I thought the ending was absolutely perfect and the twists were great! Read this if you are looking for unique elements and actually like magical realism, lots of POVs and timelines, and you’re ready to expect the unexpected!

Not entirely sure how to feel about this one. Normally I love a good multiple POV story, but there were just way too many POVs in this case. It made it hard to really connect to any one side of the story. I did enjoy some of the twists and turns when the storylines started to finally come together. But there were also some plot points that just felt out of left field and that I could have done without.

I was intrigued by the plot however the story didn’t hold my attention. It wasn’t my favorite, thank you for the advanced copy.

I flew through The Body Next Door, completing it two days. I started it on the plane to Germany, after my in-flight reading of Passenger to Frankfurt, and finished in the weird jetlagged morning.

The Body Next Door is a suspense thriller that opens with, well, a body discovered next door to luxury vacation home. Construction has unearthed the body of an unknown young woman, right next to the wealthy McCulloughs’ vacation getaway on Orcas Island. I loved how the unearthed body represented all the buried secrets on the island, bringing up all the history, secrets and connections that different people needed to keep hidden.

Rich husband Allan McCullough and his young trophy wife Hannah, and their two children seem to all have a perfect life, with Allan as such an Obvious Bad Guy that I looked forward to him getting his terrible comeuppance and I knew — with my thriller-reader spidersense — that there had to be more to the story. From the start, Hannah seems to so deeply dislike the island, so why do they even have a vacation home there? And she seems to know a lot about a place where she doesn’t like to spend time.

There are multiple perspectives and timelines in The Body Next Door, which is confusing and disorienting at first (and a few times later in the book, to be honest). I don’t love when thrillers jump to an unrelated storyline with an unrelated character, this feels more like a commercial interrupting the real program. Especially when the narrative leaves the island and picks up with a violinist with an eating disorder. It takes a long time for the payoff for the jumping, but it’s worth it for the amazing wrap up, with a bizarre but lovely found-family at the end. This is an element I love in fiction, but we don’t often get in a suspense story, so I especially enjoyed the way everything finished. What I’m saying is, just roll with the jarring narrative jumps in the beginning for a satisfying conclusion.

Readers already know in a dual-timeline thriller some of the characters are going to overlap, and sorting out who is who, and what their connections are to the cult storyline, is a large part of the mystery. The Orcas Island cult uses nicknames like Kestral and Littlest, which felt believable for their community, and avoided the usual nickname-fakeout (you know the nickname-fakeout, right? It’s a thriller where sweet Liz was actually evil Betsy this whole time!). One of the stories has a child narrator, so even though my thriller-reader sense told me that the unnamed mother was going to return, I didn’t guess how. As we see more of the cult, the Allan’s marriage, and the distant storyline with the Stradivarius violin, the book also raises thoughtful questions about control and safety through all the storylines.

The Body Next Door has a supernatural aspect, which I really loved, but you do have to be in the mood for the unexplained. It’s easy for an ability to become too powerful and start to work as a get-out-of-plot-free card, automatically rescuing our heroes from danger. Here, though, it added to the sense of mystery and to the feeling that this story was happening on the fringes of the visible world. Other elements of the story had that feel too, with the parental neglect of the cult-y community, an older man with an underage wife, a crush that’s more of an obsession, etc. There was an overall feel that the shadowy mysteries of the book were happening in the semi-visible margins of our everyday world.

Anyway, that’s about all I can say about the atmosphere without revealing plot events that would be spoilers, and this is such a layered and twisty story, you’d really want to discover each new development at the author’s pace.

This was a lifetime movie in print form. I couldn't put it down, I needed to know what happened and every twist of fate and how everyone was connected and yes, it was great. (Yes, it's a run-on sentence but that's how twisted and good it was.)

It did get kind of troublesome, waiting for all of the pieces to come together. But once it did, everything made sense.

End result: cults are bad. Finding your people is good.

Thank you netgalley for the advanced preview audio book. I just love getting advance copies! This one lives up to the hype!

After shallow buried remains were recently unearthed by a construction team on an island amidst vacation homes, the ongoing police investigation unfolds to figure out just who is the deceased girl and who killed her. The investigation unfolds through various points of view which can be a bit confusing at first, compounded with keeping together past and present, but I was truly surprised at how hooked I got into this story.

This is my first read by Maia Chance and it had a lot to offer - twists, turns, culty vibes, and a sprinkle of magical aspects. If you are able to suspend your disbelief in the magical parts, definitely give this book a chance!

I love any book set in the PNW, so that was an automatic win for me!

Hannah is the FMC, and she has a crazy hidden past that we chip away at as the story unfolds. Her husband Allan has his own dark past, and he’ll stop at nothing to keep his secrets.

Cults, lost love and murder. What else could you ask for in a thriller novel? I definitely recommend this one!

Many thanks to Netgalley for this arc. I received this book in exchange for my honest review. My thoughts are entirely my own.

Hannah McCollugh has the perfect life: a loving husband, two children, and money. Then when a body is found next door to the McCollugh’s island home that they use for vacations Hannah decides to go to the island to find out the truth. Hannah believes her husband killed her older sister so that they could marry since she was sixteen at the time. Plus a boy named Green who is the father on Hannah’s daughter has an ability to communicate to inanimate objects and make them do whatever he wants. I thought the book was really good but it was just a little too far fetched.

This book was just ok for me. The dual timelines kept things somewhat interesting, but I didn't love the characters or the story.

I really enjoyed this book! The story was captivating and kept me wanting to read more until I found out what happened! I love books that have to do with cults, so I flew through this. The only reason I didn't give five stars is the multiple povs was a little difficult for me to follow. I typically don't read books with more than two povs, so it was slightly challenging to remember and keep things straight. Overall, excellent book!

Thank you to MIRA Books for the digital copy to review.

This was a little gem that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did! I started this on a walk with Jaxx and found that I could not stop listening, I was hooked! It is definitely on the slower burn side, and there are different POVs as well as two timelines (current day and the past) all of which when only reading via audio can make things a little confusing. Once I got further along and once I realized this involved a cult (!!) it was a nice little thriller that I really loved. Plus, the ending had a couple of twists that really caught me off guard in the best way. This was my first read of this author and I definitely want to check out more of her works.

What a mixed bag- this had one too many themes in it for me, however was I hooked and couldn’t read it fast enough?? Yes!

Multiple POV and shifts past to present, themes of cult, paranormal magic maybe??, con job, infidelity, child abuse, murder, crazy religious stalker lady.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a really fun fall Thriller to read! It has multiple layers that are all interwoven, multiple POVs, and dual timelines. It was fun to guess the ending, only to be thrown for a loop or shocked to find something out. It also has some magical realism which I thoroughly enjoyed and felt was very well done. Highly recommend!!

The Body Next Door* by Maia Chance is a confusing and weird mix of mystery and unsettling cult drama that just doesn’t work. The plot is bogged down by too many point-of-view shifts, making it hard to stay engaged and adding to the overall confusion.

The inclusion of a cult subplot feels out of place and disrupts the overall tone. Instead of creating suspense, it makes the story awkward and hard to follow. It was especially strange when inanimate objects would "talk" to Greene and his mother, adding an odd element that didn’t fit. The pacing drags, important details are skimmed over, and the whole book feels disjointed.

Overall, *The Body Next Door* fails to deliver an engaging, well-paced mystery. The bizarre cult plot, too many POVs, and strange elements make it a frustrating experience.