Wow! This was a wild ride. I couldn’t stop reading. Fast paced which I love. So good. Thank you NetGalley. I loved it!! I’m definitely recommending this one to others.

When Fiona Smith moves in next door to the Dove family she offers to babysit 12 year-old Rose during the summer holidays but does she have an ulterior motive?

At first Fiona seems nice and helpful but the reader soon discover she is a psychopath out for revenge. The story is told through Fiona and Ethan Dove’s (Rose’s father) POV.

This novel is set in the same universe as Mark Edwards’ previous book The Magpies and it’s two sequels, I need to go back and read them now as I was so impressed with the writing and plot of this one. The writing is fast paced and thrilling which kept me turning the pages as I was desperate to find out how it ended.

I would definitely recommend this for thriller readers.

Ethan, Emma, and their two kids, Dylan and Rose, have just moved house. They’re desperate for a fresh start - to save their marriage and keep their family happy and whole.

Enter Fiona Smith, the charming new neighbor who quickly becomes indispensable. She defends Rose against bullies and even offers to look after her during the summer holidays. Too good to be true? You betcha!

Fiona is not the kind of person you want looking after your child. Beneath her helpful facade lies a thirst for revenge against those she believes have wronged her. She sees a kindred spirit in Rose and is all too eager to nurture the darkness she detects in her.

This was my 18th Mark Edwards book, and, unsurprisingly, I loved it. It’s tense, twisty, and nearly impossible to put down. The plot is gripping, packed with brilliantly diabolical characters that make for a deliciously unsettling read.

Fiona is masterfully written - a manipulative sociopath who expertly pits Ethan and Emma against each other. And Rose? Watching her true nature unfold was both fascinating and disturbing.

I’m always slightly concerned when I find myself agreeing with some actions meant to highlight a character’s level of psychopathy 🫣🤣 but hey, at least she’s kind to animals :)

Set in the same universe as The Magpies trilogy, this can absolutely be enjoyed as a standalone. That said, why deprive yourself of more Mark Edwards brilliance?

I would absolutely recommend this! A huge thanks to Mark, NetGalley, and Thomas and Mercer for the advanced copy 🙏🏻 Out 28th January, 2025 (UK)

"The Psychopath Next Door" by Mark Edwards is a dark and unsettling psychological thriller that delves into the chilling dynamics between a family seeking a fresh start and their seemingly benevolent neighbor. The story follows Ethan Dove, who moves his family to a new home in hopes of mending his strained marriage and providing a better environment for his children, Dylan and twelve-year-old Rose. When Rose faces bullying, their neighbor, Fiona Smith, steps in, offering assistance that appears too good to be true. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident that Fiona harbors sinister intentions, particularly as she identifies a kindred spirit in young Rose.

Edwards masterfully crafts a narrative that is both gripping and twisted, immersing readers in a suspenseful atmosphere. The exploration of psychopathy, especially in children, adds a layer of intrigue that is both fascinating and disturbing. However, while the novel maintains a consistent tension, it lacks a significant twist that might have elevated the suspense to a more impactful climax.

Despite this, the novel's strength lies in its ability to evoke a sense of unease, making it a compelling read for those intrigued by the darker facets of human psychology. The interactions between Fiona and Rose are particularly noteworthy, as they delve into the manipulation and grooming that underscore the narrative's central theme.

Holy physiological thriller! I was fortunate enough to be an ARC reader for this masterpiece and it did not disappoint. The writing language was on point leading you through a story filled with shock, twists and turns you’ll be questioning even your own neighbors. I absolutely loved this.

Ethan moves his wife, Emma and two kids, Dylan, 15 and Rose, 12, to a new town, for a new start and to repair his marriage. Their new neighbor, Fiona, is a huge help when she offers to look after Rose while her parents work. But Fiona just got out of prison and can’t wait to train Rose to be her accomplice.
First off, my maiden name is Dove so I loved that this was the last name of the family in the book. As the secrets came out, I felt a sense of foreboding on how far Fiona would go, and what would happen to the people she targeted.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc.

Holy dooly - this book was the bomb! I couldn't get enough of reading Fiona the psychopath's antics and how far she was willing to go to infiltrate herself into normal life again after her prison stint. It really goes to show that you don't know who you have living on your street, especially when they seem trustworthy on the outside!!

This book kept me on the edge of my seat. The suspense was fantastic and had me in knots as I kept reading and hoping things would work out. 

This was my first Mark Edwards book but it won't be my last. After reading other reviews, it seems I need to read the Magpies trilogy now.

The best I’ve read by this author. Told in dual pov by Ethan and his next door neighbor, Fiona. Fiona is the new mystery woman living. Ext door that Ethan & his wife, Emma, allow
To child mind over the summer. Fiona feels a kinship with Rose and decides to mentor her. Mentor her……a psychopath in training? Read this in one sitting. Fast paced, writing kept the momentum flowing, execution was great. Sequel? I hope so.

That ending!

This was a super unique thriller, that kept you on the edge of your seat. Mark Edwards is an automatic “must read” for me, as he is one of my favorite authors. His books are easy to read, thrilling, and down right creepy. This book was a bit different than the rest of his psych thrillers. This book didn’t have any real twists that you didn’t see coming, but was enjoyable nonetheless. The idea of psychopaths are intriguing & scary at the same time which made this one of Mark’s “scarier” books for me.

Too often, the main character’s dialogues & inner monologues can get repetitive and go on and on in books. This is NEVER the case for Mark. It’s one of the things I love most about his books. The substance of the story speaks for itself and doesn’t need any long winded explanations. He never makes it feel like he was a word quota to be met and has to add unnecessary commentary or descriptions. He is one of the best.

I would love a sequel to this book and enjoyed the mixing of the Magpies world.

Read this, you won’t regret it.

This is my first ever book by Mark Edwards. And I’m afraid this might be my last book by him. Or maybe not, I’m undecided.
I have always seen nothing but praise for his books. And I have no idea what took me so long to finally read one of his writings. I see that there is nothing but praise for this ARC so far, so I’m afraid I might be the first one to break the pattern with my not-exactly-love for this book.
It felt shallow. It felt superficial. It felt too much in-your-face everything. Starting with the title already, really. Come on. It had so much potential and there were so many LOL moments as I read it. The ending could have been there, but it wasn’t.
I see how the book has its audience and its fans. I see the appeal there. Grab an easy read, be comfortable both in your mind and in your body, be entertained by something simplistic, dumbed down, and be spoon-fed all the time. Never ever face the slightest discomfort of having to see things for what they really are because they are shoved straight into your face and they are nice, way too nice – all the book crazies in this book are NICE. They are borderline cuddly, cute, and lovely. It feels like looking at the cutest, cuddliest poodle and telling everyone that this is a horrible monster because look at those teeth – and those monster teeth never ever bite anyone. There is nothing dark about it, except the ink maybe – but I don’t know about that too, as I read it on my Kindle and e-ink is not really any sort of dark ink.
Cozy. The book was too cozy. There was nothing but fuzzy, cozy, superficial, comfortable, and cute “psychopaths next door”. Ok, I get it. I just got it! You know how people say someone has the looks of a girl next door? Ok, yeah. Same here, that was a psychopath next door. Ok, yeah, that makes sense. A sweet, adorable, easy-to-understand psychopath next door. Relatable and nice.
It could be me, but that’s not what I’m looking for in my psychopath books, you know. I’m not looking for cute and cozy.

Another excellent psychological thriller by Mark Edward’s. I just love all of his books, so well written and grips from the first page. Great storyline that shows how manipulating some people can be. This certainly makes you think if we really know our neighbours. An excellent read I highly recommend

Mark Edwards is an author whose books I always read. They are typically dark and gripping and real page-turners. The Psychopath Next Door is no exception, making me stay until way past my bedtime to get to the end of the story.

In this book, we get the POV from Fiona, a young woman fresh out of prison with an ax to grind. It takes a while to learn exactly why she’s targeted the Dove family.

In the other POV, we see things unfold from Ethan Dove’s point of view. He’s a middle-class, normal guy who owns a record shop and has two children. When Fiona moves in next door, she offers to help care for Ethan and his wife Emma’s daughter Rose. Their son Dylan is more interested in playing video games than anything else.

Rose and Fiona grow closer and Fiona notices she and Rose share a similar trait, I think it's what we would call “being a psychopath.” Fiona is excited to bring out this side of Rose.

This is a fast-moving novel and I liked it!

Synopsis:

Ethan Dove’s family has moved to a new home in a safe community, and it’s exactly the fresh start they need. Not only is his marriage to Emma hanging by a thread, but his son, Dylan, and twelve-year-old daughter, Rose, deserve to have a happy childhood.

After Rose is bullied by the boys across the road, Ethan is relieved when the woman who lives next door steps in. Fiona Smith has come into their lives at just the right moment, and when she offers to look after Rose during the school holidays, Ethan and Emma can’t believe their luck.

Which is exactly what Fiona wants. Because, far from being the perfect neighbour, Fiona is the last person you should trust with your child. With a vicious plot for revenge, Fiona is happy to train Rose to be her accomplice, especially when she begins to suspect that Rose might not be as innocent as she appears…

I was delighted to be able to get an advanced copy of “The Psychopath Next Door”, meaning that (after “The Darkest Water“) I’ve been able to read two books by my favourite author this year. The book also flowed very nicely after the previous book that I read, “The Survivors” by Caroline Mitchell. The premise, which can be garnered from the title of the book, is that a psychopath moves in next door to an ordinary family. But how ordinary are they all?

As is typical of Mark’s books, he manages to weave together a somewhat (I hope) fantastical story while having the hook, at least for a male reader, that you could imagine getting yourself caught up in something like the main (male) protagonist, Ethan. While Ethan comes across at the main protagonist, most of the key action surrounds two female characters; Rose (Ethan’s daughter) and Fiona, the next door neighbour. The story is fast paced and I got through the book quickly as I wanted to know what would happen. And I wasn’t disappointed.

As usual there were a few particular bits of text that stood out for me that I found either helped provide insights into a character or I found relatable in some way. For example, the following about Fiona,

She had been living here for a few days now, and free for nearly two years, but she was still able to appreciate the luxury of being on her own, of having her own stuff. Not having to look at or be looked at by anyone else.

and

Her dad’s parents had been ten-pound poms, part of that wave of British emigrants who took cheap passage down under, arriving on a ship in Fremantle in the fifties.

My aunt had been one of these ten-pound poms and never (other than a short visit) returned to the UK, living most of her life in Port Douglas, Queensland. This is the second book that I’ve read recently (the other being “Grave Talk” by Nick Spalding) that had an Australian link, although it was more subtle this time.

I liked the line,

I used to think that Lionel Richie must have written ‘Easy’ before he had kids – Sunday mornings were far from relaxing for a long time!

I could certainly relate to this for many years.

Ethan and his wife, Emma, are having marital difficulties. As Ethan says at one point,

we had become co-parents rather than friends or lovers. I was almost embarrassed when we started seeing the therapist, because it was all so unoriginal.

While this sounds quite conventional, I liked how Mark creates situations that show the challenges Ethan was facing and how the psychopathic neighbour was able to get close to the family. For example, Ethan is happy when there’s an additional person (in the form of Fiona) at the house as he knows this would stop any arguments flaring up with Emma. Linked to the marriage problems, Emma as described as having had ‘an emotional affair’ with a friend. I don’t think I’ve come across this term before, which Ethan describes as not involving her sleeping with the other person but having ‘lots of intense feelings’, and I liked it how the book didn’t resort to the more typical type of affair. However, Ethan points out the problem with an ’emotional affair’,

‘I think that was even worse. Maybe. I mean, at least I don’t have images of her naked with him to haunt me, of the two of them in bed. But they had a “special connection”.’

When Emma talks about her ’emotional affair’, as well as confirming there was nothing physical, she describes it as

I was a little bit in love with him. That infatuated, new-person kind of “in love”, when you meet someone that you feel you have a connection with.

Emma also adds

Maybe it was just a twenty-year-itch thing. I don’t know. Marriage is hard, isn’t it, especially when you live in a world full of other people.

The line that made me laugh (not that it should be a subject to be laughing about – as Ethan notes ‘I was so tense because of my marital woes that I could barely function’) most about Ethan’s marital problems was when one character says to him,

‘Good luck with your missus,’ he said to me before he left. ‘My advice – bin her and find someone who looks at you like you’re made of chocolate.’

While most of the book is set in and around London, there is also mention of some other places, including Shropshire, where I am originally from, and which has appeared in a few of Mark’s books. But in reality, as with many of Mark’s books, the story feels like it could happen almost anywhere – that’s part of what make his books so relatable and chilling at times. Much of the climax of the book takes place in another venue which reminded me of another of Mark’s books, Follow You Home.

There is one piece of text, that takes up a whole page on my Kindle due to the large font size that I like to use, that I particularly liked, but which is too long to quote here. It relates to when Ethan hugs Fiona. I love the description of the hug itself and the descriptions of what goes through Ethan’s mind.

As noted earlier, while Ethan is the main protagonist, there are times when the focus is much more on Fiona, as can be seen from the first two quotes I provided. Another moment of the Fiona POV text that I liked was when she feels like stripping off and running naked across some fields, but that as

She pictured herself doing it, got deep into the fantasy, and when she emerged she didn’t know how long she’d been in a fugue state; was afraid, for a second, that she might have actually done it, which wouldn’t have been at all wise.

I find this sort of ‘fugue state’ very relatable – and worry about unwise things that I’ve done in them.

The line that I liked most in the whole book was

The kind of eureka moment that doesn’t make you want to leap out of the bath but jump into it and hold your head under the water.

There are so many times when I wish I could have used this line.

Overall, this book is another to add to the ‘classic Mark Edwards’ collection and I highly recommend it.

2* DNF. Sadly, not at all believable and at the sake time, very predictable.

This reads as if the author's throwing all that he's read/heard/watched about psychopathic characters and thrown them into the same book, and I'm sorry but I can't bring myself to believe that a psychopathic adult moves into a house next door to a psychopathic kid in the making - whose father seems to have a pretty good read in her, but seemingly doesn't tackle her - and inveigles herself into her world.

This right here is why I love Mark Edwards’ writing so much! This book had everything; suspense, twists, a demented child! I was hooked immediately! The way Fiona’s story was laid out was very well executed and it kept me wanting to read more. I really hope we get more of Rose’s story, please let there be a sequel! Excellent book overall!!

Wow, what a book! This is definitely one of my favourite reads this year and maybe even the best Mark Edward’s book.
I was completely engrossed from page 1 and loved the dark and twisted plot. It’s more than worthy of 5 stars, it’s a fantastic read!

This book starts off slow however it speeds up so quickly with heaps of twists and so much suspense, I could not out this book down. Yet again, Mark Edwards delivers an on your edge thriller with a fascinating and new storyline. Highly recommend.

Another Mark Edwards hit! Whenever someone is asking for thriller recommendations, Mark is my go to because his books hook you from page one...this one is no exception. Love that it's a continuation of the Magpies series but totally stands up on it's own if you haven't read them yet. Just know to expect the unexpected. It's dark and twisty in the best ways. As always in a Mark Edwards book, no one is safe! Fasted book I read this year. LOVED!!!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

My heart is still racing from finishing this! I have not got enough words to describe how much I loved this book!

I wish I could go back to the start and read it again for the first time. I really liked how it was written from a male POV in most chapters, this threw me a bit to begin with , not sure why. It also seriously made me think about how, as a parent, you would react to your child turning out to be a psychopath. A lot of questions were racing around my head, especially as I have a daughter of a similar age.

An absolute winner for me, if I could give it more than 5 stars, I would!!!!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a huge Mark Edwards fan - Here To Stay and The Magpies are among the first books I will always recommend to new thriller fans. This book is set in the Magpies 'universe', with cameos from Lucy Newton, and it gave me the same tingles I got when reading The Magpies.

I loved everything about this - the writing, the scene-setting, the characterisation and the slow build of tension where you could feel that awful things were about to happen and the characters would have no way of stopping them. The ending was shocking, grisly and brilliant.

Another thing I love about Mark's books is that whilst absolutely awful, hideous things happen to the humans, the pets always get to live their best lives (hooray for Lola and Karma!)

I would 100% recommend this book, but would advise reading The Magpies trilogy first to get the most out of it, and just because it's fantastic!