There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Thank you NetGalley and John Joseph Adams/Mariner Books for providing me with an ARC of <i>The Spaceship Next Door</i> in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Gist

I was in a really good space, reading-wise when I started this book. On a book high, if you want to call it that.

I was pumped by having just finished a string of really good stories and I was eager to continue digging my nose into books and getting lost in stories that made it feel good to curl up with a book and a cup of tea.

I’m not sure what happened, but I hit a slump around the time I started this one.

The Details

It was slow. Oh, so slow. It was probably the slowest start to a story I had read in a while. It also felt like the reader should already know all the characters by the second page.

It had a very inclusive sort of feeling. If the reader isn’t quick to catch on who is who, then the reader isn’t worth it.

Certainly, very off-putting.

There really wasn’t much going on for the first half of the book and I really didn’t care about the second half.

Call me entitled, but I won’t suffer through the first half of a very slow story that really doesn’t care about its audience, just to be slightly compensated by a less slow second half of the story.

The Verdict

Overall, give me at least something to find interesting and worthwhile to keep reading 300+ pages of a book.

Sadly, this one wasn’t for me.

I thought this was fairly enjoyable - with an unusual main character in the form of 16 year old Annie, who knows everyone in town and is called on to aid government figures when a spaceship lands in her town. It takes an unexpected detour with zombies, which I wasn't keen on, but overall it was a fun read with a surprising ending.
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

The Spaceship Next Door is a wholly derivative mash-up of other popular horror and sci-fi, with nothing particularly unique to merit a full novel. There were plenty of twists attempted to resurrect the story when it started dying, which was often, and mostly they were ineffective. I lost interest maybe half-way through, once the town-wide zombie chase began. While I kind of, sort of enjoyed it, I spent most of my time thinking "how much more is there?" and being disappointed when I realized the answer was "lots". Never a good sign.

Adding to my frustration was the fact that for much of the book, I listened to the audio version in tandem and it was definitely not an enhancement. The audiobook production was bizarre. While listening, I often wondered if some man was dragged in off the street to read it cold and then allowed to leave before any edits could take place.

First off, why would anyone choose someone who sounds like an 80-year-old, life-long smoker to narrate a book that follows a precocious 16-year-old girl and occasionally a 30-something man? And if this particular man with the gravelly voice was the best choice, why was he allowed to mispronounce so many common words over and over again?

My favorite mispronunciations:
appo-calliptic for apocalyptic
Loo-boo-tahn for Louboutin (which should be pronounced Loo-boo-tan)
non-cor-prell for non-corporeal

Funniest, of course, was "appo-calliptic", the novel's genre. You'd think, of all things, that would be a no-brainer.

Three stars for the print, lowered to two for the audiobook because the reading was such a disappointment.

All Dressed Up, and Nowhere To Go

I read this in Kindle format, so I can say precisely that the first 57% of this book is very, very good, and the rest is pretty much dead-end plot "winging it". That's not anyone's fault, really. Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, all of the greats, occasionally painted themselves into a box. I mean, when the socko final reveal needs to be the big secret of the universe, that's a hard ending to deliver.

But I didn't mind because the first part is so good. Our heroine, Annie, was just right. She's funny, smart, a little snarky, a touch sarcastic and filled to the brim with snappy one-liners. Everyone around her is just fine at trading jabs with her. The featured "colorful" UFO goofs were given distinct, sympathetic and intriguing personalities, and were allowed time to shine on the page. Over all of this, the unseen narrator told the story with dry, deadpan wit.

So, for the first half of the book we trace what happens in a tiny town when a spaceship lands next to it. We follow all of the people who are drawn to that event. There are loads of edgy throwaway lines and bits and some really inspired digressions and set pieces. It's just that at some point the party's over and it's time to clean up. From there on we just sort of throw in plot angles and some vague improv and some twists and surprises, and let our heroine talk her way out of trouble and basically talk us all out to the end of the book. Even that had some nice moments. It's just that the humor and pleasure at the beginning was unforced, and the end was a bit more cut to fit.

All of that said, I'm happy to have found this. I enjoyed my time in Sorrow Falls with Annie and the gang, and am perfectly happy to overlook the ending in light of the delights of the beginning. (Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

This book has an excellent hook. I love alien stories but when the ship lands and does nothing, it made me so uneasy waiting to see what would happen that I could NOT put it down! I loved the main character Annie. Even more than the story, she was the reason I kept reading. When a book has a character that is so real to life that you think about them after the story is over, that's when you know you have a GREAT book!