The Couple Next Door – Shari Lapena

Summary

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something, and both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets—secrets they’ve kept for years.

Review

GIRL, LMAO!!!!

Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, give birth to it, Shari!

WOW. I am not kidding, I read this under a day, like, I think in 6 hours perhaps, and I only took that long because I went bowling.

The Couple Next Door is always talked about when the discussion of which thriller to start with comes up, and with good reason! This is a spectacular book to start with your reading journey, but it is also equally spectacular even if you’ve been reading for a while and are a mystery-thriller veteran, though I would argue that her best book is A Stranger in the House (a very unpopular opinion, it seems).

Yes, this is very twisty. We start with the very basic premise that a couple leaves their baby unattended for a little while, and in the blink of an eye, the baby is gone. Did someone target their family specifically? Was it a split decision during a random home invasion?… Or is one of the two parents to blame? Was it planned?

I really, really liked where Shari took us in every step of the book, but I completely understand where people come from when they say that it was just too much for them or that it was too OTT. Personally, for something to be qualified as OTT in my eyes, it’s when the twists don’t make sense, when they don’t fit at all. Lapena just happens to be a master at writing, and everything she wanted to pull out she did so wonderfully, and the more I thought about a revelation, the more it just made sense in my head.

So excited to read my next book from the author, truly.

Click for spoilers!

Anne has a condition where she blacks out sometimes (which happened the night of the disappearance), and she did something very, very bad during her youth, so she really thought she was the one that had harmed Cora in some way, but it was Marco who was responsible for the whole thing. He arranged for their baby to be fake kidnapped by a friend he had recently made, so his very wealthy father-in-law helped them with the ransom and split it, effectively solving his money issues.

However, there came a point where the kidnapping went wrong and the co-conspirator friend (Derek) didn’t reply anymore, leaving Marco with no idea where his daughter was. Richard, Anne’s father and Marco’s FIL, was having an affair with Cynthia (the neighbour). Richard knew about Marco’s fake kidnapping because he was the one who planted Derek in the place where Marco usually ran so they could meet and manipulate him indirectly into the plan.

About Cynthia, she did make a pass onto Marco the night of the party because she and her husband had a kink about her having sex with other men and filming it, so she had footage of all around the house, including when Marco snuck out to give the baby to Derek, setting his plan in motion.

Richard is arrested, and Anne’s future is uncertain because of the events in her youth, though depending on how hopeful you like your open endings, I would say she won’t be charged for anything because of her social-economic standing.