The House Across the Street – Jill Childs

Perfect families have the most to hide…

I feel so lucky to live in a gorgeous house with my precious daughter on Riverside Road, surrounded by green hills and well-tended gardens. I’m just across from the Taylors, who were a second family to me when I was growing up. But late at night, I spot someone in the house across the street. Someone who shouldn’t be there…

Lily Taylor and I are best friends and closer than sisters, but life in our idyllic neighbourhood comes to a shuddering halt when I find Lily’s father murdered in his own bed. As I break the news to Lily, I swear to her that I’ll do everything I can to help her family. Who could possibly have done this?

I tell the police, but while they’re trying to find the killer, I start getting threatening notes that leave me shaking with fear. Then someone throws a brick through my eleven-year-old daughter Cassie’s bedroom window, covering her in shards of broken glass. As I stand in her wrecked bedroom, I make a choice. I am desperate to help Lily get justice, but my daughter’s safety has to come first.

Even when I stop helping with the investigation, the messages keep coming. Someone knows what I saw, and I’m terrified they’ll come for my little girl next. But they’ve underestimated me.

No matter how far I have to go, I’ll always protect the people I love…

Review

Wow, ok, what a read.

Right, so we start with a bang—a body is found, whoddunit? But this is a whodunnit combined with a domestic feel… until the end, and it was very dark. I’m not saying it as a bad thing, but I would have definitely preferred to have this dark, more sinister vibe throughout the book rather than just a small part in the end.

Anna finds Lily’s father dead while a party is going on. Police ask her routine questions at first, but then they start investigating her as an actual suspect, and she’s like “I did not do anything at all, like I literally just saw him; what’s going on?”

She decides to prove her innocence until someone starts leaving threatening notes on her door, and her daughter’s wellbeing is tested because Anna has another secret (she just has like a tonne of secrets). So, is the same person who is trying to shed light on Ana’s secrets the same person that killed Lily’s father? Is she being framed? What is going on?

As I said before, this is a good story. The characters are good; I actually connected with Anna, especially in the last chapters.

I loved the family dynamic in this whole book—not just the blood family but the chosen one as well.

The book was really slow, though; it wasn’t quite the page-turner, but I found it interesting how the author wrapped it up. I don’t know; I would have been more satisfied with a focus more on Anna as a whole as a person, seeing a bit more of her personal story rather than the story being plot-driven. Had the writing been more focused on Ana herself a bit more in the earlier chapters to give the actual punch for the final ones and get the book moving a little bit more, I potentially would have liked the book more.