The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

The Couple Next Door

by Shari Lapena

In a way I'm glad I read this book after A Stranger in the House, Lapena's second book. That book was not a highlight of my reading year thus far. Going into The Couple Next Door, my expectations were low, so I was pleasantly surprised to have been entirely engaged with the story.

Though the writing was the same third person-present tense format, this time around the style worked far better for me.

The Couple Next Door is about a young couple whose baby is kidnapped while they are next door at a dinner party. Both parents are to blame for leaving the baby unattended, even though they check on her every half hour throughout the night. As the crime is investigated, they are both under suspicion.

The mother, Anne, has a condition she has kept hidden from her husband. Could she have killed the baby without remembering she had done it, and did her husband dispose of the body to cover for her? Did the husband, Marco, fake a kidnapping in order to get some ransom money from his wife's rich parents to help his failing business?

The twists and turns start happening in the middle of the book where we find out what really happened. Or so we are led to believe. But there are more secrets to be uncovered in this story; more people with an interest at stake, and all of them are known to Anne and Marco.

The ending is chilling. One thing I'll say for Lapena's books: She doesn't give her protagonists the happy ending, even when they get what they want. I love that! The characters in The Couple Next Door are deeply flawed and the ways in which they are pitted against one another was a well-choreographed dance where they, and we, weren't sure who to trust. But, as I will know now going into her other works, we should trust no one.

The Couple Next Door gets and 4.5 stars. It was addicting, a thrilling page turner that kept me guessing, cheering for the best outcome, but glad when it didn't entirely work out.