Happy Boxing Day! today is my holiday celebration with my extended family! One more day of food and festivities and then back to life, back to reality!💚❤️💚
Happy publication day in the US to this wonderful book! This was my very first Lisa Jewell Book, but it won’t be my last!💕💕
My Thoughts
A creepy compulsive character driven thriller that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up!
This is my very first book by Lisa Jewell, I know, I know, shame on me! But before you start writing me hate male, LOL, this absolutely will not be my last! Miss Jewell won me over after the first chapter! Her exceptional character developMent made my heart sing! Add in a complicated twisty plot that sucked me in from the very first page and short chapters that kept me on my toes…. and all I can say is YES! YES! YES!
The book starts out with a dead body, somebody has been murdered… but who? And why? And by whom? The story is then told from multiple different perspectives leading up to the murder…. there is a lot of speculation about Tom Fitzwilliams the new head teacher… he appears to be a little too friendly with his students especially the female ones, and what happened 20 years ago? And why does he move around so much? What I thought was so brilliant about this story is we never get Tom’s perspective, but we get that of those around him, we learn about him and form our opinions of him through their eyes…. The three primary narrators in the story see Tom in very different ways… Joey the newlywed who has just moved in twohouses away from him is seriously infatuated almost borderline obsessed with him… Freddy, Tom’s son and a kind of lovable oddball is sometimes frightened and sometimes not by him… Jana the teenager down the street and a student at Tom’s school is very creeped out by him, convinced he is acting inappropriately towards her BFF…. we also get treated to the police transcripts of the investigation peppered in throughout the book, I thought this added an additional layer to the story.
Throughout the story there is a lot of watching going on… Freddie is watching the entire neighborhood… let me just add in my opinion here, getting your teenage son high power binoculars, probably not a great idea, just saying…We also had Jenna’s mother convinced crazy shenanigans are going on, watching Tom… Jenna is watching and watching out for her BFF… Joey is watching the comings and goings of Tom and his wife… and so on, made me wonder what is going on in my own neighborhood?
This book was really all about perception and assumption, my opinion of each and every character in this book change from beginning to end…. made you realize you never really get the entire picture…. a wonderful book about the darker side of what goes on behind closed doors…
Absolutely recommend to anyone who enjoys an addictive dark twisted story with fantastically developed characters and a mystery that will keep you guessing!
*** many thanks to Random House Cornerstone for my copy of this book ***
About the Book
Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Bristol, England; home to doctors and lawyers and old-money academics. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens. But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.
As the headmaster credited with turning around the local school, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by one and all—including Joey Mullen, his new neighbor, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming yet unavailable man. Joey thinks her crush is a secret, but Tom’s teenaged son Freddie—a prodigy with aspirations of becoming a spy for MI5—excels in observing people and has witnessed Joey behaving strangely around his father.
One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she’s not convinced her teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate, and Jenna’s mother—whose mental health has admittedly been deteriorating in recent years—is convinced that Mr. Fitzwilliam is stalking her.
GET A COPY
Bestie Reviews
Be sure to check out the girls reviews! Unfortunately we didn’t get to read this together because we were all busy with all the holidays, but we all really enjoyed it and I am sure will be discussing it sometime today!
Berit Talks Books 