The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

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. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family–a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.

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I think this is a perfect airplane or beach novel that doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. Around the 100 page mark, the novel falls away from being relatable and you start thinking – this would never happen in real life.

The novel starts relatable – a couple can’t find a baby sitter for their dinner party, so they decide to leave the baby at home, next door, and check on her every 30 mins. Maybe not the world’s best parents, but ok, you can kind of see it. Until, of course, the baby goes missing.

This novel has a ton of layers, where (of course) each character is not how they seem. The husband and wife are keeping secrets from each other, the wife’s parents have secrets and of course the other couple from the dinner party have secrets.

Some other reviewers complained about the final twist of the novel, but I wasn’t too upset with it. By this point, the novel had gone way past realistic, so any plot twists that I didn’t see coming were just a bonus.

3 calculators out of a potential 5. An entertaining read that probably goes a bit too far from reality.

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