The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

I am having such luck with authors lately! After finding the joy that was Ruth Ware, I was skeptical about how good the next thriller I read would seem in comparison. Fortunately, I picked this beauty up.

The premise of this book is nothing special really. The story follows several different people living in an apartment building, one of which is a serial killer. What makes it special is the writing style and the sheer brilliance of the characters. Again, on the surface they don't seem unique-there's the runaway teen delinquent, the kindly old lady, the weird misfit, the perverted landlord and many more. But every character is well-developed and you genuinely become very invested in their lives and what's going to happen to them next.

This actually helps a lot with one of the book's main issues. It's told in third person but each chapter focuses on a different character. This definitely takes some getting used to (there are a LOT of characters) but the characters are genuinely all quite different and having a unique voice for each of them stops it being the train wreck it could have been otherwise. Apart from that minor hiccup, I couldn't fault the writing style. It was engaging, suspenseful and all without being melodramatic or cheesy. Hey, actual good villain POV chapters! That never happens!

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, enough to immediately acquire everything else the author wrote. I consider this her best book for sure and it's the perfect example of how to do a thriller right. Definitely worth a read

Overall Score:

.5