I received a copy of this book from Harper Collins UK in exchange for an honest review.

The People at Number 9 follows a middle-aged couple called Sara and Neil and their blossoming friendship with their new next-door neighbours Gav and Lou. While Sara and Neil are pretty ordinary, Gav and Lou are free-spirited and artistic and seem to live life a little on the wild. As Sara and Neil become enamoured by their neighbours, they soon come to realise that they might not be as great as they seem.

I thought this book was going to be a bit of a shocking thriller but unfortunately the story fell flat for me and i felt quite bored throughout. I immediately disliked Sara - she came off as a bit pretentious and snobby and then transformed to fake when she actually met Lou. I was mildly entertained by how quickly Sara became quite pathetic around Lou and Gav but I also just quite turned off. This is one of this ebook where no characters end up being likeable (except perhaps Carol who just got the bad end of the stick throughout) and while it works for some books, it didn’t quite work for me with this one.

I didn’t really buy Sara’s instant obsession with Gav. It was just too instant for me, considering she appeared to be a happily married woman before that. All it took was 5 minutes chat before she was fantasising about him while in bed with her husband. I would have like their relationship to be more developed before she decided she had feelings for him.

I did like how all the weird things between Lou and Gav and Sara and Neil were dropped quite subtly into the narrative - such as the money Sara and Neil invested in the film. I liked picking up on all of this and starting to put my own spin on what game Lou and Gav were playing with their gullible neighbours.

The end was just disappointing for me. It was a really wet sizzler and wasn’t a big bang at all like I had been expecting.

I really would have liked to have seen what became of the house foundation issues - did Sara and Neil give up because of the Lou and Neil thing? Did it ever come out what happened between them to the neighbours? Surely Sara and Neil would have won any kind of lawsuit considering Gav didn’t seem to have done anything properly when building the studio but we don’t hear anything about this. Also I really would have liked Dash to have his comeuppance seeing as he seemed to be a bit of a psychopath.

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