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THE BLOCK PARTY
Jamie Day
St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
384 Pages
Goodreads | Amazon
This book bombed for me. It is very repetitive especially when it comes to all the wine drinking and the repeated promises of “I need to stop”. I love a good popcorn thriller but this one seemed to drag. We get two perspectives, Alex (the wine drinker forever promising to quit) and her eighteen-year-old daughter Lettie. It starts off in the present at the Memorial Day block party, then we go back a year leading up to a murder. We don’t know who is dead nor who did it. Sounds right up my alley but this one lacked in execution. There are lots of heavy topics dealt with in the book, alcoholism, statutory rape, drug abuse and mental health/suicide but I felt they were portrayed unrealistically.
There were a lot of thriller cliches in the plot. The cast of adult characters were all unlikeable and they all need a good therapist, stat. There wasn’t one level-headed adult in the bunch and we are talking about an exclusive area, this isn’t a neighbourhood of people with a lack of resources and education. The dialogue felt unrealistic and the internal moaning of Alex got on my nerves. I felt no connection to any of the characters, I hated them all. The ending wasn’t surprising and it took way too long to get there. This book was a real downer and not very thrilling.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
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