Fictionophile’s OCTOBER 2023 #BookHaul #Bookbloggers #ForthcomingTitles #TBR #AnticipatedReads October 31, 2023

Suzie reports this to the owner who informs Emily’s parents and the police. But Suzie thinks she knows Emily best (but why?) because she could hear everything going on up there. So she undertakes her own half baked investigation (but why?). That’s the story. The rest is padding. Suzie lives downstairs from Emily. Emily who is young, loud, popular and an inconsiderate neighbor. At least that is how she is perceived by Emily who is depressed, a bit of a hermit and resents everything about life. Then Emily disappears and with what happened before, Suzie takes it upon herself to find out what has happened to her. Suzie Arlington can hear everything that goes on in the flat upstairs-she knows when the latest tenant, Emily eats, sleeps, has sex, and uses the toilet. She knows what music she likes, the food she prefers and the wine she drinks. Although amateur sleuthing is a trope I dislike, I thought the author used it in a way that mostly worked here. Suzie’s choices weren’t wise, but understanding her history helped me, as the reader, comprehend the driving force behind her investigative tactics. It seemed fair that she’d choose to pursue the mystery when she realized no one else was going to. The reason Emily’s disappearance haunted her so deeply made complete sense.Of course she gets worried about her neighbor but she is also scared to lose her main focusing subject help her to get through her days. The writing kept me engaged throughout the book. I could easily visualize the house, the flats, and the occupants. The setting was a major force in the narrative. With overriding themes of grief, loss, and loneliness, this book cast a lingering look at lives of single women in the big city. For some reason, this makes Suzie think that she knows her neighbor better than anyone else, so when Emily goes missing, she becomes convinced that she is the only one who can find her. In Suzie’s opinion, no one seems to care enough about Emily’s disappearance – not her parents, not her coworkers, not even the police – so Suzie is determined to get to the bottom of things. At first, I couldn’t understand why Suzie would care so much about finding a neighbor she was so irritated by, but as the story evolves, Suzie’s motivations are revealed.

Georgina Lees studied creative writing and film at university and has since pursued a career in video-games journalism, covering some of the most popular games in the world. Her psychological thrillers are inspired by her surroundings, from the congested London streets to the raw English countryside. She can be found playing games, writing stories, and reading anything from fantasy to crime fiction. Well, it COULD have been but all of this was just recited to the reader in a dispassionate fashion, from Suzie’s POV (ie: I did this and she did that)references to wine continuously throughout this book is actual unbearable, at least every chapter had a mention of wine and it was so overdone The book has a sad, but immensely creepy vibe. Sad because both women seemed so lonely, yet they were immersed in a highly populated urban center. They might have been friends if they could have looked past their differences. One needed quiet, the other needed noise to stave off her loneliness. Creepy because Suzie had an aura of 'unreliable narrator' about her... For the first half of the book I was all the time wondering if she was a narrator that I could trust. Suzie lives in a small ground floor flat in Islington. She is very much a loner, doesn’t interact and hates London, especially the crowds and noise. It is evident from the start that there has been a major tragedy in her life and, despite their best efforts, she pushes her family away and won’t discuss it. I've been in London over ten years now and I haven't found a quiet place. I live in Angel, Islington. The nice part, with the grand white townhouses, the ones advertised as being on tree-lined streets. I can't see any trees, just blunt shavings in the ground, weeds rising and arching over the stubs like gravestones. I'm on the ground floor of a two-storey house and Emily is above me. She moved in over six months ago and I thought she might leave, as people do here. People Emily's age, early twenties, they come and go like the seasons, and it's spring now. Time for Emily to leave. Suzie owns the lower flat and has a neighbor upstairs, she can hear everything that Emily does, from cooking dinner to using the bathroom. Suzie can't handle the noise, but suddenly there isn't any noise after a big party that Emily had for her birthday. Suzie has had some events happen in her life that are slowly revealed as we read this novel. She then takes it upon herself to try and figure out where Emily has gone