Those People
The GRIPPING compulsive thriller from the bestselling author of Our House
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3.5 • 114 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Meet the neighbours you'll love to hate . . .
'You're in for a treat!' Lisa Jewell
‘Twists aplenty, and such wonderful observation - I loved it' Clare Mackintosh
‘A feverish atmosphere is built up, with Candlish again skewering the peccadilloes and prejudices of her middle-class characters’ Sunday Times
'An addictive, twisty page-turner about the neighbours from hell' Alice Feeney
Until Darren and Jodie move in, Lowland Way is a suburban paradise. Beautiful homes. Friendly neighbours. Kids playing out in the street. But Darren and Jodie don't follow the rules and soon disputes over loud music and parking rights escalate to threats of violence.
Then, early one Sunday, a horrific crime shocks the street. As the police go house-to-house, the residents close ranks and everyone's story is the same: They did it.
But there's a problem. The police don't agree. And the door they're knocking on next is yours.
Praise for Those People . . .
'A delicious slice of suburban noir. I loved it' Harriet Tyce
‘Sharp satire and a plot that builds to a roiling boil with a couple of oh-so-clever final twists’ Sarah Vaughan
'Guaranteed to have you vibrating with impotent fury … a carefully crafted psychological thriller’ Laura Wilson, Guardian
'Those People is nail-bitingly tense from the first page to the last. Louise Candlish shows us the dark side of suburbia – and of ourselves' Erin Kelly
'A devilishly good thriller… with a wicked ending. Loved it' Laura Kemp
'A read that will make you rejoice for nice neighbours!' Prima
'An unsettling, darkly funny, artfully composed novel about the way we live now' Irish Times
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Louise Candlish’s brilliant thriller Our House presented a terrifyingly convincing scenario in which a few small turns of fate transformed a settled domestic existence into a horrific nightmare. She’s pulled off the same impressive trick here, unleashing hell on a suburban London street when a set of noisy neighbours move in and a fatal accident occurs. Candlish is superb at creating characters who are wholly believable but difficult to completely trust, and her robust plot constantly wrong-foots you with every twist and revelation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Candlish follows her well-received debut, 2018's Our House, with a cannily plotted if disappointing domestic thriller. After moving into 1 Lowland Way in South London, in-your-face auto mechanic Darren Booth and his equally pugnacious romantic partner, Jodie, create a dusty, noisy, rubble-strewn eyesore with their DIY renovation. The unrelenting stress and nocturnally blasted heavy metal music quickly take a toll up and down the street, especially on a couple who, with their six-month-old son, live on the other side of a shared wall, as well as on an elderly divorced woman dependent on B & B income to make ends meet. Tempers flare, hostilities escalate, and formerly upstanding residents start to entertain murderous fantasies. Then there's a fatal scaffolding collapse. Only it's not Booth who's killed. Though Candlish skillfully juggles multiple narrators and frequent flashbacks to maximize suspense, the book's first half, before the plot grenades detonate in earnest, may frustrate readers expecting more action. Hopefully, she'll return to form next time.
Customer Reviews
Good
Good
A great read.
Are you a fan of the idyllic community setting that you see in feel good TV shows like Neighbours? If you are, then this book is definitely not for you!
Louise has created a world much like pleasantville, in the suburb of Lowland Way in the south of London, where everything is portrayed as all sunshine and roses. But what was once the ideal street to live in, soon turns into a nightmare when Darren and Jodie set up residence!
They are everything that the rest of the community are not! They play loud music and drink until all hours of the morning, have rubbish and building materials littering their yard, as well as multiple vehicles around that makes the street look like a used car lot. You can imagine that this does not go down well with the other resident’s, and after multiple attempts from each of the neighbours who politely trying to reason with them, Darren and Jodie just laugh off their attempts at trying to make them fit into their way of living.
Then tragedy strikes when one of their own is killed, and everyone is quick to come together to place the blame on Darren and Jodie in the hope that they will be arrested and they can get back their once idyllic street. But there are some things that don’t add up to the police and this is when the story moves into territory of how far would someone go in setting someone up for a crime that has been committed by another.
Louise has cleverly set up a story like what you see out of the TV show “The Nightmare Next Door” and does a great job at conveying what it would be like to live next door to a neighbour from hell! I was able to feel what the residents were feeling and I was very anxious throughout. I could not think of anything worse and I loved how the story moved from an upbeat one to a more darker and sinister tone.
There are a number of characters in the book, that are a mix bag of both likeable and unlikeable ones, that are well written and developed. We are given glimpses into each of their lives away from the perfect world that has been created on the outside to where the reader becomes privy to secrets that are being kept hidden behind closed doors, and how their lives are not as perfect as they appear to be. It is a very intriguing insight how two people can change the dynamics of a street into one where the residents are forced into revealing who they really are.
As the story progresses, any one of them could be the culprit and when I thought I had it figured out, Louise would throw in a curve ball and take me in a completely different direction right up to the finale. I really enjoyed that in this book.
This is a quick enjoyable read that moves at a steady pace, with just the right amount of mystery and suspense that kept me enthralled throughout. I recommend this book and look forward to reading more from Louise in the future.
Thank-you to #NetGalley, #SimonandSchuster (Australia) and #LouiseCandlish for allowing me to read an advanced copy of Those People in exchange for an honest review.
All opinions are my own and are not biased in anyway.
One of those
The author is British, an alumnus of UCL, and worked as an editor in art publishing and a copywriter before turning her hand to fiction. She has published >20 books (I lost count).
A newspaper literary critic far wittier than me coined the term "suburban noir" for Ms Candlish's style. It's a good call. In Our House (2018), the only other one I've read, a woman comes home to find strangers moving into her house, a house she didn't sell. Hint: There's an estranged husband lurking about.
In this one, the neighbour from hell moves into Lowland Way, and proceeds to reduce his house to rubble. The concerns and complaints of the good burghers of London's answer to Ramsay Street fall on deaf ears, in no small part because the male newcomer is a metalhead mechanic who divides his time between his power tools and ministering to the five cars that now block everyone else's access.
The narrative moves along apace without much of interest happening: an unusual combination in my experience. I'm still not sure how Ms Candlish managed that.
Reviews I've read vary in their enthusiasm, from meh to tepid endorsement. Bearing in mind I’m a grumpy old white man, I'm going to go with meh.