CBR Bingo: Dough. As in “d’oh! This book drags”
Nicole Trope’s The Family Across the Street is not a bad thriller, really, but Trope stretches out the plot to a glazed-eye degree. The premise is a family being held hostage by the father, who is enraged his wife wants to leave him. The chapters switch among POVs, including the father’s and his wife. But a lot of the chapters are devoted to others who “have a funny feeling” about what’s going on in the house, from neighbors to the package delivery guy. The problem with these chapters is two-fold: the “funny feelings” are supposed to build suspense as to whether the family will be rescued, but instead the myriad suspicions were just frustrating due to prolonged inaction; and there are back stories for each character that don’t lend much to the plot, even though there’s an attempt to parallel the central conflict. And the father who is holding his family hostage makes his motivations explicit early in the book, so that affects the suspense too. There is a twist, but by the time it came I wasn’t that engaged.
I’ve been reading a lot of thrillers this year, and I think I need a change in genre. I found myself judging the book more harshly than it probably deserved and rolling my eyes at all the common tropes. Woman in jeopardy, check. Abusive male partner, check. White suburban milieu, check. Maybe it’s not so much a change in genre—because I really do enjoy thrillers—but more effort on my part to read something with diverse characters and unique plots that don’t mimic a ton of other books.
In any case, I’m going to rate this two stars, but I can’t discount how my burn-out on such books is affecting my judgment. Yet even so, multiple Homeresque “d’ohs!”: book drag, sameness of plot, repetitive characters, my stagnation. Time for different lit, after which I can come back and delve for some new thrillers.