Date published: June 2009
ISBN # 978-0-553-80723-3
Genre Crime Thriller, Psychology Thriller
Hardback
Reviewed by Gina
The Joneses are, for all intents and purposes, the perfect family. He’s tall, dark and handsome. She’s blonde and plain gorgeous. Their four year old daughter, Ree, is as cute as a button, precocious but not obnoxiously so, and the light of their lives. He’s Jason Jones. He works nights as a reporter for a local paper so he can be home during the day to take care of his daughter. She’s Sandra Jones and works days as a social studies teacher so she can be home at night for Ree. They keep to themselves, pay their bills and live a basically idyllic life. The thin façade of that life is about to crumble.
When Sandy and Jason met they knew there was something special between them. Kindred spirits finding each other. She was a pregnant 18 year old, he was a thirty-something who knew he’d found someone who could share his life. He could protect and care for at least one child. Within days of meeting each other they married and moved form their Georgia homes to Boston. Boston and Massachusetts where blood isn’t necessarily thicker than water when it comes to parental rights. Sometimes Sandy gets bored and needs a night or two on her own. Jason respects her need to spread her wings. It’s not like she can hurt him, as long as she comes home to him and their daughter. One night though, Sandy discovers something about Jason. Something she doesn’t know quite what to make of it. As what the knowledge means crystallizes, Sandy does what she can to protect herself and Ree. She doesn’t run or go to the police. She needs information and digs to find it. The digging leads her to a thirteen year old student who believes she is his one true love. As one thing leads to another, the Jones’ carefully constructed life unravels one thread at a time. Sandy is gone and Jason is the prime suspect.
Jason Jones kept me awake at night the past few nights. He’s not the alpha male you find in a romance, yet there is a vulnerability to him that draws you in. He is tall, dark, brooding and clearly loves his wife and child. Jason is reminiscent of the wounded hero found in a gothic romance. When his wife disappears you feel his confusion, his fears, the sense of helplessness and cannot help but want to rail at the police for wanting to take him from his little girl.
At the same time, the reader is drawn into Sandy’s story. A childhood that was more nightmares than anything else. Demons far from laid to rest despite a house with wooden dowels in the windows and steel reinforced doors. She’s the little girl with the monster still under her bed.
Ms. Gardner’s latest release, THE NEIGHBOR takes you into a world that appears safe and secure only to find monsters are real. Her characters are fully drawn, complex with identities of their own. Well told in both first and third person points of view, Ms. Gardner goes a step further and presents several first person tellings in the story. The reader is taken into the minds of each of the main characters and sees the world through their eyes. While I have read other authors who tell a tale from two first person points of view, too often the characters sound all too similar, making it difficult to tell one from the other. Not so with THE NEIGHBOR. The mindset of each character is clearly drawn and the reader absorbed into their particular story.
One thing I struggled with was the timeline. I had just read SAY GOODBYE and was left with the impression it takes place in the present day, not twenty years ago. A few of the characters from SAY GOODBYE are in THE NEIGHBOR and I had a bit of a time reconciling their ages. As long as I treated it as an entirely different story THE NEIGHBOR was easy yet compelling to follow. I don’t think I’ve read such a psychologically intense story. The ending, while completing the Jones story, leaves the door open for yet another. I hope so because I want to know more about the Joneses.
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