Nope! Ughhh I hate giving bad reviews but this just wasn’t it! So boring! Characters sucked! Story wasn’t thrilling!

I don't like giving bad reviews but this felt like the author was trying too hard to show you how cool and quirky he is by using lots of big words, and clunky sentences.
The characters were AWFUL and really weird. And not in the cool and quirky way he was aiming for.
I gave it two stars because I did keep reading it even though I didn't like it, so points for being compelling.

The cover is beautiful,

The people/neighborhood are awful in this story so I found it hard to read. Overall I found the book anticlimactic. The married couple were insufferable and I didn't enjoy.

After an egregious violation of company standards, Adam is now an unhappy stay-at-home father with a strange compulsion involving Ali, his neighbor across the street. Sarah, his wife, is a teacher at an elementary school where her principal Evie Kemp’s behavior is erratic and harassing. Evie’s son provides a link between these three characters.

The ironically titled The Neighbors We Want is beautifully written. It reads like a play with characters so well described you can see them and understand what motivates them. However, not one of them is likable (several are fairly repulsive) and their behaviors are twisted and repellent. It is narrated by Adam, Sarah, Evie and Crispin Kemp. None are reliable and all lie to themselves. The action moves from past to present and back again. This is at times confusing but the technique lats the reader see events through the eyes of all the participants. The Neighbors We Want is a difficult book to read. That said, it is almost impossible to put down. 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and Tim Lane for this ARC.

Book: The Neighbors We Want
Author: Tim Lane
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Pub Date: September 5, 2023

Meh. A very weird book. The first couple of chapters I was starting to get into it and then it just took a weird turn. Every body was sleeping with someone else. There was weird obsessions. There was no character development at all. I just didn’t enjoy it. I don’t recommend it.

Thank you Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for this sneak peak! Publication date is September 5, 2023.

White bro fetishes a Black woman as a plot point? Big nope for me, the married couple were insufferable and didn’t deserve to get away with anything.

Very slow paced with highly unlikeable characters lacking depth. I would say this was hard to get into but I never fully got into it. It was a good idea with a less than delivery. Two Stars.

Thank you Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC.

This was a slow burn book with some unlikeable people. Overall, a decent read that kept my attention.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane books for my ARC!

I personally found this book very challenging to get into. It didn't seem to flow too easily and was bit confusing in how the writing changed in the first two chapters.

A small community/neighborhood thriller to keep you guessing!

Adam is a stay at home dad who spies something across the street that makes him weary. He is unsure whether to share this with his wife, as he was recently caught doing things he knew he should not be doing. Adam's wife Sarah is struggling with her job as a teacher and the quiet obsession of her principal. The Principal is obsessed with many things, including her badboy son. Her reports on him in a police questioning are scattered through the book, lending a tension that grows as you read closer to the end. If you like a neighborhood thriller, a domestic tale of doom or just are wondering about the neighbors, The Neighbors We Want is for you!
#TheNeighborsWeWant #TimLane #CrookedLaneBooks

This is a tough one to rate. I was expecting thriller/creepy vibes and while I got a bit of that the rest of it was odd.

I give positive feedback on the writing style since I finished in a few hours and found the pacing fast. I enjoyed the multi POV and didn't find the time hops too confusing.
My negative comes in the characters themselves. All are extremely unlikable. The husband and wife are miserable with each other due to lack of communication. The neighbor, Ali, across the street could have been likable but we never got a full sense of her personality since she was just labeled as Black and big boned, oh and an artist. It felt odd that a white dude was writing from the perspective of a young black female. It didn't feel genuine. Crispin and his mom are freaking weird. The relationship between Eve and Sarah was also never fully explained...not sure I get what that was supposed to be, maybe intimidation?

This could have been a great novel about seemingly normal neighborhoods and all the secrets beneath but it was lost in weird/one dimensional characters.

Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Publishing for the ARC.

Nope. Just nope.

I thought this would be a fun and entertaining suspense or domestic thriller – kind of Rear Window-like. Instead it’s just…oddly racist people who can’t control their hormones.

These people are awful. Not in a fun, scandalous way, but in a very much no thank you kind of way.

I semi-liked one character, Ali, but she’s also the least developed of all characters. I mean her main characteristic seems to be that she’s Black and “big-boned”.

Adam is whiny, irritating, and weirdly desperate.

Sarah is whiny, irritating, and (here we go again) weirdly desperate.

Crispin is oddly one-dimensional for someone who clearly has issues. But don’t worry, he’s also whiny, irritating, and weirdly desperate.

And Crispin’s mother (whose name I can’t remember) is just weird. Whiny, irritating, and weirdly desperate and I really didn’t understand the whole relationship with Sarah.

I wanted to kill everyone but Ali – and I only didn’t want to kill her because she was surprisingly a non-entity.

Most definitely not for me.

• ARC via Publisher

The Neighbors We Want
A Novel
by Tim Lane
This was a toughie for me. Everyone was a bit insane. Some more than others. It was odd how the POVs were skipping in a different areas. But, I did stay with it. Yes, everyone except the poor baby had many things they are hiding.

I struggled a lot with this book. I really wanted to like it as the synopsis sounded intense.
Really the book was anticlimactic, a lot of back & forth plot and I didn't like or care about any characters. I felt slightly uncomfortable about the racism and how the writer wrote about this. Hard for me to explain but it just felt awkward. Just not the book for me. 2.5 stars

I found "The Neighbors We Want" to be somewhat difficult to get into as the book has a slower pace. However, I would recommend this for people who are curious about the theme and/or its characters. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This book was sent to me electronically by Netgalley for review. The characters are realistic but not likable. Neighbors watch…they talk…this book moves somewhat slowly. The author is talented at writing a book with intrigue.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

2.65-3/5

This was an interesting book and I appreciated the different perspectives. However I didn’t like any of the characters, and I found the book ultimately very anticlimactic. It also goes back and forth to some scenarios/time in that year and I just didn’t feel like I could connect with the story well enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Rating 2.5 stars.

I typically enjoy a psychological thriller, and I read this book in one sitting because I did find myself needing to see what happened. So from the standpoint of suspense, it performed well.

There were certain aspects of career development that I thought were excellent. For example, the development of Adam was done in a way that shed light on the very real stresses of being a stay-at-home parent.

I also thought the development of the relationship between Adam and Sarah was effective in showing just how complex relationships can be.

I felt a sense of discomfort reading this book, however, and I think it was due to the way race was presented. The depiction of racism that existed in the white characters was fine coming from a white author. It was extremely difficult and uncomfortable for me to hear a white author projecting about what was happening inside the mind of a Black woman in these situations, however. I’m having trouble putting exactly what I am trying to convey into words. Black women face racism constantly and the author was right to make this clear. It was just hard to feel that he was presuming how she was thinking and feeling about the things she was experiencing. This wasn’t central to the overall plot, but it was enough to make me uncomfortable in my reading experience.