This was an entertaining domestic thriller but I felt that it was lacking a bit. I wanted a bit more from the characters, and from the story overall. I did enjoy it, I just wanted a bit more from it.

Aidan Marlowe is a broken man. The love of his life, his wife Holly, dropped dead from a brain aneurism while at their kids’ school, and their twins, Maggie and Bo, were there to see it. Marlowe is trying to inch forward, get through the funeral and help his kids manage their grief. When he gets a moment alone at the funeral with the coffin, he tries to tell Holly the one secret he’d not been able to tell her in life, but the ping of a text message distracts him. And that’s when he sees the text about the lottery. He’d been playing the same lottery numbers for years, and they finally hit. In a heartbeat, he learned that he’d won thirty million dollars.

He found a city that spoke to him of safety, of prosperity, of security. It’s a place with good schools, where his kids can grow up without fear. It would be a fresh start, this big house in Bury, New Hampshire. Marlowe is working with a lawyer who knows what to do with lots of money, and she’s set up new bank accounts for him and trusts for the twins. He closed on the house and hired an interior designer to fill it with furniture.

And then he found the letter.

It was printed on plain white paper and left on the front porch. It’s written by someone nearby, or a group. It’s signed We Who Watch, and it talks about the fact that his wife died and he’d won the lottery. It would have been easy enough to figure out that his wife had died, but he stayed anonymous when he won the lottery. No one was supposed to know about that. So who could have written the letter?

Then Marlowe finds out that the house has a history. The man who had been living there disappeared suddenly, and no one knew where he was. His two grown daughters had also gone missing, along with a grandson. There had been an investigation, but the local police found nothing. And then Marlowe finds a safe room in the basement.

He has to admit that there is a dark feeling in the house. Could it be haunted? Or is it just the secrets that flow through the walls? Marlowe hires a security company to put up cameras, but it doesn’t seem to help. There is still that creepiness in the air. More letters show up, telling him that he can’t move his family away, vaguely threatening, from We Who Watch.

Marlowe has his dad come to stay with them for awhile, which is good for the kids. But Marlowe keeps splintering apart. He’s drinking a lot. He loses time. He can feel his anger building, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. He wonders if he can protect his kids against the darkness in the house, against the people watching them, against the darkness growing in himself. He wants to give up. He wants to join his wife in the next life. But he still has two kids who are depending on him.

Will Marlowe be able to keep them safe in this house in Bury, New Hampshire, or will the darkness destroy them all?

Carter Wilson is back with The New Neighbor, a creepy thriller that will have you questioning your sanity as one man’s life unravels before him. The author of The Dead Husband delivers a story with a little psychology, a helping of supernatural, and more than a little danger in this domestic thriller. Wilson keeps readers guessing what is real and what is insanity while asking just how far one man would go to protect his family from evil.

I raced through The New Neighbor, trying to keep track of what I thought was really happening and what it could mean. There is a lot going on in this book, and it’s hard to know what’s real and what is not. As Marlow loses his hold on reality, it gets more challenging to see the truth, but the stakes kept going up, keeping me hooked in to the story, more and more desperate to find out what’s really happening. I thought this was a strong thriller, and I look forward to were Wilson takes us next.

Egalleys for The New Neighbor were provided by Poisoned Pen Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.

This book had a great premise, but got bogged down with too much attention on the protagonist’s deteriorating mental state.. This was maybe done so that the reader doubted his observations and deductions. However, I found it tiresome. Also, the big climatic scene with the killer wasn’t particularly compelling or scared. Finally, the author focused quite a bit on the family who had previously lived in the house and had disappeared. However, we never learn what happened to them. That was disappointing.

🄱🄾🄾🄺 / @netgalley 🅁🄴🅅🄸🄴🅆

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝑵𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒃𝒐𝒓
𝙱𝚢: @carterwilsonauthor
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Psychological Thriller
𝙿𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚛: @poisonedpenpress
𝙿𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚍 𝙾𝚗: April 12th 2022
@𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 𝚂𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚎: 3.70
𝙼𝚢 𝚂𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚎: 🏘🏘🏘🏘 / 5 Neighborhood Houses

Thank you @poisonedpenpress for my copy of the physical book and to @netgalley for the E-ARC. For synopsis of this story please slide my photo.

Ⓜⓨ Ⓣⓗⓞⓤⓖⓗⓣⓢ

The story begins with a man at the funeral of his dead wife. They are taking their time with the grave and so this man decides to walk away for a bit of alone time. He hears a chime from his phone. The lottery notification. When he reads the winning lottery numbers things soon change for this man.

Aidan decides to move his seven-year-old twins to a new town, a new neighbor after his world has just been turned upside down. His wife has died and he has gained a worthy amount of money. Soon after his arrival, he begins receiving mysterious notes and finds out that his new house has a dark history where an entire family disappeared.
I really feel like this story went to some very weird places ha-ha! However, I also thought the writing was sharp and engaging. The characters weren’t exactly the deepest and I wasn't the fondest of Aidan but still enough to be entertained. It stands to mention that Aidan in his grief (his multilevel grief spiked by guilt as it turns out) is something of an unreliable narrator, increasingly so as the novel progresses. Staying authentic to his Irish blood, he drinks too much, which muddles his existence.

I always enjoy short chapters and so Carter did and awesome job, each ending in the way that you simply have to read the next, the novel zooms by, the last third in a somewhat hallucinogenic state of uncertainty, but still…There’s a nice plot twist in the end too.

Such a thrill! Loved the characters the plot and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time! For sure will read more by this author!

This was a fast paced and complex book. There were many layers, characters, and mysteries throughout. I enjoyed the haunted house feeling. It was creepy and fun. It was a creative plot. Essentially losing and gaining everything at once.

My first Carter Wilson book, and I can understand why people enjoy his take on a psychological thriller. The New Neighbor focuses on Aidan Marlow, bartender and recently widowed father of fraternal twins. In the ultimate ironic twist, on the day of his wife's funeral, Marlow receives an email message notifying him that he has won the PowerBall lottery, providing him with the ability to leave his job and the memories of his wife behind, purchasing a mansion in a well-to-do community. But the new house holds secrets, and Marlow quickly realizes that running from one set of pain and secrets does not mean that you won't find more.

This book is one of those rare books that frustrated me, and yet kept me flipping pages. I found much of the writing to be overly descriptive, with a lot of "telling" rather than "describing". Plot twists kept occurring at an almost frenetic pace, and I started to lose a sense of suspense by about the 60% mark, just wanting to find out the final details. The ending was oddly satisfying, though. I absolutely do not rule out picking up this author's backlist.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

The New Neighbor is the eighth novel by American author, Carter Wilson and crosses over with his previous novel, The Dead Husband. On the worst day of his life, the day he buries his wife Holly, Aidan Marlowe learns that he has won Powerball. Two months later, he and his seven-year-old twins, Maggie and Bo, have moved from Baltimore to a mansion, sight unseen, in Bury, New Hampshire.

The move seems to have been made on impulse rather than logic: Aidan admits to being inexplicably drawn to this town and this house. When they arrive, Aidan feels an energy on entering; Bo, his eerily perceptive son, tells him the house is creepy.

Mere hours later, there’s a hand-delivered letter, not junk mail, but something addressed directly to Aidan, knowing much more about him and his family than any stranger should, mildly threatening and signed by “We Who Watch”.

As Aidan sets about furnishing the house and managing his enormous windfall, he does indeed get the feeling of being watched. After a second letter, he involves the police, who recommend updated security, but get no trace or other clues from the letters. Aidan finds himself seeking advice and reassurance from his very expensive (and attractive) lawyer quite often.

Aidan enlists his father to help keep his family safe, but what happens at a gathering of his neighbours seems to emphasise that someone has malicious intent. Timothy Marlowe agrees with his grandson about the house: “Like a thousand secrets trapped under the floorboards, radiating.” His father’s presence here recalls a long-buried guilt for Aidan, in addition to all the strange goings-on.

Wilson gives the reader (what turns out to be) an unreliable narrator, a strange house with a very unusual basement and a bizarre history attached, a hint of paranormal, and enough intrigue to keep the pages turning right up to the nail-biting climax. This one is hard to put down.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press.

In Carter Wilson’s thriller, The New Neighbor, Irish transplant, bartender Aidan Marlowe, buries his much-loved wife, Holly, on the same day he wins the lottery. Talk about the ups and downs of fortune. Marlowe, as he prefers to call himself, is a new widower, facing the daunting prospect of raising twins, Bo and Maggie. As he stands at the graveside wondering how he is going to cope, he gets the news that he is now a millionaire. There’s a great irony to the timing here. Now Marlowe has money, at last, serious money, he no longer has his wife to share it with. All those years of struggle together, and she’s not here to share in the bounty. Of course, the money will make it easier to raise the children, won’t it?


One of the first things Marlowe decides to do is to uproot the children from Baltimore. He buys a 8,000 sq. ft. mansion in Bury Ct. There are several reasons for this decision, and Marlowe leaves all the old furniture behind for this fresh new start. The house Marlowe buys was owned by some very wealthy people who simply disappeared. Marlowe becomes fascinated by the mystery of their disappearance.

It’s clear that life is not going to be smooth sailing for Marlowe, millions or no millions, but the money should pave the way, but instead, the money brings unexpected complications when anonymous, threatening notes begin to arrive. …After the threats pile up, Marlowe brings his Da, from Ireland to help, but Marlowe’s actions, drinking and blackouts raise the question of his sanity. Plus then there’s the whole unreliable narrator thing.

I liked the novel’s premise and the way the parasites some crawling out of the woodwork, drawn by the smell of money, but found a number of things implausible and other things jarring: the description of Holly’s face decomposing like a “pumpkin rotting in the sun”–a truly horrible image of the woman he loves from Marlowe’s mind (made me wonder if he did love her), and then the way he answers his cell phone at the graveside. Yes, he was alone, so there was no one to tut-tut–except me. Readers should be aware that there are descriptions of animal torture. This is a deal breaker for a lot of readers. You have warning and can skip it … still…

review copy

A thank you to Netgalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a strange reading experience for me. I didn't like it at all and I found Marlow, the main character so damn irritating. The writing was a bit heavy on the overload on the extraneous details and just when I would start getting in to the story, the pendulum would swing and I just wanted it to get on with it. That said, I found it was one of those rare reads that exasperated me, but couldn't not finish because I just had to know the ending. I also listened at that Irish brouge didn't hurt.

This book was so well written! It’s an addictive psychological thriller with an ending that you will not see coming. You won’t be able to put this one down!

First off, how amazing is this cover?!

This was an entertaining and twisty domestic thriller with such a fun and engaging plot. How ironic is it to win the lottery the day of your wife’s funeral! Could you imagine?! Very intriguing for sure!

The short chapters make it a quick read and are structured perfectly to continually drive the suspense. While I wasn’t utterly blow away by it, it was still a solid and enjoyable read!

This was a real thriller! Fast paced and kept me on my toes. Definitely looking forward to reading more by this author.

The New Neighbor was my first Carter Wilson novel and I was left well impressed.

A funeral, a lottery win, and moving to a new town with twins is enough to contend with, add to this threatening letters demanding a slice of the winnings and you are in for a creepy, suspenseful thriller. Who is sending the letters and what is the ulterior motive, money, revenge, or is something else at play?

With quite an interesting back story then main protagonist Marlowe is battling after the loss of his wife and trying to start fresh in a new town in the home of his dreams. But it seems that having everything isn’t always what it is cracked up to be and these letters are just the beginning of a wild ride for Marlowe and his family.

I found the storyline engaging and the loved the short chapters that kept me turning the pages to reach the riveting conclusion.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for this early reading copy, it is one that I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to anyone looking for a fast paced thriller.

I really enjoyed this story.
The story follows Aidan Marlowe after the sudden death of his beloved wife. On the day of her funeral he finds out he's won the lottery. He's a millionaire. After years of struggling through life, things will be easier for him and his twins. He follows her "Prompts" to buy a house and far away from everything they knew. This house he bought has a sad history, the previous owners disappeared. He becomes more and more neurotic and bad things begin to happen.
This was so good to read, there were a few surprises along the way. I was not disappointed!!!.
Many thanks to Netgalley for the free arc book for an honest review.
#Netgalley, #Poisonedpenpress, #carterwilson.

2.5/5 A painfully slow beginning of a story. Once you get into the full plot the characters are complex and interesting, however, the story just never really clicked with me. I wish it did as I craved more development on the story.

Fast paced book that was quite the wild ride. Very different from the usual thrillers which kept me hooked and finished the book in about 10 hours!

This is a true psychological thriller. I sat with my mouth dropped numerous times throughout this book.

One of the main side stories never gets answered and that bothers me but it doesn’t detract from the main characters story. And really that’s the most important part.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
"The New Neighbor" by Carter Wilson was a tense & addictive psychological thriller.
The world could have ended around me & I wouldn't have noticed because I was so engrossed in this book.
This was my 3rd read by Mr. Wilson, I previously read & loved: "The Dead Girl In 2A" & " Mister Tender's Girl".
I am looking forward to his next!

This was my first book by this author and it did not disappoint.

The mystery surrounding the letters that arrive was super creepy and kept me wanting to know more. The suspense built throughout the story and had me invested, turning pages quickly to see how it would end.