“THE TROUBLE WITH LOVE IS THAT IT BLINDS YOU.”

It was the house of their dreams, until the bodies were found. When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with her boyfriend Tom, the last thing she expects is two bodies unearthed during housing renovations. When her grandmother Rose, who suffers from dementia, is questioned by police in her care home, secrets long since buried begin to surface. Secrets held tight for over thirty years.

I may or may not have gotten whiplash from the speed at which the twists were thrown into this story. 🥴 It took me a fair amount of time to get into it but wow, once I did there was no turning back.

The audio was good, with dual narrators which I always enjoy. The male narrator for Theo had such a strong accent that I had a really hard time understanding him. I had to really slow the audio down to even follow along, and I found myself just reading his parts unfortunately.

𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘰𝘵𝘦: “The sea, as much as she loves it, has always terrified her. It’s like a mighty beast, and you never know what mood it’s going to be in. It deserves respect.”

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Perennial and Paperbacks, Harper Audio, and the author for the ARC and ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a great story, with likable characters, twists and entertainment. I will go and find more books by Claire Douglas.

I love the narrator who had a slight British accent. As for the story, I think it dragged out for too long and once the story concluded, it still dragged on to wrap everything up which made it feel even longer than necessary.

This audiobook just wasn’t for me. I liked the narrator and I wanted to like the story, but the multiple points of view were distracting rather than intriguing. It was well written, but slow moving and did not keep my attention. Maybe I would have liked it better in print, rather than an audiobook.

I really enjoyed this book. The plot was interesting, that characters were distinct and well-written. I would definitely recommend this book.

This was such a great story. I really enjoyed getting to know this family. I loved their bonds and their flaws. The character development was great and they seemed so real that i felt their closeness and their hurts.

I think it was a really great mystery as well. Put together pretty smoothly. There were several different strings of things happening that sometimes made it a lot to follow. But it all came together nicely. One twist i did see coming tho.

Overall, really enjoyed this one.

I did really enjoy the narration also. But the male narrator spoke faster than the woman so i had to slow it down during his parts. Really not an issue but made it a little less seamless.

Pregnant Saffron Cutler and Tom have moved to the house Saffron's mother inherited from her mother. Lorna's mother Rose Gray is now in assisted living with Alzheimer's. Saffron visits her beloved grandmother as often as she is able to do so. Tom and Saffron, thrilled to have a home, have hired a construction crew to expand the kitchen. But, the crew hits a snag in the form of two bodies in the backyard.

The police say the remains have been there at least 30 years, which is during the time Rose owned and lived in the house. Rose is confused and can't contribute much to the police investigation though she is questioned repeatedly. At the same time, a stalker seems to be watching Lorna and her daughter Saffron. Frightened and confused, Lorna seeks answers and discovers more than she bargained for. Who was buried there and why? What part did Rose play in it?

Though the book had a somewhat slow start, it eventually pulls you in and the various threads of the story are finally woven together to make for a good read. The audiobook, narrated by audio book veterans Kenton Thomas and Nathalie Buscombe won't disappoint.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Audio for the eARC.

Saffy and her boyfriend Tom have begun remodeling their inherited home. When the contractors begin to dig in the garden, to everyone's surprise, human remains of two people are found. Saffy is even more shocked when the police begin to question her grandmother's involvement, as she was the prior owner of the home. Several big twists that I did not predict made this a satisfying listen.

This was my first experience with a Claire Douglas novel. I will always love stories with multiple POVs. Both narrators did a lovely job portraying the in depth emotions of the male and female characters. One unique feature that I'm still not sure if I liked or not: the audio producers opted for a special effect for all character dialog that took place over the phone, to make it sound more distant. While I grew used to it, I initially found this distracting and it pulled me out of the story.

This audiobook was one of the best books I have listened to in a long time. The audio was fantastic. The narrators did a great job with the multiple characters and narrators by differentiating the accents among them, and it helped make the characters come alive. I also really liked the way they did the sound effects for the phone calls, where it sounded more realistic. This was the first time I experienced this, and I feel it enhanced the listening experience. Both of these things made listening more enjoyable.

Saffron and her boyfriend, Tom, moved into a cottage gifted to them through her family. While renovating the place, two bodies were found buried under the patio. They appeared to be there for over thirty years. The police wanted to talk to the previous owner, Saffron’s grandmother, about the cottage. Rose has Alzheimer's, but she might be able to remember what happened while she lived there.

The multiple POVs work flawlessly together, and the twists will leave you on the edge of your seat. It was easy to get so caught up in figuring out the different pieces of the puzzle, but Douglas executed the story in
a way where all of the twists were unexpected, and you want to keep listening to see where the story was going. This is a well-executed psychological thriller with many twists!

Thank you to NetGallery and to Harper Audio for giving me a copy of the audiobook in exchange of a honest review.

I really enjoyed this one even though the ending was a bit sad. The way the audiobook handled the phone calls was really unique and different. Great story overall!

The Couple at Number 9 will keep you guessing on every page. It's absolutely thrilling. Claire Douglas did an amazing job at creating a page-turner!

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Audio for the chance to listen to this audiobook. The narration is excellent and I enjoyed the plot as well. Interesting family dynamics between the mothers and daughters. Also enjoyed the inherited home storyline (is this a trope yet?). Going back through time was well done with both timeframes equally interesting.

Rating: 4
Author:@ clairedouglasauthor

I listened to the audiobook version and right away you can tell they put a lot into production. How they did the phone call conversations in this book was super cool! At first I was like ‘what is going on?!’ then it clicked that they were mimicking a phone call. That helped immerse me even further into the story and it helped me immediately know when a conversation was taking place in person or over the phone. Since this book has so many characters and is told from multiple POVs I found it to be even more helpful. While I do love multiple POV stories this one had a lot and at times I had to go back to make sure I knew whose POV I was listening to. This could have just been me getting confused and might not happen for everyone. Especially since every character had their own traits and personalities but they were all written in a similar way.

This book was long! I was listening at 3.0x speed and it still somehow took me a few days to finish even though I was listening all day. My friend @sirenofbooks joked that I was listening to the never ending story and I definitely agreed with that. While it was long I never found myself bored or lacking interest in the story. If anything I was just shocked that it kept going but I welcomed it. I was enjoying the mystery and the characters so I didn’t mind the length but I can see it being an issue for others. Not every chapter or scene is exactly thrilling but you will keep gaining new information that will keep you wondering about the house and the characters.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this one! It was an interesting listen that kept me engaged until the last page. Since it is a thriller/mystery definitely don’t go reading all about it so you can experience it for yourself! Just know it is well written, the characters are developed and show growth, and the pacing was on point.

Thank you so much @harpercollins and @harperperennial for the #gifted copy on #netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGally for allowing me to read/listen to The Couple at Number 9.

Saffy has inherited her grandmother's cottage due to her grandmother's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. She is also newly pregnant and she and her boyfriend have been making renovations to the cottage in order to make more room for their child. While construction crews were digging on the grounds, two bodies are discovered. It's determined that the bodies have been there for around 30 years, which is about the same time her grandmother, Rose, moved into the cottage. Police begin and investigation and start to uncover some unsettling facts. Saffy, her mother, and the police all try to encourage Rose to remember what happened or if she remembers anything at all about living in the cottage, but with her memory loss growing worse it becomes difficult for the investigation. However, when DNA tests come back for the two victims, secrets begin to surface and some people may not be who we think they are...

This book was so twisty and turny; I loved it. I'm a sucker for a good UK mystery/thriller and this ticked all of my boxes. I don't think I even had any issues with this book at all, which is kind of rare for me in a mystery. I'd love to read more from Claire Douglas!

The Couple at Number 9
by Claire Douglas
Pub Date: August 2, 2022
Claire Douglas (Author), Kenton Thomas (Narrator), HarperAudio (Publisher)
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the audio version of this book!
I love listening to books while I drive. Thanks for offering it in this format.
* Thriller
This was so good! Clever! Twisty, fraught with emotions, and packed with secrets.
12 hours and 43 minutes of listening time.
I really liked this one!
4 stars

I enjoyed the story and found the mystery compelling and interesting. I did feel there were some plot holes with simpler aspects of the book that made the bigger leaps a little harder to take. The story is told in from multiple POVs and seems to drift from person to person and from 1st to 3rd person, sometimes within the same chapter. I did enjoy the narration.

I listened to the audio version of The Couple at Number 9. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

This is the first tile from Claire Douglas that I have read. The synopsis was better than the book itself. I liked the story's multiple points of view, and at first, I was very intrigued by the story. Unfortunately, it seemed by about a third of the way in that the story had lost steam. It felt like work to finish the book. I did not like the narration of this book from the start. I don't know if it was the accent or if I felt like I was having to figure out the author's lingo.

I love a good, twisty mystery! Pay attention though - it's complex (in a good way!) and tells the story from multiple points of view. You love the characters, too. I enjoyed it thoroughly!

The Couple at Number 9 was a solid suspense novel. It was not really what I was expecting, I thought it would be a fast paced thriller but it was more of a character driven slow burn. The narrators were great and the production was very good. I liked how the telephones calls sounding like real life. The plot itself was decent and the mystery was interesting. 3.25 Stars.

I hadn’t read Claire Douglas before now, but I am now a fan! I received an ARC of this title for an honest review. I loved every twisty, dark, shocking turn of this book, many of which I did not see coming like I sometimes do. Told in multiple POVs and amid two murders from 1980 recently discovered when a woman and her husband move into her grandmother’s old cottage rent-free, it makes you doubt what you know about your friends and your family as more and more secrets and questions emerge surrounding the deaths of the two bodies found while the couple is renovating. If you find a stopping place before bed, take it or else you’ll be up all night like me. So worth it though. Highly recommend for book clubs or at least lend it to a friend soon after so you can discuss.