Looking for a fun summer romp and not too worried about implausibility? Then pick this one up when it publishes July 18.

In the vein of Big Little Lies, The Block Party begins with a bang at a Memorial Day Block party in an upscale neighbourhood. Narrated by Alex (stereotyped wine-swilling wealthy white woman) and her daughter Lettie (eighteen and privileged), the characters of the cul de sac are revealed along with all of their various secrets. The timeline moves back to the year previous and then moves forward to the present day.

The characters, while unlikeable, were interesting and each had a lot of drama going on. I am going to be honest, this book is for the reality tv watchers. If you enjoy the drama of 90 Day Fiancé and the Housewives franchises then I believe this book will fit into your summer reading list. While I love a good character driven literary story or a twisty suspense book particularly ones with situations I worry about getting myself into, I can so easily fall into this kind of popcorn book. I am not knocking this book and really enjoyed it but it won’t be for everyone. Will I be looking for whatever this author writes? Yes, I will be!

Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for an ARC of The Block Party in exchange for my honest opinions. Another fun one by a favourite publisher.

Check out my storygraph account (Pomoevareads) for content warnings!

What should I call The Block Party? A domestic thriller? We all enjoy a peek into the messy home lives of others. How about calling it something more menacing like Suburban Noir? In the end I enjoyed very much this summer read chockablock with many interlocking situations that are all satisfactorily tied up in the end with a nice, neat bow.

This is a new author to me. This book was quite unusual to me. I thought it would be thriller but the book fooled me. It was about the neighborhood.

This book was very intriguing and interesting. It held my interest thru the whole book.

I'm going to look for more books by this author. I really loved this book. Great job.

Phew this one took a while for me to finish! I've never read a Jamie Day book before but would read another one. The book gave a Heathers vibe, "Writing about revenge is cool, I guess, but taking revenge ... now, that's something to truly savor." I thought to try the reverse psychology on my daughter but it didn't work, "Parents just don't get it. The more they want us not to do something, the more likely it is we're going to do it. Such thinking is hardwired into our teenage brains." I don't think I've ever heard the phrase, but it stuck with me, "if everyone threw their problems up in the air, people would race to catch their own." It resonated with a teenager who didn't want to catch what another one was lugging around.
The Block Party by Jamie Day. #NetGalley #july182023

I really wanted to love this book but I just could not get into it. I started/stopped it 2 times before pushing through because the publish date was approaching but reading this felt so much like a chore. The characters are not at all likeable and there were so many secrets that by the time the end arrived I was just glad not to be learning anything else about these people. This was a miss for me.

I was irritated with Alex and how she is portrayed at the beginning of the book and that possibly colored my opinion from the beginning. I found Lettie and her perspective interesting, but I struggled to stay engaged in the story, skimming and sometimes outright skipping sections of the book to get to the end. It just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Jamie Day for the eARC.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable neighborhood drama told from multiple perspectives over a couple of different timelines. The characters were engaging, the plot was well paced, and there were several twists that I didn't see coming. Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced reader copy.

Told in alternating viewpoints by Alex and her daughter, Lettie, this story highlights the drama in an elite neighborhood. The party begins in present day with a murder and then switches back to the block party the previous year leading up to the event. Lots of drama and hidden facts slowly emerges in this lively story. Too slow for me.

I really was looking forward to a thriller or mystery about a small town wealthy suburban neighborhood filled with secrets and lies that unravel at a block party. Unfortunately, the block party doesn't begin until toward the end of the book. There were so many characters that I honestly had to take out my phone and take notes to keep everyone straight. Everyone had a backstory and a relationship and/or children, and I kept losing track of which person was married to which person or which child belonged to which family.

I felt that the book really dragged, and I wanted more of suspense or mystery. It never really came. I enjoyed the two perspectives, but I wish that they were both in first person. I wanted more excitement from the block party, but it was just lacking.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book.

This was such a fun read!!! I feel like anyone living in a neighborhood could relate. I love how the story enfolded and it had be guessing until the end!

An annual block party and neighborhood full of secrets. This was a medium fast paced suspense novel told through multiple perspectives. I guessed several of the twists early on, so I was only lukewarm on the book. It's low-stakes and not to stressful.

Thank you to Netgalley & St. Martin's Press for the advanced reader copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for this ARC of "The Block Party" in exchange for an honest review.
As much as I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I couldn't help wondering......did author Jamie Day want us to take this stuff seriously? Or does "The Block Party" function as a sly, dry humor spoof of those plunges into uppercrust suburban dysfunction like "Big Little Lies" and "Little Fires Everywhere"?
I only mention this because the host of troubles in the sumptuous Alton Place cul-de-sac makes those other books look like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. And the neighbors of Alton Place, to the everlasting entertainment of their community chatboard members, make the characters of TV soap operas look like the Teletubbies in comparison.
And that's what makes this book such a fun read........you'd have to plow through 800 episodes of "Days Of Our Lives" to revel in the Mt. Everest of tribulations that author Day compactly piles into one single swiftly paced novel. On this one cluster of houses, those "sands in the hourglass" come pouring out at the speed of light.
In cataloguing the sheer amount of heartaches, anxieties and deep dark secrets on display, I'm almost tempted to put them alphabetical order......
Just name your poison and it's all there waiting for you on Alton Place. Crumbling marriages, infidelity galore, spousal abuse, drug abuse, booze abuse, (enough wine guzzled to fill several Olympic pools) ,rumored mariticide, racy photo apps, psychotic stalking, rape, emotional wounding of adolescent kids, and some serious anger mis-management issues. That's as much as I can remember at the moment, but I'm sure I'm leaving out more than a few additional miseries and maladjustments.
And YA readers may also want to dive into all the turmoil, since one of the gang's teen daughters co-narrates, thereby providing a bonus list of teen angst tropes......parental torment, peer pressure, forbidden sex, aching crushes, college applications, bullying, drugs, cyber-revenge....and horror of horrors... summertime grounding!
As anyone can tell from these descriptions, sooner or later, this ongoing melodrama kept a constant boil will not bode well for more than a few of the neighbors and come to a rip roarin', twist-revealing finale. In that regard, "The Block Party" doesn't disappoint.
Whether you swallow this for real or chuckle along with it as a guilty pleasure, I fully admit I had a great time with "The Block Party"......but never, ever as a neighbor, just casually visiting.....like slowing down on the highway to rubberneck a fender bender.

3.5 stars rounded down - This was definitely an interesting and unique domestic suspense book! I feel like the title is a little misleading because this centers around so much more than the yearly block party. I loved the drama, secrets, and unexpected twists but I found myself bored once in a while.

This is a must summer read! Everyone loves summer block parties until they go horribly wrong! Find out why in this new fabulous book!

This review will be posted on July 18, 2023 to: https://instagram.com/amandas.bookshelf

A murder takes place at a neighborhood block party in the opening pages. Then, the novel rewinds to the block party held the year before. As the year unfolds over the pages, we learn more about the families who live in the sprawling McMansions. They all have great curb appeal, but once you start digging, theres a LOT beneath the surface. This novel kind of reminded me of Knots Landing, the primetime show from the 80s that focused on a southern California cul-de-sac. Like the show, the novel focused on a lot of domestic drama, which isn't necessarily a genre I like. However, you needed that background to understand the murder in the present-day. #TheBlockParty Rating: somewhere between 😐 / meh, it was ok AND 🙂 / liked it
•
This book is scheduled for publication on July 18, 2023. Thank you @stmartinspress for providing me this digital ARC via @NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A compulsively readable novel you will be unable to put down! The characters are relatable and feel real, if a little nutty, and their lives are diverse and complex. The timeline is a little bit confusing at first although it quickly sorts itself out and you become embroiled in the problems and issues of these characters. No one is all good, no one is all bad. Real life, albeit maybe a bit juicier, on the page. I loved it!

What a fun twisty read!

The Block Party is about a rich cul-de-sac group of people who are friends, their lives intertwined in different ways. With that comes a lot of drama and mystery as their secrets are revealed. What happened at the block party? The neighbours who weren't invited all want the inside scoop!

Highly recommend - this is the perfect summer thriller

Told in dial points of view, this twisty thriller will take you for a ride, nothing and no one is who they seem. An excellent debut novel by Jamie Day. Looking forward to more books by the author
Thank you to Net Galley, St. Martin's Press, and Jamie Day for the advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

Alex and her teen daughter Lettie tell this tale of murder in suburbia- but who has been killed and why? This starts with the neighborhood Memorial Day party and then moves back a year to bring the reader into the lives of the various residents. While there are a lot of characters and you won't be able to tell initially who is important, it's not hard at all to keep them straight. No one, btw, is especially likable (not even the narrators). This is becoming a familiar plot- privileged (but not all) neighbors with grudges and secrets- but Day's got good storytelling skills that make this a page turner, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. No spoilers from me!

The Block Party by Jamie Day
Published: July 18, 2023
St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Domestic Thriller
Pages: 367
KKECReads Rating: 4/5
I received a copy of this book for free, and I leave my review voluntarily.

Jamie Day lives in one of those picture-perfect, coastal New England towns you see in the movies. And just like the movies, Jamie has two children and an adorable dog to fawn over. When not writing or reading, Jamie enjoys yoga, the ocean, cooking, and long walks on the beach with the dog, or the kids, or sometimes both.

“Once an egg tosser, always an egg tosser.”

Alex lives on a prestigious block, where everyone is friends. Everyone knows everyone. Kids were raised together, wives have ladies' night gatherings, and they take turns hosting a Memorial Day BBQ until the truth starts coming out.

Holy. This was intense and read like a soap opera! The secrets, twists, lies, deceit, and ego were bonkers. I enjoyed the build-up and character development.

There are a lot of characters in this book, but the writing is so well done that it’s easy to keep track of everyone. I found the way each character was fleshed out to be refreshingly realistic.

The last half of this book is so intense. There are no pausing places, so I devoured the ending. As things started falling into place, my jaw hit the floor, and I could not read fast enough.

This was well-written and had such delicious, devious twists.