REVIEW: Nosy Neighbors by Freya Sampson
Nothing brings neighbors together like someone else’s secrets… At Shelley House, the walls have ears, and they’re attached to a ragtag duo of busybodies ready to pry, snoop, and generally annoy their neighbors into solving a crime.
Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House longer than any of the other residents, and if you take their word for it, she’s as cantankerous as they come. But Dorothy has her reasons for spying. And none of them require justifying herself to Kat Bennett.
Twenty-five-year-old Kat has never known a place where she felt truly at home, and crumbling Shelley House is no different. Her neighbors find her prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat’s plagued by a guilty secret from her past.
When their apartments face demolition, sworn enemies Kat and Dorothy agree on just one thing: they must save their historic building. But when someone plays dirty—and one of the residents is viciously taken down—Dorothy and Kat seek justice. The police close the investigation too soon, leaving it up to the unlikely amateur sleuths—with a playful Jack Russell terrier at their side—to restore peace in their community.
CW/TW – death of a child, addiction, death of a parent
Dear Ms. Sampson,
I had my issues with “The Busybody Book Club,” but this book has higher ratings and I could get it from my library so I decided to try it next. I liked it but still have issues.
The blurb isn’t really a great match for what we get. I was expecting the action to be more focused on the outside threat to the building in which these characters live but instead more time is spent on all the inside people drama. There are reasons for many of the characters to act as they do and I enjoyed the fact that several of them are in much better places – mentally and emotionally as well as physically – by the end.
MsDorothy Darling has spent the last thirty some years relentlessly poking her nose into the business of her neighbors. She keeps meticulous records of every little infraction or bother that they cause each other and to her. Needless to say, her reputation is that of a prickly busybody. The new tenant – ahem, illegal subtenant – of the flat opposite her is a vulgar young woman with pink hair and tattoos. Kat isn’t thrilled with living in the building that used to be thought of as the house of a witch (and it’s soon obvious who that actually is and why) and she’s scared of being back “home” which is the scene of her past infraction that got her banished. But something called to her to finally return.
Now the two, as well as most of the other tenants, are caught up in trying to stop their eviction from this grand old building. But will their own squabbles and personal issues overshadow trying to keep the sleazy landlord from booting them out?
For the first half, I was glued to what was happening in the story. There are a lot of characters and a lot of subplots. Dorothy suspects everyone of everything and keeps notes as well as placing asterisks beside the names of the people she thinks are the culprits. Except, that’s actually all of them. She just will see guilt in everyone and invent the most extravagant theories. Her neighbors roll their eyes at her or snarl some expletives.
Then the book shifted away from being a cozy mystery and switched to being a soap opera. Everyone has past issues that affect their present. And no one, I mean no one, will talk to those to whom they need to talk. I understand that we all have secrets or issues or painful things in life but there are almost no characters in this book who aren’t either hiding something or refusing to face some reality. Yeah, okay fine.
As the drama unfurls, the personal issues do take on importance to the story as they direct how characters act and react. The personal outcomes ended in extremes though. For some, when truth finally emerges I found myself – more than once – thinking, “That’s it?” If these two had just talked for five minutes, years of misunderstandings could have been eliminated. And when people finally did talk, it was sort of “Oh, okay. That’s how you felt. Well, good that we have that sorted then.” It was very much of a let down. On the other hand, in some current situations characters would suddenly fly into blazing rows mere minutes after having made up from the last contretemps. Dorothy’s convoluted imaginings usually resolved as nothings.
Another thing bothered me. Most of the characters were to some extent, caricatures. The big scary tenant is eastern European, the woman wearing skin tight clothes dates asshats, pink haired Kat with tats has a bad family history, older precise Dorothy is the nosy neighbor, Omar pushes his daughter Ayesha to study law.
To be fair, by the end, it seems like everyone is in a better place even if some of these crippling issues are resolved far too quickly. One thing bothered me though. What happened to the darn building? Did I miss what became of it after the final confrontation? Oh, well. I don’t think I care enough to go back and reread the end. C
~Jayne
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