100 Books Like The Family Across the Street

Friendly tip: I do not recommend reading this novel while isolated from your family due to travel and illness, because this book hits hard in all the right ways.

It invites both the protagonist and the reader to explore the deepest wells of regret and the branching infinities that our life choices produce. In doing so, the novel beautifully confronts the seductive lure of “what could have been” while reminding us of the quiet beauty in what is.

As someone whose mind is often lost in the past or gazing into the future, this ultimate lesson of the book provided a much-needed sense of clarity.

Gone Baby Gone is book 4 in Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series. As private detectives, Gennaro and Kenzie are a top-notch investigative team and the story itself is one that will suck you in from the start. It keeps you guessing with its mix of characters, reliable, and unreliable, upfront and in the shadows. It’s my kind of story and one I often referred to while writing my book. Beyond the story of a missing girl, Lehane uses the relationship between Gennaro and Kenzie as a subplot. The friction, the conflict, the barriers in their personal life continue to give the reader angst even after the facts are uncovered. Gone Baby Gone is a suspense story that doesn’t just solve a crime, but also takes the reader into the lives of the investigators, questioning their morality, their decisions and ultimately asking the reader, is the truth always worth… show more.

Cormoran Strike and his business partner, Robin Ellacott, are searching for a missing writer who has penned a scathing novel, revealing his friend's most tightly held secrets. Any one of them would be happy to take him out. Ellacott and Strike are hired by his wife to find him. They do, brutally murdered. Besides facing a plethora of possible murderers, Strike and Ellacott face that there’s more than a working relationship evolving between them. But with Stike’s recent break-up and Ellacott’s live-in boyfriend, feelings are buried. After they solve their twisted case, I’m on to the next book in the series to see how Cormoran and Robin will move forward together. I love a good mystery and I love a relationship plagued with obstacles. The Silkworm delivers on both.

Coffin is a retired detective sergeant out of Portland, Maine. I love books by authors who write what they know and, obviously, write it well.

This book is the first in a series involving Portland PD Detective Sergeant John Byron. Coffin draws on his life experience to create an exhilarating, believable suspense novel and a likable character I want to continue to read. 

Not A Happy Family is a Domestic Suspense novel. The Mertons have everything, money, a beautiful home, and plenty of vacations. So why, after Easter dinner with their three children are they found dead? The kids are distraught. Or are they? What childhood secrets do each of them carry and is one of them murderously vindictive? I come from a big family and always enjoy reading about dysfunctional families. Luckily, my own family was only semi-dysfunctional for the most part. Nothing I needed to kill my parents over.

Ever since my mother passed away on her favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, I’ve been obsessed with how much control we might actually have in life and beyond. So, Golden Girl’s story of Vivian getting to watch her children and even make some changes after her passing was right up my alley!

I found myself identifying with her as she watched, worried, and decided when and how to alter the course of events. And who doesn’t have a few secrets they want to keep hidden? I saw what happened to my family after losing my mother and wondered what mom would say or do differently if she could have seen us and manipulated events from beyond!

I was first attracted to this book because it begins with a suicide. I have written about suicide, so I’m interested in how others view it and how it can be used as a catalyst to drive a story.

In this case, a dear friend’s suicide becomes pivotal to the evolution and development of the other three main characters. Whenever someone ends their life, those left behind begin to question everything and often suffer from feelings of guilt. This book shows how the other characters coped, moving forward, along with fabulous, colorful memories from when the four friends were together.

I love that it made me laugh and cry. I found myself wishing that I had three dear friends like the ladies in this story. 

Everybody's probably read this one, but I'll mention it anyway.This book could be titled Everyone is Lying All the Time. It's one of my favourites by McFadden.

Newlyweds Tricia and Ethan find themselves stuck in a house until the snowstorm passes. Everything about the house—the noises, things moving or appearing, secret doors—makes Tricia nervous, but Ethan has an explanation for everything.

The characters of Dr. Hale and her nemesis, EJ, are particularly compelling, and it’s saying something considering they are mostly "written" through the audiotapes that Tricia listens to, so there’s no description of their actions. Just pure dialog on the page, as if you were listening along to the tape.

It’s only at the end that you realise this novel is a series of magic tricks designed to make you look over here while the action was really happening over there.

I once lived in a close-knit neighborhood similar to the one in which this novel is set, and I was entranced by the interplay between the variety of characters in this tale of domestic suspense. The story isn’t so much about the woman who disappears one night as it is about the perplexed bunch of girlfriends who are left behind. I relished the voyeuristic peek into the hidden dramas of the various neighbors’ personal and family lives—it made me feel like I was riding a silent drone through the ’burbs, swooping unseen through kitchens, bedrooms, and backyards, uncovering people’s secrets!

I found this book deeply disturbing, despite the seemingly normal content of the story.

Like the protagonist, I could never tell what was real, what was paranoia, and what the hell might happen next. We’re inside the head of a confused, scared man dealing with disturbed characters who hide in plain sight as mere neighbors. I relate to this, as does the protagonist in my book.

Decades ago, I was seduced by a guru to become the first disciple of a small, relatively benign cult. Serving as an assistant guru of sorts—manning a branch office of our organization, so to speak, I experienced both sides of the coin—being manipulated by someone with confounding abilities, as well as manipulating others myself.