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A review by alexisrt
Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan
4.0
As a native Long Islander (Levittown and Huntington) I am a sucker for books and movies set there. Garden City native Sarah Langan has set this thriller in her hometown of Garden City, slightly fictionalized. (I did enjoy the shout-outs to real places I recognized, and fittingly, aside from the one Indian family, Maple Street remains resolutely white.)
Brooklynites Gertie and Arlo have moved to picture perfect Maple Street, full of families with children. They don't quite fit in to this upper middle class street, with their lack of college education and Arlo's healed track marks. But, while Gertie was once friends with block Queen Bee Rhea, they've had a falling out. A sinkhole opening in the street is the trigger for a spiral of tragedy.
As the title alludes to, this book shares some spirit with the famous Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." As in Rod Serling's vision, the monsters turn out to be no more than ourselves, whipping themselves into a frenzy of mob violence.
The book is structured over the course of a month, with flashbacks into the past, interspersed with excerpts from books and articles about the case. The writing is sharp--the characters are complex and well written, with the backstory unspooling at a nice pace.
The one thing that didn't work for me in this book was her setting it in 2027. It's done in part to have a reason for excessively hot temperatures and to work in a climate change storyline, but it just didn't seem to meld with the rest of the book. It also made a lot of the details about tech and pop culture feel dicey; they felt more like 2020, and things have changed enough since 2013.
Brooklynites Gertie and Arlo have moved to picture perfect Maple Street, full of families with children. They don't quite fit in to this upper middle class street, with their lack of college education and Arlo's healed track marks. But, while Gertie was once friends with block Queen Bee Rhea, they've had a falling out. A sinkhole opening in the street is the trigger for a spiral of tragedy.
As the title alludes to, this book shares some spirit with the famous Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." As in Rod Serling's vision, the monsters turn out to be no more than ourselves, whipping themselves into a frenzy of mob violence.
The book is structured over the course of a month, with flashbacks into the past, interspersed with excerpts from books and articles about the case. The writing is sharp--the characters are complex and well written, with the backstory unspooling at a nice pace.
The one thing that didn't work for me in this book was her setting it in 2027. It's done in part to have a reason for excessively hot temperatures and to work in a climate change storyline, but it just didn't seem to meld with the rest of the book. It also made a lot of the details about tech and pop culture feel dicey; they felt more like 2020, and things have changed enough since 2013.