The Family Across the Street

I love how Nicole Trope takes everyday situations and turns them into dark and menacing.
Katherine and her twins are trapped inside their own house by a madman for an entire day in steamy Sydney. It doesn't end well.
I only picked the twist early because I write in this genre and I think my mind is trained that way. Didn't diminish my enjoyment one bit.

Trigger warning
Domestic violence

Read this one for Thriller book club, and I decided to do the audio that is done by Taryn Ryan. I thought the narration was done well FYI! 
This is a domestic thriller and mystery. It features multiple first person perspectives and I felt like the POVs were pretty well done. They all switch over with chapter changes, which is really the only way to successfully do it. 
This one is pretty hard to review without spoiling, but I'll try. The book features a nosey neighbor, a domestic hostage situation, and an ex-con delivery driver with a bad gut feeling. The author layers further on top of that to make the mystery and twists more hard hitting. 
Someone in the book clubs group chat put out an early prediction that ended up being right, and I'm not sure if it's due to me reading that first or not, but I found the twist to be pretty solidly on the nose. It isn't handle poorly or anything, I just thought it was obvious. 
Other than that I did feel like the book was still kind of lacking something. That and the fact that it was released in 2021, but the ex-con is more so just described as being profiled because of his tattoos, drove me nuts. I'm not sure if maybe it's just because it's Australian and not American, but yes it is much much harder for ex-cons to find solid work, but I found the use of his tattoos as being the reasoning for most of it to be incredibly weak. Tattoos are now most definitely the norm. The guy was described as wanting to be a mechanic, not some crazy CEO or something, and the author still made that seem incredibly out of reach...it pulled some credibility out for me personally and read a bit like personal opinion. 
Still enjoyable, and a lot to like. Personally a 4/5* for me. 

Suspenseful story, yes, but a difficult read emotionally.