Thursday Thriller Audio: The Block Party by Jamie Day

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Block Party by Jamie Day

Mogsy’s Rating (Overall): 4.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Thriller, Suspense

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Macmillan Audio (July 18, 2023)

Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins

Author Information: Website

Narrators: Megan Tusing, Suzy Jackson

Wow, so there are thrillers and then there are thrillers. When it comes to this genre, I can never resist a good domestic neighborhood suspense, and if you are like me and prefer them packed to the gills with drama and scandal, I’ll have a feeling you’ll enjoy The Block Party as much as I did.

Every year, the residents of Alton Road celebrate the arrival of summer by throwing an exclusive Memorial Day block party that is the envy of the entire town. And every year, the event is a spectacle, complete with sizzling barbecues, free-flowing booze, family games and activities for the children. It is the present when the book opens, and the party is in full swing. The story is first told through the eyes of wife and mother Alex, who has had a bit too much to drink. After falling onto her ass into a kiddie pool, her husband Nick orders her to go back home to sleep it off. Thoroughly humiliated, Alex crawls into bed and closes her eyes…only to wake up a few hours later to the sound of police sirens. At least one of her neighbors is dead.

The plot then takes us back to the year before, to the last Alton Road Memorial Day party. Alex’s daughter, Lettie, then a high school junior, has been suspended for the last few weeks of school for vandalism (but in her mind, it was for a good cause). We meet her cousin Dylan, the son of Lettie’s sister Emily and her husband Ken who also live on Alton. Next, we have Riley, Dylan’s girlfriend and Lettie’s former best friend turned nemesis. Riley’s parents are Willow and Evan, their troubled marriage headed for divorce. Rounding out the neighbors is Brooke, whose husband died under suspicious circumstances on their cruise vacation, leaving her a rich widow. On the day of party, Samir and Mandy Kumar are also in town with their college dropout son Jay, looking to buy a house on Alton.

The Kumars soon move in, and the rest of the story flows forward chronologically, hitting all the major holidays as the neighbors come together to celebrate throughout the year. Everything comes to a head exactly one year later, back to the same block party in the book’s intro, and we find out exactly who died and why.

Yes, there is a huge cast of characters to keep track of, making me think books like these should always come with a family tree or a web diagram for readers to refer to in order to remember all the different relationships. Everywhere you turn is another disaster (the good kind!) unfolding. Alex suspects that Samir may be abusing Mandy based on the couple’s strange behavior, while her own drinking problems get progressively worse. Her sister Emily discovers large sums of money disappearing from her joint bank account with husband Ken, who himself begins clashing viciously with “Bug Man”, an annoying rep from a pest control company. During a girls’ night out, Willow lets out a huge secret which would devastate and enrage her already volatile husband. Brooke causes quite a stir when the men discover her OnlyFans site, rankling their wives. And that’s just the adults! As for their children, Lettie befriends Jay, recognizing a fellow misfit, but realizes too late that he may be too much of a bad boy even for her. Dylan, already feeling overshadowed by his golden boy older brother, spirals further into anger and depression when he finds out his girlfriend Riley is cheating on him with a mystery man. Riley herself has recently come across a shocking piece of knowledge that has turned her world upside down, exacerbating her drug abuse.

As the story progresses, readers are kept abreast of the details surrounding these bitter disputes and all the juicy gossip, and it’s surprisingly easy to follow along even with so many characters. I definitely attribute this to the skill of the author in making sure that the focus is spread out and balanced, and the entire book had the punchy feel of a fast-moving TV series with an ensemble cast. Plus, the fact that there were only two POVs, Alex and her daughter Lettie, probably made the task of keeping track of everyone feel more manageable.

Ultimately, by the time we’ve reached the one-year mark, we’ve become aware of the many reasons why the residents of this neighborhood would want to kill each other. More importantly, the story does a good job of establishing that just about anyone could be the murder victim in the intro for whom the sirens tolled. Oh yes, with a story like this, it can only be murder. With the end taking us back to the beginning, I also loved the clever way this book was structured. The ending was even relatively believable, unlike a lot of thrillers that completely fly off the rails for the sake of sticking in one last twist or shocking reveal. Of course there are still moments of absurdity in this, but the point is, somehow I’m strangely cool with the way everything turned out.

Overall, The Block Party was amazing in terms of providing pure popcorn entertainment and might be the perfect contender for the ultimate beach read thriller of the year. The book was also extremely fun to listen to in audio, with both Megan Tusing and Suzy Jackson delivering fantastic performances.