Too Close to Home

Rating: 3/5
Genre: Thriller / Suspense
Review Style: Spoiler-free

I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Cloverhill Lakes is the kind of picture-perfect community people dream about. Safe, polished, and full of families who seem to have it all together. The moms meet for coffee, the kids play at the park, and life revolves around school events, brunch, and summer nights by the lake.

That illusion shatters when a car explodes at the annual Labor Day party. The wrong person is killed, but the target was Regan Hoffman. As the carefully curated image of the community begins to crack, Regan is forced to hold herself together while dealing with something even more unsettling…seeing her supposedly dead husband alive.

From there, the story leans into uncovering the secrets hidden beneath the surface, following multiple women whose lives begin to intertwine as things spiral further out of control.

For me, this one had a strong start but didn’t fully deliver. It pulls you in immediately with the opening, but the pacing slows down quite a bit after that. The story follows three different women, and at times their voices begin to blend together, which made it harder to stay fully immersed without double-checking whose perspective I was reading.

While it’s labeled as a thriller, it didn’t quite feel like one. Much of the tension comes from the unfolding drama rather than true suspense, and some of the character decisions felt unrealistic. There were several moments where going to the police would have made sense, but that option is consistently avoided, which made parts of the story harder to believe.

There are also a few plot points that require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Certain actions and outcomes just didn’t feel as grounded as they could have been.

Overall, it’s not a bad read, just not one that fully worked for me. I would still be open to trying more from this author in the future.