Hey!

I just finished reading How to Make Your Neighbors Disappear by Samara Cove.

And it's about a neighborhood full of people with deadly secrets, including a serial killer.

Serial killers hiding in plain sight are a thriller staple, and I've read some good domestic ones over the years.

Here are my favorites.

Serial Killer Thrillers

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

Millicent and her husband look like the perfect suburban couple. They have a nice house, two kids, and a marriage that still has spark. But that spark comes from a shared secret: together they stalk, abduct, and kill.

In My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing, we follow the husband as their carefully hidden routine starts to unravel and puts everything they've built at risk.

The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey

In small-town 1970s Minnesota, a group of teenage friends witness something they were never meant to see. Then one girl goes missing and another turns up dead.

In The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey, we follow one of the girls as she realizes a killer may be moving through her town. And that's far from the only danger she's up against.

The Good Lie by A.R. Torre

Dr. Gwen Moore is a psychiatrist who specializes in violent minds, and she gets pulled into the case of a suspected serial killer.

In The Good Lie by A.R. Torre, we follow Gwen as she works alongside a defense attorney whose own son was one of the killer's victims, and the line between hunting a monster and understanding one starts to blur.

And the newest addition to the list:

How to Make Your Neighbors Disappear by Samara Cove

On Silent Ridge Road, the neighbors gather every fall for the same friendly block party. But behind the smiles, almost everyone on the street is hiding something. And at least one of them has been getting away with murder.

How to Make Your Neighbors Disappear by Samara Cove is a domestic thriller set in a suburban neighborhood.

Cove's writing is functional and easy to read. The dialogue and inner thoughts get a little cheesy here and there, but it does its job well and keeps the story moving.

We follow a big ensemble — six point-of-view characters — across a single timeline. I thought that many POVs might get overwhelming, but the book is long enough to give each thread room, and the chapters are named after whoever we're following, so it stayed easy to track. The introductions could have slowed things down, but we learn early on that one of these characters is a serial killer, which hooked me from the get go. From there the others start layering in their own secrets and schemes, and before I knew it I was halfway through.

It plays as part mystery, part thriller. It opens on the mystery, ramps into thrills, then eases back into mystery as the threads converge. Most of the characters are proactive, each pushing their own piece of the plot forward, which keeps all those threads moving.

There is some background romance but no spice. There is swearing. And although there are a lot of murders in this one, there is no graphic violence. The tone stays light throughout, and it does ask for a fair bit of suspension of disbelief.

So, what about the ending? (No spoilers, obviously)

I was fine with the ending. The main mystery lands, even if I didn't quite buy one of the outcomes. The denouement was pretty good, long enough to see where the characters end up after everything, even as a lot is left open for the next book in the series.

How to Make Your Neighbors Disappear by Samara Cove is a fun, entertaining domestic thriller that bites off a lot with its big cast of secret-keepers. If you don't mind suspending your disbelief and you're happy to start a series rather than a one-and-done, you'll have a good time with this one.

Latest Updates

• Furious premieres on Hulu July 27. Emmy Rossum plays an FBI agent and former homicide detective on the hunt for a calculating female serial killer.

That’s all for this week. See you next time.

— D.E. Dunne

P.S. Let me know how I did today by replying to this email.

P.P.S. I would love to hear your recommendations for thrillers you loved. Reply to this email, and I’ll add them to my TBR list. Thanks!

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