Don't Judge a Neighbor by Their Wardrobe

Helen Cooper's suspense novel, "The Downstairs Neighbor", takes a new spin on a missing person's tale. The novel follows three floors worth of tenants: a set of "over-attentive" parents and their teenage daughter, a woman on the brink of breaking down when her roommate departs, and a married driving instructor wishing for more than his day-to-day responsibilities.

Cooper introduces an array of characters who all undergo further development throughout the piece. It isn't a standard novel in which a daughter goes missing, the parents lose their minds and she's miraculously found after being abducted from the bad man who might've been seen as good. Initially, the novel ALSO covers a character's life which takes place twenty-five years earlier. It takes a bit to discover whom the twenty-five-years-ago character is, but once the puzzles pieces fall into place, as a reader, I was left wanting more.

5/5 stars!

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