Californians Nora Howell, her husband Keith, and teenage daughters Stacey and Piper are moving to New York for a year. Keith’s job is moving him to New York for a year, and after a lot of discussions, Nora decided it would be easiest for them to all move across the country for a year instead of making him commute, flying back to see them once or twice a month. Nora found an amazing rental in Brooklyn, and they flew across the country for a year of new experiences.
It doesn’t take long for Nora to meet one of her neighbors—just one trip to the dog walk in the nearby park, and Nora started talking to Heather. She and her wife Jules and their two teenagers live just down the street, and they immediately invite the Howells over for dinner to welcome them to the neighborhood and to Brooklyn.
The dinner starts out well, with Piper getting along well with Courtney and Stacey talking to Lennon, sharing their mutual love of reading. But then someone mentions what happened in the house they had just moved into, and the whole atmosphere changed. Keith, Stacey, and Piper were all shocked and concerned to find out that there had been a triple murder in the house. Nora acted like she was as well.
Twenty-five years before, the couple who has lived in that house had been shot, along with their teenaged daughter. No one had ever been prosecuted for the murders. There were never even any suspects. The house hadn’t been lived in for all those years. The owner was a businessman who lived in Europe, so he didn’t use it himself. And then he finally put it up for rent, just before they moving to New York for a year.
As if that wasn’t creepy enough for Stacey, the true crime aficionado, she gets the feeling like someone is watching her. She thinks she sees someone one a nearby roof watching her with binoculars. But after taking a second look, there was no one there. But the feeling persisted.
Weeks go by, and they all start to settle in. There are more coffees and dinners with Jules and Heather. The girls start at their new school, learning to take the subway around the city. Keith gets settled into the job and tried to be present at home with Nora and the girls. And Nora, a horticulturist by trade, starts cleaning up the yard. She buys new herbs and flowers to plant and pulls up some of the old plants that were in the wrong part of the yard. But when she does that, she finds a small metal box. When she pries open the box, she finds the original papers for the couple who had been murdered, packets of cash, some jewelry, and under all that, a gun. Nora tells no one about her discovery, locking it in the shed that no one else uses.
While the Howells look like a perfect family, there are secrets that seep out as the weeks go by. Keith worries that Nora has been cheating on him. Stacey heard her parents talking about how maybe she needs a psychiatrist, and she wonders if she does, even though she’s finally at a school where she’s making friends and she even has a boyfriend. Piper is sneaking out to go to parties and smoking pot. But Nora is the one with the biggest secrets, the ones that could destroy her entire family. And moving back to New York may just be the lit fuse that causes her whole family to blow up.
Bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub has crafted a standalone thriller in The Other Family that can stand up to some of the biggest names in thriller writing. This is a powerful story of secrets and how they can affect a family’s well-being. The characters are compelling, and the New York setting adds more texture to the story, from the seasons that the Howells get to experience (some for the first time) to the noise and crowds of the subway to the peace of the park.
I have not read a lot of Staub’s books yet, but I thought this one read like butter. It’s smooth in its craft, layering in the hints of the secrets that will come to light eventually, spreading out the tension through the different characters so that no matter where you look, there is something creepy happening. But at the same time, you can’t look away, because you want to know the whole story. You want to know what happens to this family but also to the family that came before. This is a smooth thriller that keeps you guessing all the way to the end.
Egalleys for The Other Family were provided by William Morrow through NetGalley, with many thanks.
