This post used to be a page on my blog that I updated from time to time. But now I see the last time I updated it was three years ago. I used to listen to a lot of fiction podcasts, but now most of my podcast listening is in the realm of non-fiction with only 3 fiction podcasts in my regular rotation. So I’ve decided to retire this as a page and instead turn it into a post for archival purposes.

After surviving an attack that nearly leaves her dead, Kirby is determined to catch the man responsible. Unknown to her, the serial killer Harper can travel through time, making him particularly difficult to catch. She gets help from Dan, a sports reporter who used to cover crime.

“Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.”

Our narrator Simeon is a middle-aged man who is mourning the loss of his husband Jonathan. He’s also recently lost his job. He has an ex-wife and a 16-year-old son. We don’t see much of the son, but I often got the impression he was younger than 16 due to the way his parents treated him and talked about him. With references to chat rooms and webpages buffering before loading, I initially thought this took place in the 1990s, but it turns out it takes place in the present time.

The prolog reads like it belongs to a different book as it takes place in space in the future and the rest of the novel takes place in a satirical version of a hospital in present-day China.

There are a couple hilarious moments. Our narrator Yang Wei gets sick from drinking water. He’s taken to the hospital by hotel staff. One of them takes out his wallet and bribes the doctor on his behalf. They even offer to take his blood tests for him!

Amber and her family are moving into the house where her parents were murdered. This takes place during the Covid pandemic. The movers wear their masks incorrectly under their noses, giving us a touch of real-life horror thrown into this supernatural tale.

I’m not sure what pronouns to use for Lou, our first-person narrator. When it comes to gender, Lou identifies as “the human-shaped approximation of a void” and says, “I’m not a woman, but I am a daughter.” On the other hand, Lou doesn’t object (either out loud or in thinking) when other characters use she/her pronouns to refer to Lou.

Jill is a horror novelist, which made me suspect she’s an author stand-in, and the afterword pretty much confirms it. Her sister Kitty is a social media influencer, so both of them have jobs which are extremely difficult to make a living at.

For about the first fifth of the book, the only horror in Jill’s life, besides her tragic childhood, is PTA meetings, group texts, MLMs and a serious case of writer’s block. I like that the book debunks the razor blades in Halloween candy myth and other hoaxes.

Regarding The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum said he wanted readers to feel guilty for turning the page. He wanted readers to feel complicit in the crime, to make readers feel like they were one of the people in the neighborhood who knew what was happening, but didn’t do anything to stop it. He definitely succeeded in that.