The Magpies

This book was riding high in the Amazon best seller list for a while, at the bargain price of 99p I ignored it for a while but then the reviews seemed very favourable so I thought I'd give it a try. The story of Kirsty & her boyfriend Jamie who buy their first flat together and move in with grand plans for a happy future together and the promise of a quiet life.

From the night of the housewarming party odd things begin to happen. Hoax calls to the fire brigade, pizza deliveries they didn't make, odd mail. They don't think much of it. They make friends with their neighbours downstairs Chris & Lucy and soon they begin socialising together. Then their friend Paul is seriously injured on a karting day that Chris has invited them all on and things turn sour. Letters complaining about the noise they make, recordings of them making love and odd deliveries start arriving and it's clear their neighbours are behind it. Just how far will they go to make life a misery.

Promising plot? It should have been. It had flashes of genius about it, Kirsty falling pregnant and going through a pregnancy under all the strain. The spiders appearing mysteriously in their flat. There were some interesting bits but despite the promise I found it all strangely dull. I didn't buy it.

At the start of the book Lucy and Jamie are really close and yet by the end she doesn't even feature. It's like she just exits the last quarter and stops caring. I didn't understand why she wouldn't have fought harder for the man she loved. Jamie's descent from computer programmer to criminal was dubious. I just didn't believe it. It wasn't credible.

It was worth 99p but I wouldn't pay any more than that for this book. I'd give it a miss.