Synopsis:
Be careful where you live.
Cintra Coutinho loves Elliott, her husband, and her teenage son, Boston. She is determined to win them back.
Cintra has always told fibs and exaggerated. But one day she told Boston a horrible, despicable lie. It rolled off her lips easily without Cintra giving it any thought before blurting it out. It was too much for Elliott, and he demanded a trial separation. Cintra has had to face the fact that she is a compulsive, pathological liar . . . and undergo treatment. Before she can return to the family home, she must prove that she can go six months without telling a single lie. Which, for a compulsive liar, is much harder than it sounds.
Fortunately, Cintra’s college pal, Pedro, a Broadway dancer, needs a roommate. Cintra has barely moved in when a couple takes up residence in the next-door apartment. They’re sociable and have a young boy, Leo, staying with them while his mother is “in Europe.”
But one morning Cintra sees a note posted on their door. “I’m being held,” written in a childish scrawl, is accompanied by a drawing of a boy with a gun to his head. Add in the combination lock she notices on the couple’s front door and the eerie sounds she hears at night through a shared wall. Cintra’s imagination is in overdrive. She suspects Leo has been kidnapped.
Cintra is desperate to learn the truth about what’s going on in apartment 3D. And she might need to tell a few lies in order to find out.
But what she discovers proves that the most dangerous people might just be the ones living right next door.
Review:
C.G. Twiles is a pseudonym for an author who claims to be a “longtime writer and journalist who loves Gothic, mysteries, cemeteries, animals, ancient history, and old houses,” and has been “determined to write a Gothic romantic thriller” set in the present since having read Jane Eyre at the age of twenty-one. Twiles’ first novel was The Best Man on the Planet and it has been followed up by The Neighbors in Apartment 3D. Twiles acknowledges that the second book “was heavily influenced by Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby” and, indeed, that source of inspiration is evident.
Is this what normal people did all day? Told every last shade and gradation of truth? How was that even possible?
As the book opens, Cintra welcomes Niko and June, a couple in their forties, to the Brooklyn apartment building in which she resides when she encounters them in the hallway, and relates to Pedro that Niko seemed to have glared at her. She observed that Niko had dark eyes, a shaved head, and a suntan, but appeared to glower at her. Pedro has agreed to be Cintra’s “accountability partner,” a person who will challenge her when she appears to be exaggerating or, worse, outright lying. So when Pedro does just that, Cintra decides she should try to befriend the new neighbors because it would be nice to have friends who are not aware of her issue and circumstances.
But that night, Cintra is awakened by a long, low whine that she hears coming from the other side of the wall behind the headboard in her bedroom. She’s convinced it’s the sound of someone crying. But who? And why?
That’s the genesis of Cintra’s quest to learn what is happening next door in Apartment 3D. She is suspicious that something is amiss, and is highly observant when invited, along with Pedro, to dinner and interacting with June and Niko. She comes up with creative, ingenious, and downright reckless ways to solve the mystery, walking a tightrope because she wants badly to get back together with Elliott. Does she just have an overactive imagination that is destined to get her into trouble and derail her efforts to reunite the family she loves? Or is there really something nefarious happening behind the door with the odd combination lock? Twiles keeps readers in suspense as Cintra obsessively explores the possibilities.
But Cintra is very much in the same position as the mythical little boy who cried wolf. Because she has told so many lies over the years, no one takes her words at face value and Elliott shows no subtly when expressing his doubt about Cintra’s veracity. So she has to stealthily investigate in order to determine ifher theory — that young Leo, June’s purported nephew, has actually been kidnapped by the couple and is being held against his will. Leo is supposedly the son of June’s sister, from whom Pedro is subletting the apartment, an opera singer performing in Europe.
Twiles has concocted a wild and complex tale, at the center of which is a surprisingly empathetic protagonist. Yes, Cintra is a demonstrated liar, but she is neither malicious nor mean-spirited. With that one horrific exception, her lies have been calculated to evade the truth, including about her lack of progress on her second novel — she is stymied about the genre and plot. (Ironically, Cintra is adept at inventing dramatic situations in her real life, but struggles to make them up for the fictional tale she is supposed to be writing.) Or exaggerations designed to make her appear successful or popular. She did once tell her father that she had been in a car accident, a falsehood that deeply disappointed him. Throughout her marriage to Elliott she had lied, and he confronted her from time to time, but, sure to form, she would keep lying, pretending to be confused by his accusation. To Cintra it seemed like fun and games until her behavior negatively affected her son. She thought her fabrications were “just exaggerations, or a harmless altering of reality. But I’m telling you, I didn’t do this stuff as much when I was younger. I had a penchant, yes. But it became worse a few years ago.” Could there be a deeper meaning or reason for Cintra’s escalating dishonesty? Or even a physiological explanation? Whatever the reason, she deeply and genuinely regrets the words that caused Elliott to demand that they separate. She wants to be a full-time mother to Boston again, and knows that Boston misses her and wants that, too. And she is making a genuine effort to stop lying, and prove to Elliott and Boston that she is worthy of their trust and love so that she can return to their home. Her doctor warns her that change “isn’t going to happen overnight. It took years for this habit to form, and it could take years to gain control of it.”
The book’s pace never lags as Cintra follows one clue after another, accelerating as she moves closer to the answers she seeks until it reaches a feverish speed when, on Halloween, no less, there is a Rosemary’s Baby-esque confrontation that sends her on the run across Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. With her life on the line and her son in grave danger, Twiles reveals how complicated the story really is and delivers several surprising developments, not all of which are entirely plausible or logical. Those details can be overlooked, however, because Cintra is endearing and, as a mother, relatable. Readers will find themselves cheering her on as she races to save herself and her son, and learns the devastating extent to which she has been deceived and betrayed.
The Neighbors in Apartment 3D is an ambitious second novel that overcomes the lack of polish that would be expected from a more seasoned novelist with enthusiasm, suspense, and a unique premise. It’s an entertaining mystery that will leave readers wanting to read more from a talented new voice.
Comments are closed.