Review by Shally_xx -- The Neighbour At Number 18 (Reload)

[Shally_xx]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Neighbour At Number 18 (Reload)" by Hawa Crickmore.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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A Neighbour at Number 18 (Reload) by Hawa Crickmore

Set in England, A Neighbour at Number 18 (Reload) is a two hundred and sixteen paged short fiction centered on the life of the character, Maria. Brenda, a widow with three children becomes fast friends with Maureen, a woman who lives on the same street with her. Owing to their friendship, their daughters, Maria and Emelia also become friends and a deep bond is formed between the two families but it all goes downhill when Emilia is forced to betray her friend. This leads to an unfortunate event that causes both families to drift apart. There is a time jump and the plot shifts to focus on Maria’s current life as an adult. She had been able to make a place for herself in the British legal profession and was now a successful lawyer. After a brief courtship, she got married to Ronald Makintosh, a former client of hers but years into their marriage, a clandestine affair ensues between Ron and the young and pretty next-door neighbor at number eighteen which threatened their marriage. The rest of the story focuses on reuniting with lost relatives and the later years of Maria’s life.

The plot is built on family relationships and friendships and how they affect each of the characters from childhood to adulthood. It covers real-life situations ranging from child molestation to depression and mental health issues. The book is majorly family themed and is inspired by the author, Hawa Crickmore’s life. On the subject of family, Brenda advises her daughter, Maria, thus, ‘It is a good thing to have your own family who you will give love and affection. They are your future and would provide you with emotional support when your spirit is down. Having a family is a good thing.’

The only thing that I liked about the book was the way the author pulled on the strings of the characters’ relationship with one another to create real-life situations that readers can identify with. Apart from this, there was nothing else in the book that really stood out to me.

For a book that is inspired by real-life situations and aims to connect readers to situations that they can relate with, in most scenes, I found the characters to be lame and lacking action. While the circumstances created by the author are in fact occurrences that happen in real-life, the dialogues felt unreal and somewhat forced. In addition to that, the large number of grammatical problems contained in the book overshadowed whatever message it was supposed to relay and ultimately made it a very annoying read which was what I disliked most in the book. The grammar was bad, it was like the book had never been edited and that made it really difficult to read. It was lacking in the use of proper punctuation, there was an insane amount of typographical errors, and mismatched names and gender. Also, the author kept switching between the present and past tenses which made reading it very exhausting.

To conclude this, the book was in no way an enjoyable read. Honestly, I had to force myself to finish reading it. I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars because it was a poor read and has a lot of issues that need to be fixed. So, I would not recommend this book to anyone until it has been professionally edited.

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The Neighbour At Number 18 (Reload)
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