Review by Muskan Upadhyaya -- The Neighbour At Number 18...

[Muskan Upadhyaya]

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

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3 out of 4 stars

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The Neighbour At Number18(Reloaded) is purely a family drama written by "Hawa Crickmore". Novel initially describes about the struggle of two single mothers- Brenda and Maureen. Both of them became friends and so do their daughters Maria and Emilia as well. Brenda lost her spouse at a very young age and use to had nightmares due to loneliness. Maureen's fiance also left her suddenly which itself is a mystery. Writer introduced another character Tyler, Maureen's nephew. He was shacky and unstable in his behaviour. His constant desire for sex with young girls leads to many turns in the story.

Novel covers the time lapse and after years,on one hand Maria found the love of her life, Ron. They were settled with their beautiful family and on other hand due to some major hustle bustle Emilia and her family had to separate. A sharp turn came in the story with the arrival of a nurse, Shirley with her 2 young sons in house no.18. Ron and Maria were settled in their married life and were really strong as a couple but the story unwrap Maria's hidden love for Tyler, will this efect their relationship? Will Ron be able to trust Maria anymore?

The families which were separated due to inevitable reasons,united after years. Maria and Ron also took Brenda to live with them. Author had discussed about the genuine and ground level matters like feeling of old age people when their family abandon them, how their agony increases with the decreasing days of their life. But all this while where was Emilia and her family? Were they even alive? In the later years Maria got diagnosed with Dementia disease due to which things went down between her and Ron. Will their love wins over these issues?

One need to read this novel to get all the answers, there are certain positive aspects of novel which make the reader to think about these social issues,one such is the child molestation, its consequences, dark side of SSR and establishment of anti SSR.
Novel also gives us an insight about how the God gives us ray of hope in dark phases of life by narrating Maureen's life incidents who was deeply in pain due to Tyler and Emilia's henious acts and also because her fiance left her but she got that ray of hope when she visited Church.
Another interesting thing about the story is that there are many unexpected turns in it which keep the readers on their toes.

One negative aspect is that the author has mixed up some names of characters, he didn't even clarify whether Emma's child is a baby boy or a baby girl.

The novel has too many grammatical errors and typos like "spices of birds"(page-6), "she was wore"(page-54) etc. which can't be ignore,the plot of story is quite interesting but due to typos and errors "I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars".

Readers interested in family drama, sex and relationship and some grounded family issues will find this novel fascinating to read.
Beginners can also read it as it's not written in hard core English language and hence its easy to read. I suggest that children shouldn't read it as it has some detailed romantic content.

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The Neighbour At Number 18 (Reload)
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[Kaushiki Parihar]

I am not interested in family drama, but I like stories with female lead characters. Nice review!

[Muskan Upadhyaya]

Thankx for your comment:)

[Medhansh Bhardwaj]

This book had so much potential with the family drama and all that going on. But the grammatical errors cannot be ignored. Keeping this in mind, I will have to skip this one. Great review!