Member Reviews
I was surprised to like this book as much as I did. I think it has a creepy atmospheric vibe to it that I love. I know it’s totally not the same thing and I may be comparing apples to oranges here, but this book in a way reminded me of Ruth Ware's The Death of Mrs. Westaway. Trespassen House and the Adder House Apartments are both creepy and I love that vibe. The setting almost becomes a character and that was one of my favorite elements of the book. The characters and everything just gave me a sort of Ruth Ware vibe which is a compliment in every sense of the word. So, about this book, I think this is a solid read. I think the author did a great job of building up the tension and the drama. I was guessing throughout the entire book trying to get a sense of what was really going on. I was interested in the story from the jump which is always a good sign. I'm very picky about endings and this one was a little lacking for me. I'm not the type of reader who wants everything wrapped up in a bow, but I just didn't love the ending. However, it didn't take away from my reading experience at all and that's a testament to how much I enjoyed this book.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book. I will be checking out more of the author's work.
A must read. This book is interesting and intriguing. The characters are strong and well developed. The writing is amazing. I give it 5 stars and a strong recommendation.
The Apartment was a super quick read that I easily flew through in two sittings. It is one of those suspenseful novels that's only mildly thrilling, with a few twists and turns and a few creepy elements sprinkled throughout. I liked it enough, but there were a few things that weren't quite my favorite.
I thought that the author could have done a lot more with the narrator, Freya's, story. I felt that I couldn't trust her from the start, that something was off about her, that she wasn't being honest with the reader. The deal is that her husband cheated on her and left to live with his new girlfriend, attempted to get custody of their five-year-old daughter, Skye, then tragically died less than a year later, having never divorced her. Consequently, Freya ended up with a small life insurance policy, giving her about six months before she needed to find a new job to support herself and Skye. For some reason, something felt off about Freya the entire time I was reading the book, but ultimately there wasn't a whole lot more to that story. I thought that if Slater had made Freya an unreliable narrator, the story could have been SO much better and more interesting.
Ultimately the ending was twisty and satisfied me. It wasn't quite as exciting as I was hoping it would be, but there were enough surprises and I was furiously flipping pages towards the end of the book, desperate to find out the truth about this apartment building and its residents. I liked the book and found it compelling and can definitely recommend it for a quick and breezy thriller with a twisty ending.
Thank you to NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK for the opportunity to read The Apartment ahead of the release! The Apartment follows Freya and her daughter Skye as they adjust to a life of new normals after some major life events and changes. It seems like Freya's luck is changing when she is offered the opportunity to move to an amazing apartment and get the fresh start she desperately craves. But as the saying goes, when something seems too good to be true, it often is. The story kept me on my toes as the quirky neighbors are introduced and an unsettling feeling kicks in both for Freya and you as a reader. I enjoyed the story but felt a little bit like once you got to the climax of the drama and learned what was going on, it all happened and was resolved rather quickly and almost too neatly. Still an interesting read and compelling story.
I was intrigued from the moment I saw the cover. This was my first book by K.L. Slater, The storyline was unique and I was instantly hooked. Slater was so descriptive and I felt like I was transported right to Adder House.
Freya and Skye's world was turned upside down, that is, until the day she stepped in that coffee shop and met Dr. Marsden. Moving into the Adder House seemed like an answer to her prayers. But, shortly after moving in, Freya begins to notice some things seem amiss. Items are moved or missing from her apartment, but she can't recall how. She begins to wonder if this was too good to be true, but it may be too late to turn back. Hooked from page 1, this book had me guessing to the very end.
Thank you to Netgalley, Amazon Publishing UK and to the author, K.L. Slater for my ARC for a honest review
The Apartment is all the things you might want it to be: weird, creepy, full of mystery and what the f is going on. It's quite lovely. Our main character and her daughter seem to fall on good luck and find an apartment that could be too good to be true. Once they move in, lots of strange things seem to happen. Several times the story spins and turns and I really didn't know what was coming next. I've not read a Slater book prior to this one, but consider me a fan now. It's a fairly easy read and as most of my reading time is right before bed, I found myself looking forward to bedtime because I knew what awaited me.
The Apartment publishes 4.28.2020.
5/5 Stars
I found this book a little slow and confusing at the beginning. But after reading quite a lot of K.L Slater's previous books I knew it would be ramped up quite quickly.
The book was creepy from the outset and that didnt let up. There was clever little bits of suspicion woven throughout and you just knew there would be a clever twist coming. By the time I got to the reveal my heart was beating so quick I felt like I was living the scenario with Freya.
This book ended up being absolutely brilliant and I cant wait for my next installment from this author.
The story is engaging. You are drawn in, but the flash backs are strange. When I finished the story I felt like it was too far fetched and the ending tried to wrap everything up too nicely.
Book that I could not put down.For thriller lovers this ones for you so well written tense characters that come alive.K.L.Slater is an author that never fails to engage me in the story.#netgalley#theapartment
Obviously a very popular author going by the amount of titles and volume of reviews for them. So this book is likely to do well. Personally I found it a bit tame. I found the build up of tension very slow. It was a readable enough story developing the relationship between mother Freya and daughter Skye after the death of their husband/father. Financially and socially they are given a solution by Dr Marsden who offers them a flat in fashionable Adder House. But strange things start to happen.
Intersected with present day events are flashes into history and a scientific experiment on a young child. We are invited to make a connection between the two narratives.
One reviewer has called this a ‘gentle drama’ and I would have to agree. Nothing much happens. The writing however is good. The main characters are believable and I wanted to read on. Compared to other thrillers though it is mild. This review will appear on Amazon. Thanks to #Netgalley for a review copy.
I found this book really intriguing and well paced. I enjoyed the premise of the back story, the ‘Little Albert’ experiment of conditioning and found this very interesting. I think the book had the potential to be longer and go deeper into this experiment and also further with the story of Freya and Skye however I did enjoy the book even if it was over too soon. Elements of the book with the eerie too good to be true apartment did remind me of Riley Sagers, Lock Every Door.
This really required a whole lot of suspension of disbelief. Freya, the heroine with a propensity to vomit when under stress, seems unlikely to manage to exist in any situation especially one as complex as the one she finds herself in at "Adder House". Almost every aspect of this story seemed implausible and yet I continued reading it through to its most unlikely conclusion because I was intrigued to see how the author wrapped it up
Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer/Amazon Publishing UK for the ARC.
A slightly creepy tale reminding us that if something seems to good to be true, then it usually is!
Freya Miller has lost her husband, she has to sell the family home, she's feeling vulnerable and emotional, and needs a miracle. Just when she's at her lowest, she's approached by a man in a coffee shop, offering her and her daughter Skye, a place to live. An amazing, expensive place in Kensington, for an affordable price!
It seems perfect, but is it? Freya feels watched, things move in her flat, and her landlords are very strange...
To say I was underwhelmed by The Apartment would be an understatement! I struggled to get through it, and had to force myself to read at times, luckily it was a short book! But I probably should have DNFed it really! It was a little bit creepy, but nothing like as scary as it could have been, and the tension and build up, could have been done a lot better!
This book was slow. The plot was repetitive, and seemed to go around in circles. Not much really happened until quite near the end of the book, and even then, I wasn't really shocked! I mean we knew from the start not to trust the other residents?!
I wasn't keen on this being written in the present tense. It was mostly written in the present, but would then jump back into the past, as we read someone's journal. I don't mind that in a book, if its done well, but the flashbacks in this book were confusing and uninteresting to me.
I didn't feel that the characters were well developed, aside from Freya, and even though her character was well fleshed out, I found her quite unlikeable. Her naivety was so ridiculous, that I just couldn't believe it! Who tells complete strangers such personal things about themselves, and lets them take control of their life like that?! The amount of red flags, would have had most people running, the minute they even visited the place! I could however, feel Freya's fear, panic and rising stress levels, as well as her love and protectiveness for Skye, so that was done well.
BUT, why didn't she ever google things on her phone?! Was it me, or did she wait until she got home to search on her laptop each time?! What decade was this meant to be set in? From the start, I was muttering to Freya that she should look into it more before making such a huge decision, but alas no...
The action did start to pick up at about 90% in, but then that ending happened.
After such a slow build up, it unbelievably felt rushed and sudden?! It was so far fetched, silly and pointless, that it was actually laughable. There were so many plotlines and characters that were left hanging! Why include them, if they're not going to go anywhere?! I had many questions after, and it quite annoyed me!
To sum up, The Apartment was boring, ridiculous and disappointing read for me. I haven't read anything else by K.L. Slater, and after this, I am reluctant to do so! I've heard this is reminiscent of Lock Every Door by Riley sager, which I own, but now am not looking forward to reading.
However, this book does have many good reviews, it sadly, just wasn't the one for me.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK for my early readers copy, in exchange for an honest review.
What would you do if approached by a random stranger in a coffee shop offering you the opportunity to live in a beautiful apartment in an expensive city like London at a ridiculously low rent?? Well, cynical old me would run a mile, wondering what the catch was since such an altruistic offer must be too good to be true. I’m sure many of us would do exactly the same but Freya, reeling from the death of her husband is desperate to make a new start with daughter Skye. Desperation can make you act entirely out of character so I can partly understand why Freya accepts Dr Marsden’s offer, seeing it as her last ray of hope in her otherwise gloomy world. Sounds promising so far.
However I wanted to grab hold of Freya and shake some sense into this woman as from the very beginning you know that this move will not be a good idea at all. She is an immensely irritating character, bemoaning her current status and I found it hard to conjure up any sympathy for her predicament. Alarm bells should have been ringing, alerting her to the strange atmosphere in Adder House, home to Dr Marsden and Audrey Marsden. He is incredibly strange, bestowing gifts on Freya and Skye when they first move into the apartment on the top floor, acting like a knight in shining armour. That didn’t seem likely behaviour at all in my opinion and my gut instinct would have told me be extremely wary. Freya doesn’t seem to possess these skills, all too ready to accept people at face value and quick to accept the hand of friendship, acting with extreme naivety.
Other residents are strangely absent, with Adder House largely silent which does add to the eerie atmosphere and provide some element of tension for the reader, wondering what may befall Freya and Skye whilst they are living here. Apart from a fleeting meeting in the garden with an ethereal like character called Susan and then a more friendly introduction to elderly Lily who takes a shine to Skye, I felt this novel was lacking in characters to provide more of a backstory to past events at Adder House, or perhaps more pertinently, those that do play a part are quite sketchily drawn so that I never felt a had a grasp of their who they were and their relevance to the storyline. The Marsden’s are the only characters that feature heavily, with Audrey an overbearing, rather cool and distant woman whilst the doctor is more of an old school type of gentleman but I liked neither of them.
There is some further tension created when bizarre things happen to Freya and Skye. Noises are heard, the source of which is impossible to detect and there just feels like an extra presence in the apartment with objects not in place where they should be. This is a well used method to induce panic and paranoia, in this instance into the mind of Freya whilst making the reader question what are the darker forces in play here and why is Freya their chosen subject. Whilst I flew through the pages, I didn’t feel there was enough tension created, finding it fairly easy to guess how Freya’s nerves are so put on edge but not the reasons why. In fact I would say not a great deal seems to occur until the very ending when revelations are all very rushed and frankly ridiculous. The author leads us to the conclusion with more insinuation rather than any shock inducing acts. Occasionally there are scenes from the past woven into the present time which of course do connect all these individuals together and odd snippets of conversation about a past tragedy at Adder House do finally make Freya distrust the Marsdens but perhaps a fraction too late??
This was my first time reading a book by this author and on this occasion I have to say I was disappointed and underwhelmed and it didn’t live up to expectation. Maybe it’s just this title and I need to explore others to get a better sense of this author’s style of writing. I’m incredibly appreciative of the chance to read The Apartment in the form of an ARC courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley, just on this occasion sadly it wasn’t for me.
Faced with the challenges as a single mother, Freya had to uproot her five year old daughter Skye from the home she grew up in to an apartment across town. The home she lived in with her husband was sold.
At a coffee shop observing flyers for places to rent, Dr. Marsden approaches Freya with a solution. He’s in need of a tenant at the Adder House in which he resides.
Overall:
The prologue was an excellent preview of what’s to come. KL Slater’s words provided just enough information to hook me in. The premise was quite promising leading me to believe I was heading into a ghost story. The cover is absolutely stunning. The title was another leading factor for me wanting to delve into The Apartment.
Imagine my surprise when I realized this is not a ghost story or a haunting. Once I got over my initial shock and disappointment that I wasn’t going to read about this monster house I redirected my focus to the new tenants and there story. When that didn’t seem to be all that inspiring I spent my time investigating all the tenants. What else could I do since that’s the direction Ms. Slater guided me. I got to say I wasn’t not impressed with this direction. I had it in my mind that the Adder House was an entity of its own. I presumed this house would be treated as any other character.
It’s a character driven story focusing on the tenants who inhabit inside the Adder House. I thought the house would be suspicious and creepy not the tenants.
I was slightly taken back by the experiment scenes. The introduction to these scenes was abrupt to the story. These scenes came out of left field and didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the story, but then again I was so set on this house being haunted.
Its with much regret that I find myself not as invested in this book as I had originally thought. The premise, the title, and the cover were all leading factors, yet the dialogue and direction took a turn I wasn’t planning for. When it was all said and done I wasn’t impressed. The house wasn’t the entity I thought it was going to become. The outcome was anticlimactic.
Glad to find another great read by the author!!!! Absolutely one of my favorites. I can't wait to dive into more of her stories
I received an ARC copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for my honest opinion of it. After Freya's ex-husband died, she is desperate to find a new place to live for her and her daughter, Skye, as she can no longer afford her house. She meets an older man in a coffee shop who offers her an apartment that the rent is based on what she can afford. She falls in love with the apartment and it is just too good to be true. After Freya and Skye move in, strange things begin to happen and she soon finds out that a previous tenant died. I really was not impressed with this book at all. I normally love the work by this author but I just felt like when I was finished with it, there were so many parts of the story that were not answered.
Review of eBook
After her husband’s death, Freya Miller needs a new start. She’s sold their house to pay the bills and now she needs somewhere to live with their five-year-old daughter, Skye. But money is tight and Freya has no job. While worrying about what to do, she stops at the local Starbucks coffee shop where she meets Doctor Michael Marsden, a charismatic gentleman posting a flyer about an apartment available for rent.
Despite the fact that the apartments in the exclusive, upscale area around Adder House regularly command a much higher rent, Doctor Marsden tells Freya this one is available at a nominal cost. Finding herself intrigued, she seriously considers taking him up on his offer for her to rent the apartment.
Soon thereafter, Freya pushes aside her initial uneasiness and moves into Adder House with her daughter. But she believes someone is watching her, she hears voices, and she discovers some things moved around in the apartment; all of these episodes serve to intensify Freya’s paranoia. Skye has some difficulties with the move as well, most notably in that it means she will attend a new school, leaving her best friend, Petra, behind. But she hears voices, too, and has nightmares. And yet, Freya cannot seem to find any rational explanation for these events and she writes them off as worry giving way to paranoia or the child’s difficulty in dealing with the sudden changes.
Is Freya becoming overwhelmed by her circumstances and imagining things? Or is there something sinister about the situation in which Freya now finds herself?
Two plots unfold in this quick-read narrative: the story of Freya and Skye and the story of a long-ago research project involving a baby and his mother. The first unfolds in the present-day narrative while a series of journal entries interspersed in the present-day story reveal the backstory of the latter.
Freya has an exasperating tendency to make choices based on her erroneous belief that she is over-reacting or being paranoid. While this might be forgivable once or twice, her continual propensity to ignore that “gut” feeling is certain to frustrate readers. Unfortunately, the too-good-to-be-true situation doesn’t cause her to immediately turn and run; she continues to make cringe-worthy choices, leaving readers to roll their eyes in annoyance.
While Freya and her daughter are believable, well-developed characters, much of the telling of the tale focuses on every-day sorts of things such as traveling to and from school or moving from the house to the apartment. These scenes do little to move story forward and, while well-written, tend to diffuse any building sense of impending catastrophe that readers might feel.
With the other characters lacking strong development, readers remain woefully ignorant about the residents of the South Kensington apartment building. It is clear that everyone is hiding something, but the lack of any real information about these people leaves the reader floundering for some sort of an explanation. Something untoward is occurring at Adder House and, at times, there are strong scenes that successfully build suspense, but the ordinariness of Freya’s everyday life tends to overwhelm these foreboding episodes until late in the telling of the tale.
The ending, while a bit of a believability stretch, does answer most of the questions; however, an inference to Freya’s previous mental illness goes without explanation. More importantly, the elephant in the room [what happened to Lewis] remains unanswered. These are plot points that are certain to leave readers feeling a bit short-changed.
Recommended.
I received a free copy of this eBook from Amazon Publishing UK and NetGalley
#TheApartment #NetGalley
I will leave a review on Amazon or B&N on April 28, 2020
The Apartment by K.L. Slater is a psychological thriller, and my first book by this author. Overall I found the book very well written, it started out a little slow at the start but then the pace picked up. As the saying goes if something seems to good to be true, it more than likely is. That certainly was the case in this book. I would recommend this book to those that enjoy a good thriller.
I received an Advanced Readers Copy of the book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my fair and honest review.
I keep hearing great things about this book, but I couldn’t even get a quarter of the way through this one. It was so boring that I just couldn’t do it. Maybe I should have kept going, but the story just didn’t hook me. The writing and the characters just seemed blah. If I can’t get into it after 40 pages, I’m out. Such a disappointment by a great author.