Good Neighbors

November 6, 2017
In Serling’s suspenseful debut, four privileged families in an upscale Boston suburb do their best to maintain the fiction that their lives are perfect. The strain increases when one of their number, unstable Paige, adopts a preschooler from Russia, which results in unhappiness for all involved. Narrator Nicole, who is hiding from public knowledge a deadbeat alcoholic sister and a diabetic mother back in Ohio, is drawn to adopted Winnie as she becomes frustrated with her two school-age sons. As Paige becomes more reclusive, the others in the group begin to take sides, some arguing that Paige is abusing her new daughter and some that the little girl is troubled in ways that few would be able to handle. Serling succeeds at dialing up a sense of dread: Nicole is far from a reliable narrator, and with all the other characters keeping their secrets close to their chests, much is left unrevealed. While many novels have tackled the subject of suburban secrets and unease, this one excels in particular at exploring the bonds among families. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi Inc.

December 1, 2017
An international adoption falters, splintering a coterie of rich suburban friends.When a narrator begins with "We were modest. We were moneyed. We were all of us self-made and the most successful siblings of our respective families," the reader knows there is trouble ahead. The storyteller is Nicole Westerhof, a married Boston suburbanite with two grade-school sons who's on hiatus as a writer and riddled with insecurities. (First-time novelist Serling is a married mother of two in suburban New Jersey.) The prologue is called "What We Thought We Knew" and the epilogue, "What We Knew." The space in between consists of a slow awakening to the folly of turning one's clique of friends into a substitute family for "alleviating the boredom and the isolation of middle age." The fault line appears in the second chapter, when Paige and Gene Edwards, the wealthiest among the group, announce they are adopting a preschooler from Russia. The brittle, imperious Paige and the less-distinctly drawn Gene return from Moscow with a girl they name Winifred Leigh Edwards, whose lazy eye is the first of a string of impairments. Nicole is smitten; Paige--thin, glamorous, and icy in her prematurely white hair--decidedly less so. The Edwards' friends begin to glimpse cruelty, to suspect neglect and eventually "the black trickle of something dangerous." Nicole is bracketed between her fierce preoccupation with Winnie and her efforts to keep a distance, via the phone, from an alcoholic sister back in Ohio. Serling, who favors sentence fragments, writes with verve and frequent insight: a happy memory "rising up like a swarm of mosquitoes. Almost painful." But even as she ratchets the tension, her characters become increasingly hard to care about, particularly the husbands. This weakens the novel's twist ending. Serling lands on a lethal climax among the privileged, in the vein of Big Little Lies.A spicy stew of suburban discontent is diluted by the thinness of its characters.

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November 1, 2017
American suburbia, allegedly the land of the white picket fence, is ripe ground for fiction. Serling's debut focuses on the intense relationships among a set of families in a tony Connecticut suburb. The story is propelled by the adoption of a Russian child by one of the couples, a move that shakes the neighborhood's delicate equilibrium, especially because the narrator, Nicole, worries that things are a bit awry when it comes to the new kid on the block, Winnie. Is she being abused? Nicole, balancing the demands of a psychologically unstable sister, lets her imagination go into overdrive, even as the neighbors continue to bond together as before. The situation promises to be suspenseful, but the denouement doesn't pack enough of a punch, and some readers may find the staccato writing Cameron clumsy. Awkward. Tripping over branches or else throwing a Wiffle ball badly distracting. Then there are the paper-thin characters, who seem to be borrowed from Desperate Housewives. Though it doesn't quite jell, all in all, Serling's first novel is a fast-paced and easy read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)