Cassie Hamer’s, The End of Cuthbert Close is a Fabulous, Fun, Thought-provoking Read

From bestselling author Cassie Hamer, comes a hilarious tale of warring neighbours in Australian suburbia, with a mystery at its heart.

You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your neighbours. (Trad. proverb, origin: Australian suburbia)

Food stylist Cara, corporate lawyer Alex and stay-at-home mum Beth couldn’t be more different. If it wasn’t for the fact they live next door to each other in Cuthbert Close, they’d never have met and bonded over Bundt cake. The Close is an oasis of calm and kindness. The kind of street where kids play cricket together and neighbours pitch in each year for an end of summer party.

But no one’s told Charlie Devine, glamorous wife of online lifestyle guru, The Primal Guy. When she roars straight into the party with her huge removal truck and her teenage daughter with no care or regard for decades-old tradition, the guacamole really hits the fan.

Cara thinks the family just needs time to get used to the village-like atmosphere. Beth wants to give them home cooked meals to help them settle in. Alex, says it’s an act of war. But which one of them is right? Dead guinea pigs, cruelly discarded quiches, missing jewellery, commercial sabotage and errant husbands are just the beginning of a train of disturbing and rapidly escalating events that lead to a shocking climax.

When the truth comes out, will it be the end of Cuthbert Close?

Cassie Hamer’s first novel, After the Party was a bestseller and I feel this is destined for the same success. The End of Cuthbert Close is a great read, and exactly what I needed to take me away from the current world situation and into the neighbourhood of a more relatable world. Cuthbert Close could be any neighbourhood in Australia. It’s that close-knit, middle class community where people know each other, kids grow up together and everyone looks out for each other. Cassie write’s female friendship really well and the friendship between the three very different mums, Cara, Alex and Beth is great. To take this setting and throw a new family into it to rock the boat is a lot of fun.

The End of Cuthbert Close is a fabulous combination of witty dialogue, very real characters, and important social issues to create an utterly entertaining tale. I zipped through this but slowed towards the end because I didn’t want to leave Cuthbert Close… I enjoyed being there.

Cassie Hamer is a merging of all that is wonderful about authors like Marian Keyes, Liane Moriarty and Sally Hepworth. With this, her second novel, she shows she’s here to stay. The End of Cuthbert Close is a fabulous, fun, thought-provoking read.