Both Emily and Suzy are interesting characters. Emily is an aspiring writer, shunted off to London by her parents while they endeavour to repair their fractured relationship. Suzy lost her husband suddenly and tragically and is struggling to cope. Both women are emotionally fragile and vulnerable, and have far more in common than either realise.

Emily has gone missing and nobody seems to be worried about it, except for her downstairs neighbour who has gotten to know Emily from afar, but nobody can be trusted, can Emily be saved? The author has created a fine set of characters, written with compassion and empathy and some very cleverly placed red herrings. The writing itself I enjoyed. I’m not sure if it’s the author or editor that let this premise down.

Of course she gets worried about her neighbor but she is also scared to lose her main focusing subject help her to get through her days. Emily suddenly disappears for days and it seems that only Suzie, the complaining neighbor is concerned. That’s because when Suzie's husband walked out after an argument no-one went looking for him and was found dead from an accident. Suzie is convinced that had she gone looking they may have found him alive and rescued him. The fact that no-one is concerned about Emily’s disappearance now becomes her crusade in life.

Suzie lives in a small ground floor flat in Islington. She is very much a loner, doesn’t interact and hates London, especially the crowds and noise. It is evident from the start that there has been a major tragedy in her life and, despite their best efforts, she pushes her family away and won’t discuss it. It is mostly sad, depressing, slow burn thriller gripping your attention from the beginning and you’re trapped inside Suzie’s blurry, unreliable, struggling head! There’s something amiss about Suzie : she keeps drinking, spiraling into pessimism, holding on to memories with some man: a husband, lover, what happened to him?The book has a sad, but immensely creepy vibe. Sad because both women seemed so lonely, yet they were immersed in a highly populated urban center. They might have been friends if they could have looked past their differences. One needed quiet, the other needed noise to stave off her loneliness. Creepy because Suzie had an aura of ‘ unreliable narrator‘ about her… For the first half of the book I was all the time wondering if she was a narrator that I could trust. Suzie reports this to the owner who informs Emily’s parents and the police. But Suzie thinks she knows Emily best (but why?) because she could hear everything going on up there. So she undertakes her own half baked investigation (but why?). That’s the story. The rest is padding. I’d still try another book by this author though. I’d like to see if another book will be more promising. Suzie is always complaining about the noise her upstairs neighbour Emily makes and they have words but when Emily goes missing Suzie feels upset and reports this to the landlord.