Three unusual characters (a man, a young girl, and a cat) reside in a boarded up house away from the prying eyes and questions of the world outside. Secrets are buried in the birch woods behind the house that he must protect from others. A woman, Dee, moves in next door to the man whom she suspects kidnapped her little sister years ago. She is certain this time she will find the answers she has been searching for.

The Last House on Needless Street is an unusual psychological thriller by author Catriona Ward. The plot synopsis for this one hooked me and I was excited to read it based on all the rave reviews. Despite wanting to love this one I really struggled getting through it. I'm keeping my summary vague as not to spoil anything as the "twists and turns" seem to be the main attraction for many readers. The novel transitions between POV's of different odd characters, including a "queer" bible reading cat. Yes, that's not a typo...and just like this novel many of the paragraphs you read may appear to have inconsistencies or contradictions that you might initially overlook but soon realize are clues to figuring out the mystery. I will say, although I realized pretty early on what was happening there were some plot points that I didn't catch until the end. I think my biggest struggle with this one included my dislike of all the characters. Their inner dialogue and social interactions with others and the outside world felt a bit exaggerated. I will say that part of the plot twist is relevant as to why the characters act and think this way but it still made it a bit of a struggle to want to continue reading. Just because I didn't love it doesn't mean other readers won't enjoy it. Overall this novel was an interesting, although not original, concept that will have the reader questioning pretty much everything.

HOLY SHT!!! As many others have said, this is a very hard book to review. Mostly because you don't want to give anything away. It is extremely hard to put into words the depths and intentions of this book without giving away the big picture.

I guess I'll start by saying this book as SO MUCH MORE than I expected it to be. I almost put it down at first because it was super confusing, but it's meant to be that way. You are not alone in thinking this, but push through and keep the little things it gives you in your head. It will make sense soon enough and you won't want to put it down after.

It sounds interesting in the blurb, but what this story actually is and how it all fits together is nothing you would ever imagine from the back cover. It is intense, fucked up, haunting, sad and a little bit hopeful. Everything about this story is a jumble that needs undoing to be figured out, and that is pretty much its whole purpose.

The characters are fantastic, you get a very deep understanding and insight into each one of them. How such hurt and loss can unravel someone and shatter their very being. Go into this story with an open but strong mind, because it might very well shatter you as well once you know the truth.

The audiobook was pure perfection. The characterization was amazing and truly brought this one to life. You could really feel each character and their emotions com through the narration.

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Netgalley for a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review

I read this freaky book so quickly. Weird! I couldn’t look put it down. Of course, it is going to have a twisty ending. I have read this author before, and look forward to reading more of her work.

2 stars. Thank you Netgalley and Viper for the arc. This book, I feel, was miscategorized. This is not a horror book. At no point did it feel unsettling, creepy, or scary. This was one long book and I felt like there was no pay off whatsoever. This book was not for me.

Loved loved loved. Not enough space in this review to describe how phenomenal I thought this book was. It was truly haunting and I couldn't predict the twists as they kept coming; I felt like I was really getting sucker punched with them. Such a great read.

Loved this highly original literary horror novel with multiple twists and turns. The author does an excellent job in portraying the three main characters while slowly peeling back, like an onion, the different layers to this story. Well-done and highly recommended.

Horrifying addictive novel. Our main protagonist Ted lives in a house with his daughter and cat . With disturbing memories of life with his mother . You won’t know which way is up or down right or wrong . You will not be able to put this truly original scary , thrilling novel down

The story within these pages at first seems to be fairly straightforward but completely veers off in very unexpected directions. I found my feelings about Ted shifted throughout the book. The ending was a nice surprise. I won't say more than that because I don't want to spoil the book for other readers.

WOW. I truly do not know how else to describe how I felt after finishing this book. Gothic horror, kidnapping, child abuse, insanity.. it has it all but that is not the heart of the book. There are not twists so much as huge surprises. HUGE. Anymore and I would ruin all the surprises. I highly recommend for fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, Stephen Graham Jones, Joe Hill, Richard Chizmar.. you get the picture.

Wow. Pay close attention when you're reading this one. There are so many twists and turns you'll find yourself flipping back to re-read parts again and again. Definitely takes you to dark places with a unique story.

“‘There’s a monster inside each of us,’ he says. 'If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you.’”

At the end of a street in a quiet neighborhood, there is a house where Ted Bannerman lives with his daughter and his cat. Many years ago, children went missing in this town, and one of those investigations led to the house on Needless Street. That’s why Dee has taken up watch in the abandoned house next door, convinced that Bannerman had something to do with her sister’s disappearance. It might be true. It might be worse than she thinks, and what’s buried in the woods behind the house might change Dee and Ted forever. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Macmillan-Tor/Forge. Trigger warning: character death, parent/child death, animal death, abuse/abusive households, torture, stitches/needles, broken bones, violence, some gore/blood, severe injury, hospitals. (Note: I’m skipping a couple trigger warnings because they’re spoilery. I’ll include them after the spoiler mark with the rest. Feel free to ask about specific ones!)

An approximation of my experience reading this book:

50%: I have no idea what’s going on.
55%: OMG I KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON AND IT’S SO MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. 😱😭
100%, at my past self: Lol girl you didn’t know shit.

In short, The Last House on Needless Street is a mindfuck from beginning to end, and I’m so here for it. This is pretty much everything I ask for out of a horror novel, plus some things that the genre usually doesn’t come through on. I’ll explain in detail after the spoilers, but I actually recommend that you don’t read them if there’s ever a chance of you reading this novel. I had a hard time even describing it without giving things away, and it’s 100% one of those stories where it’s better to go in cold. Don’t ruin this book for yourself. It’s so much better to just experience it.

This is one of the best examples of unreliable narrator that I’ve ever read. From the beginning, we know that we can’t fully trust Ted’s point of view, since he tells us right from the start that he has trouble knowing when something is happening. (“I don’t always get tenses right. Everything always feels like it’s happening now and sometimes I forget it actually happened then.”) The other most common narrator is Ted’s cat, Olivia, who for some reason seems far more reliable than Ted despite the fact that she’s not human, but it also becomes clear over time that Olivia, as a cat, doesn’t understand everything she sees. She’s limited to her experiences in the house, and we very rarely see what’s strange about our everyday lives.

And that’s one of my favorite things about this book. There are so many strange little details, most of them not all that noticeable at first, but the more they pile up, the more we get the sense that there is something terribly, terribly wrong in Ted’s house. Why do things that are broken keep turning up unbroken? Is the timeline not linear? Is the rug by the door orange or blue? Dee’s is the only perspective outside the house, but rather than provide clarity, it only further muddies the waters. (Possibly the one thing I don’t like about the book is the rather abrupt ending to her chapters; for all the closure we get for the other characters, there’s almost none for her.) All of it adds to the sense of confusion and unreality that permeates the book, but Ward is expertly weaving together the layers of the mystery, dropping hints that won’t make sense until suddenly they do, and the picture is so much more horrifying than I’d guessed. It’s the kind of book I wanted to start over again immediately to see what I’d missed, and I’m already looking forward to reading it again (and again). I liked the beginning and middle, but it took the end to push it into love. Be prepared to hear me screaming about this one for a while.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

Trigger warnings: mental illness, dissociative identity disorder.

I love the way this book managed to convince me that Ted is a monster who tortures children, precisely because this is the kind of tasteless horror trope that often gets pinned on the mentally ill in fiction. It’s so easy to look at something we don’t understand from the outside and decide we know what’s real, but the truth is that Ted is the victim, not the monster. And people with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than they are to be perpetrators. I love the way the novel sticks with him even after the reveal, which is less shock value than it is cultural critique aimed at our own biases (and those of the horror genre in general). It takes great care in showing us that Ted is a person, an innocent person who had terrible things done to him, and that he’s deserving of care and friendship. It’s a far from typical ending to a horror story, offering a surprising bit of hope and optimism that makes the book all the more powerful.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

I’d like to begin by saying thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/forge for the ARC of The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward.

I went into this book expecting horror and suspense. What I found was a roller coaster. A true psychological thriller. I thought I knew what had happened several times throughout this book. As I kept reading, I would read something that threw me for a loop. I’m awful about reading ahead when the suspense got to me. I tried to do that in this book and was still left not knowing what had happened. It wasn’t until the last few pages that everything fell into place with the rest of the book. In a good way! Catriona kept me hooked until the very end.

I loved the slow build of the narrative and the horror adjacent elements. The multiple perspectives were engaging and the writing was all encompassing. Really enjoyed this!

Propulsive and mind-blowing, The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward is a novel that might challenge even the best puzzlers and most jaded mystery fans. Narrated by several characters, the basic premise is to figure out the circumstances surrounding a young girl’s disappearance eleven years ago. Ward pulls her willing readers along for a very curvy ride. Some may experience a sense of exhilaration while others might just end up feeling dizzy. Certainly, most will turn back to page one and reread it with greater understanding. No more can be said without spoiling The Last House on Needless Street. Do yourself a favor—stop reading reviews now and go read this book. The less you know going in, the better.

Thanks to the author, Viper and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Full disclosure, I almost DNF this book. It was hard for me to connect with the different character's POV and experience. But it did have my curiosity and I pushed through. I AM SO GLAD I DID! At the 40% mark is where things started to connect for me and then I blew through the rest. If you are someone who enjoys the feeling of... "What? WHAT? WHAT?" meaning some twists and turns, this book is for you!

I also really appreciated the afterwards from the author. It humanized the book and was touching

This was one very weird book, in a good way. I spent a good portion of the book trying to figure out what the heck was going on and what was going to happen. Ted Bannerman lives a reclusive live at the end of Needless Street, very close to a large forest. His daughter Lauren and cat Olivia are his companions. Ted obtains a variety of medication from the bug man, a guy Ted thinks looks like a bug. The medicine and overindulgence of alcohol are Ted's escape from reality. All the windows in the house are boarded over after Ted had been wrongly accused in the disappearance of a young girl and people found out where he lived and threw rocks through the windows. Ted takes solace in feeding birds in his backyard, only to discover one morning that someone has killed the majority of them. Ted is the main voice, though we also hear from his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia on their perspectives. The young girl that Ted had been accused of kidnapping, Lulu, has an older sister who has never forgiven herself after the day Lulu went missing and becomes fixated on Ted to the point of moving into the house next to him and watching his every movement, breaking into his house to look for Lulu. The story moves along at a steady pace though as I mentioned, it was not always easy to figure out what was going on, the clues are revealed like peeling an onion, introducing child abuse/neglect and mental health issues. Overall I enjoyed the book and would recommend. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I sat down and read this book in one sitting. I was driven to finish this book because I wanted to know what it was about. While I had a serial killer/cult/supernatural idea at first, the real reveal was too far in for me to either care or not be irritated for being confused about what was happening.

Clearly, this wasn't for me, but I admit that the characters were very diverse and different and did hold my attention; it's why I wanted the plot to be my first guess.

When you think you’ve figured it out, keep reading because I guarantee you’re wrong.

Also, don’t let the horror tag scare you away if that’s not your thing - it’s much more of a psychological thriller with some horror crossover themes.

This is a book that defies description or genre. I guess I'd consider it a psychological mystery, but it encompasses so much more. It begins as a typical missing child/serial killer story, then goes off in unexpected directions, touching on deep emotions. Even after I suspected where it was going, it was gratifying to see it unfold. This will be an easy book to recommend to a wide variety of readers. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"I am made with pain, for it, of it. I don’t have any other purpose, except to die."

This is a book that I've been hearing a lot about. Readers kept saying that this book will shock and scare everyone who reads it. That it'll make you uneasy in all the best horror-filled ways. Then I noticed that Stephen King had a mini-review on the cover. I was definitely sold after that. After reading this book, I feel as if I have been duped.

At first, I didn't know where the story was taking me. So that made me more intrigued with the story and the characters. As I went to bed that night after reading a hundred pages or so, it finally dawned on me. I figured out what the big secret was. Well, I thought I figured it out, and let me say this... I like my ending better. The author took the soap opera way out and I hate that. It was some bullshit.

There's not much I can say because every little thing could spoil this for you. There were points of view from four characters and one is from a cat! A damn cat! That's what I enjoyed most about this book. The point of view from a cat who gets locked inside sometimes. Let's hear what the cat, Olivia, has to say! Everyone else bored me.

The Last House on Needless Street was a bullshit of a book. Everyone kept telling me how amazing this was and that I had to read it. I'm still wondering if we all read the same book? I feel as if I wasted my time with this because it wasn't worth it. Those secrets at the end were eye-rolling worthy. Ugh! I'm still angry about it.