Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this ARC in return for an honest review.

Full Disclosure

This no-holds barred satire sees a cast of unabashedly dastardly characters compete to inherit the considerable estate of Agatha Benedict. There’s just one rule: Last one alive wins. So dress to impress and check your morals with the butler because it’s time to review Dead End Drive.

Conditions

It’s 1993 and we’re in Louisiana. That’s it. That’s all the standard book setting you get, because this warped reality has different ideas. This is a world where a wealthy old lady called Agatha adopts an actual human child to replace her dead cat. His name is Kelly (the human, not the cat), although he does wear Poopsie’s old collar as a bracelet.

Parties

Everything in Dead End Drive is an extreme, especially the characters. I revelled in despising the them. Whether it was catty stylist, Alexandre (legally changed from Alexander, natch), fake psychic Adelaide or failed tennis pro, Clint, each and every one of them shows the worst of humanity. It’s like the seven deadly sins all trying to off each other at a cocktail do. Even protagonist Kelly is difficult to like. My personal favourite though was Gavin, the giant Scotsman who causes havoc wherever he goes.

Delivery

There’s something refreshingly freeing about the casual murder and mayhem in Dead End Drive. The joy of this book is in ditching any sense of social niceties and revelling in its sheer abandon. Seriously, characters openly discuss planning to kill each other. But once you get past the simplicity of its premise – waiting to see who will survive and win – it does deal with some hefty concepts. Mainly, it explores how far people are willing to go for money and the murky places where money meets morality.

Kieran Regan’s understated performance brilliantly underscores the often-absurd actions of the characters he plays. He not only manages to juggle various accents, but hits just the right note of sardonic humour. To my ear, some characters are portrayed more successfully than others. For example, I thought Clint was just the right side of insecure yet arrogant, but Kelly was a touch too whiny. There again, that all adds to his unlikability.

Waivers

If you are looking for a twisty-turning plot, then this is not the book for you. This is not so much a whodunnit as a theyalldunnitandhow. Think Poirot meets The Purge with pithy repartee. It does require a certain suspension of disbelief, especially given that nobody has come to investigate what must be tens of missing people last seen at this address. Oh, and there's the gore. This is not one for the faint of sensibilities.

Final Judgement

This entertaining tale of murder and greed gleefully blends the darkest of subject matter with witty observations, sharp tongues and even sharper blades. It’s a light-hearted, fun, original listen that made me laugh out loud. I’d definitely listen to more by this author and this narrator.

This audiobook is a solid 2.5, but I'm giving it three stars because I tend to round up (for the benefit of the authors). My review is best broken down into separate elements;

Characters:
The character creation in this book is fantastic. Everyone is unique and they stay consistent with their personality types throughout the book. Even though there is a large cast of characters, nobody is easily confused with another and I was able to follow along with their stories. That said, they were all (for the most part) terrible people. So, I didn't much mind what was happening to them. This created a disconnect because there were lots of deaths but few meant much to me.

Plot:
I got a "Game of Clue" type vibe from this book early on. The house is a grand estate and people go around killing one another. I don't mind the initial idea, but the premise "everyone is a shitty person" is not all that unique or mind blowing. Yes, people suck. I don't need to read a book about uninteresting murders to come to that conclusion.

Also, the ending was strange. I'm not sure why the *SPOILER ALERT* cook was blamed for the murders. There was mention of him "learning a lesson," but I'm not sure what that lesson could be. Maybe I missed something early on? But regardless, the ending fell short.

The Performance:
The narrator did a decent job. I could have done without the persistent, maniacal laughter, though.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Not horrible, fast paced and not boring for sure, but more of a 3.5 because its very similar to knives out and other similar stories

I listened to this as an audiobook, and found the narrator to be fine, other than pronoucing Edinburgh are "Edinberg" which irritated me immensely.

I thought the concept of the novel wasn't very original, I feel that this general story type has been done to death over the last two or three years.

Having said that I found that I wanted to know what was happening next, so it kept my interest, but other than a general trawl through murder and mayhem , there wasn't a lot to it.

I enjoyed it, but felt a little disappointed by it's simplicity.

I liked the premise for this book but found it dragged on a lot and I just got bored. I zoned out and didn’t know what was happening half of the time to be honest.

Just from the synopsis I knew I had to listen to this book. It’s like Agatha Christie’s book “And then there were None” meets the movie “Knives Out.” I was sucked in from chapter 1, especially not knowing who would be the last left standing, or if there would even be one! Yes, it’s a storyline that has been written various times but I guess having a 14 year old in the mix made it a little different. The ending did leave me with some unanswered questions, which is why my rating is 3 stars. I will say that the narration was spot on! While there were various characters it was easy to figure out who was talking by the change in accents.

I was not the biggest fan of this book. Let me explain. After thinking on it a while, I found the best way for me to describe how the book felt for me.
You know those bad slasher movies that people only watch to see some cool death sequences? This is that in book form. The problem is that most people can sit down and watch an hour and a half long movie whereas this is a six hour audiobook (not including how long it would take to read the physical book or e-book). Granted this book has more substance than those bad horror movies. This book just seemed to fall a little flat for me.

Pros:
I liked the concept of this book. I found it intriguing and attention grabbing. Execution of the concept fell flat for me.
The diversity of the characters was nice. Every single character was very different from the last. My problem is that they were all one-dimensional (more on that later).
The deaths were creative and different. They weren't all poison or all a knife stab. They were at least creative in the setup and execution. That I can appreciate.

Cons:
The characters were one-dimensional for me. They felt like they stuck with their one stereotype and that was it. Any character that seemed like that they might have had a little more substance to them either died very early on so we didn't see much of them (Clint) or just wasn't expanded on (Kelly with his backstory before he came to Agatha. Matthias being a wildcard towards the end of the novel was a very nice addition, but he didn't get enough page time in the long run. I would've really liked to have seen more of him and Kelly having conversations.

The story being focused on multiple characters really hurt finding one character and routing for them. I think the problem with the audiobook specifically is that the voice the narrator chose for Kelly was the absolute worse choice. Kelly is supposed to be 14 yet he sounds like he's 10, which got on my nerves and affected how I viewed Kelly. I saw Kelly more as a spoiled rich brat more than anything, so in the beginning, I wasn't really rooting for him. There was no one I really liked all that much until Gavin and Anna got there chapter about 30% of the way through. I said "Yes! Some characters I can actually root for!" Then they didn't get any focus until much later. The characters we weren't supposed to like got more page time than the likeable characters, and it comes to the point when you're saying "I don't care about these people. Why are we following them?" If the main focus was on Kelly or even on Gavin, I think that would have greatly helped this book.

Lastly is just a note on the narration. I appreciated that all the characters had a very distinct different voice from each other. But Kelly's voice was very irritating and grating for a character that's supposed to be 14 years old.

All in all this book had some good qualities about it, but the execution and characters fell flat for me. The narration didn't help.

I had high hopes for this one but I found it rather unlistenable. The character voices were very off, the writing tended to hammer its points home rather than let them speak for themselves and it altogether struggled to keep my interest.

When foundling teenager, Kellys adoptive Aunty dies (she found him on the streets after her beloved cat dies), he assumes that he will be the soul heir to the family home and fortune but unfortunately thats not how it works in this house. Basically anyone who thinks the estate should be theirs can make a claim against it but they do this by bumping one another off over one night and last one standing will get the lot. Something Aunty failed to tell Kelly. I did like the idea of this book and the audiobook was good and the narrator Kieran Regan does a good job with all the different characters but some of them were quite nasally and quiite frankly annoying,

Dead End Drive by Ian Kirkpatrick is a thriller novel that shows the actions of multiple characters at a reading of one deceased woman's will. The characters must fight to the death in one night and the victor shall inherit this entire fortune.

Let me start by talking about the plot itself, which I think was honestly not too bad. The pacing had some big issues as we didn't find out that everyone had to kill each other until the first victim was murdered a significant way through the book. There was no real explanation as to why this had to happen or how all of these characters knew what to do. There was also the issue that every character was one dimensional, boring and forgettable. The gay character only talked about hair and 'gay stuff', the evil doctor insisted that everyone only called her Doctor. It was just a bit stereotypical and not that enjoyable. I think that there is solid potential in the plot itself but everything that supports the plot was not great.

I got an audiobook of this novel and oh my god was the narrator the most annoying person I have ever had the displeasure of listening to. His voice acting was questionable for the most part and outright offensive the rest of the time (of course the gay character is the only one who spoke like an idiot with a gratingly high voice and a weird accent) and the laughs that happened to be every paragraph or so for some sections were incredibly grating.

2/5 stars. The only redeeming quality is that I think the plot idea was pretty cool. Thank you to Netgalley and the author for this copy to review.

Who will survive and inherit the estate. The story has characters I really like as well as those I despise. It's a fight to the end.

This audiobook is a solid 2.5, but I'm giving it three stars because I tend to round up (for the benefit of the authors). My review is best broken down into separate elements;

Characters:
The character creation in this book is fantastic. Everyone is unique and they stay consistent with their personality types throughout the book. Even though there is a large cast of characters, nobody is easily confused with another and I was able to follow along with their stories. That said, they were all (for the most part) terrible people. So, I didn't much mind what was happening to them. This created a disconnect because there were lots of deaths but few meant much to me.

Plot:
I got a "Game of Clue" type vibe from this book early on. The house is a grand estate and people go around killing one another. I don't mind the initial idea, but the premise "everyone is a shitty person" is not all that unique or mind blowing. Yes, people suck. I don't need to read a book about uninteresting murders to come to that conclusion.

Also, the ending was strange. I'm not sure why the *SPOILER ALERT* cook was blamed for the murders. There was mention of him "learning a lesson," but I'm not sure what that lesson could be. Maybe I missed something early on? But regardless, the ending fell short.

The Performance:
The narrator did a decent job. I could have done without the persistent, maniacal laughter, though.

I loved the idea of people literally having to battle to the death for an inheritance. It is the next step in mysteries-just do it out in the open. I also appreciated the sarcasm and satire of the story. However, the characters fell pretty much into cliches immediately and never left there. It was pretty obvious where this was all going. That's fine when you can enjoy the ride but the ride became very repetitive. The narrator was adequate for the number of characters but the portrayal of many of them was just cringy. There was a lot of near misses but it had moments of funny to listen to while doing other stuff.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book felt like a collection of short stories, each a character study, thrown together by the director of Clue. There is an attempt at social discourse that identifies humans as belonging to one of two camps: those who are bloodthirsty and out to get you and those who just haven’t figured out yet that there’s really only one kind of person.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and wonder if I would have enjoyed this more by reading it in the more “traditional” way. For most things, the narrator did an excellent job...however...the representation of Kelly and the laughing throughout the book were grating.

Kelly, a boy adopted by a rich heiress, suddenly finds himself motherless...again. All of the members of the household start trying to “win” his inheritance...by killing each other.

I found it hard to get to know the characters and there was no one I could really root for. Most of them were despicable and as soon as I’d think to start liking a character, they were dead.

If there had been a bit more overall exposition at the beginning of the novel, it might have given it a more cohesive feeling. Instead, exposition about the house was sprinkled throughout the novel and it just didn’t feel like enough.

If you like slapstick comedy and think that your nihilist view of the rat race of life is humorous, this book might be for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and Steak House Books for the arc audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

The quality of the audiobook was done very well and the narrator did a pretty good job with trying to create different voices for the dozen of characters in this story.

The book is about an older lady with a fortune passing away and everyone in her life getting together to go over her will--then to fight for their portion. This reminded me a lot of the film Knives Out and a little bit of Clue. Definitely wasn't what I was expecting and way more violent, which helped make the story more interesting. For me though, there were way too many characters so I had a hard time following along and remember who was who. Not sure if I would of had a difficult time reading it physically but with the narrator changing his voice up for each person, that helped a little bit.

Overall, I thought the story was okay--I did want to know how it was going to end so I kept with it but the ending was a little "meh" for me.

3/5

Have you ever wanted something so much you are prepared to kill to get it?
I listen to the audiobook and found it very interesting the story follows a group of people all trying to inherit a large estate. They will stop and nothing to be the sole person to win the house of there dreams. This book reminded me of the purge with a twist I could stop listening I wanted to see what would happen next. The narrator was great thanks for writing a great novel.
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This was a fun and wild ride! Poor Kelly had no idea what he was getting into when his adopted mother passed away. Family and employees show up for the "will reading" and things start to get crazy. There were a lot of characters, which took me a while to keep straight. I was thoroughly entertained by their interactions and the lengths they were willing to go to in order to "win". I felt really bad for Kelly because everyone knew what was going to happen but him. He was young and needed to figure out who he could trust. Some of the characters didn't have much background on them, but I don't think that detracted a lot from the story overall.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was great! Some of the characters' voices were a little stereotype sounding, but it did really help keep track of who's who with such a big cast of characters. I would definitely look for more done by this narrator.

I was able to get a copy of Dead End Drive audiobook from NetGallery. The story begins with the death of the owner of the estate. You don't get much back story in how she came to get the estate or why. You get glimpses in some flashbacks but very few details. I love the story idea but unfortunately it was very predictable. The character development was very lacking which kinda helped because you really didn't care who lived and who died.
How the story ends is very predictable but still a good read. I liked that the story flowed quickly and you didn't have to deal with tangled messes of who did what and where and when and why. It's kinda how I feel any good slasher thriller should be. Happy Reading or Listening in my case!

Narrator 5 stars
The narrator did a fantastic job with all the characters

Story 4stars
WHAT ON EARTH DID I JUST LISTEN TO!!??
I finished listening to this book a few hours again and I'm still thinking about it.
I feel like I can't find the right words to really describe this so I'm just going to go with 'If Agatha Christie was a serial killer this would be her book'

First time read/ listen from this author but definitely going to try something else.

This is a very dark tale, one of death and wills and duels in the night. I loved the narrators voices. He really helped to keep all the many characters different and unique. The author has such a creative mind, I don’t think I could ever imagine a family set up quite as wild.