I was absolutely thrilled to get an advanced copy of a Diane Chamberlain book, she is for sure one of my favourite authors. This was an incredibly interesting story with dual timelines occurring. One is about a white girl named Ellie who joins with the civil rights movement in North Carolina, and gets lost in a world of hatred, fear and violence. I loved her storyline and could have honestly just heard her part of the story and really enjoyed the book. I really wanted to know more about her and the other characters she was working with.
The other storyline is current day widow/mother who is about to move into her new home her recently passed husband and her designed together. As she gets ready to move she is surrounded by feelings of discomfort and receives threats from an unknown person which makes her nervous about moving into her new house. In true Chamberlain fashion, the two storylines weave themselves together into a tragic, and moving story.
I would definitely recommend this book, it deals with such important issues and tells a story that I had never heard before. A great book for book clubs! Thanks Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy!

I just reviewed The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain. #NetGalley

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published January 11, 2022.

I was hooked from the very first chapter. Two stories are told 45 years apart. In 1965 college student Ellie decided to spend her summer canvassing the South and convincing blacks to register to vote when LBJ signs the bill. In 2010 architect Kayla moved into her beautiful new home and discovers someone doesn’t want her there. But why? The author does a great job tying these 2 separate stores together.

In the age of Black Lives Matter it saddened me to see how little we’ve progressed since 1965.

Diane Chamberlain is a master author when it comes to historical fiction. Some of my favorite books are by Chamberlain—Necessary Lies & The Stolen Marriage. I love a good historical fiction when it’s done right.

If I’m being honest, this one started a little slow. About halfway through, I found myself asking when the story line was going to pick up. It wasn’t that the story line was poorly written. I just felt like there wasn’t a lot happening. Once we hit about 75%, the story line really started to move…and that was when I couldn’t put it down.

This story is told from two POVs and two time periods—Ellie (1965) and Kayla (2010). Ellie’s story was definitely more riveting…once we got to the 75% mark. I enjoyed seeing how her story wove together with Kayla’s.

I found some of the “threats” to Kayla to be too unbelievable…too much of a stretch when you factor everything in. I’m not sure what I wanted to happen with Kayla’s story line, but I wasn’t totally satisfied with it. Ellie’s story line had good closure by the end of the book, which I appreciated.

There are a lot of politics involved in this one as it took place during the time of the Voting Rights Act (which is wild how recent that all is). I definitely learned more about that time period & I always appreciate the research Chamberlain puts into her novels. She’s able to carefully and honestly tell stories that are authentic to their time periods, and this one was no exception.

While this wasn’t my favorite of Chamberlain’s novels, I still enjoyed it, and I’ll still read anything she writes.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date is January 2022.

4.5 Stars!

This book is a historical fiction novel. Its about the Scope Project which I never heard of before, and I learned a lot from it. There are dual timelines. The timelines are 2010 and then goes back to 1965.

2010
Kayla is at work and her new administrative assistant comes into her office and tells her that a lady told her that she has an eleven o'clock appointment with her but she is not on her calender. Kayla tells her to send her in her room.
The lady's name is Ann Smith and she looks like she is 65 or 70 with vivid red hair and she is wearing sunglasses and is wearing red lipstick.
Kayla introduces herself and Ann tells her that she wants an addition on her house and wants to add a sunroom. She tells her that she has just lost her husband and wants to make some changes to her house.
Kayla lost her husband, Jackson recently and Ann tells her you understand how it feels to lose your husband. Kayla wonders how this lady knows that she lost her husband. Kayla's husband died falling off the staircase while he was building their new home. Then Anna Smith asks her how she can live in the house that her husband died in. She also tells her that she would not want to move into Shadow Ridge Estates. Its no place for a little girl.
Kayla is shocked! She wonders how this woman knows so much about her and even knew about her daughter Rainey. Then the lady asks her do you know what keeps me up at night. I am thinking about killing someone. Kayla tells her to leave.

1965
This is about The Scope project and its about college students living with black families and they go out canvassing trying to get the blacks to register to vote.

I love this author! I loved all the books that I read by her. I did not know anything about the Scope Project and learned so much from it. I loved the 1965 timeline the best. My favorite characters were Ellie and Win. I loved how Ellie fought for what she believed in even though everyone was against her, including her parents.
I loved the creepiness of the background. This was an emotional read and it punched me right in the gut and tore at my heartstrings.

I want to thank Netgalley, St. Martin's Press and the author for the copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Oh, The Last House on the Street, Diane Chamberlain's newest novel, was AMAZING! Taking place in a small town in NC, in parallel timelines (1965 & 2010), this book addresses many issues of grief, racism, civil rights movements in the 60's, hate, family/small town bonds, interracial relationships, and more. Told through fantastic, relatable characters, the tie-in between past and present was seamless. This book is a must read. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the copy for review. All opinions are my own.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I have loved some by this author but also not liked some so I did not have high hopes going into this one and I am glad I was wrong. Love that the story was told through then and now and that characters were all somehow connected. Part love story, part mystery, part historical fiction. …I couldn’t get enough of it.

The Last House on the Street is a suspenseful novel set in North Carolina. The chapters alternate with a dual timeline between the 1965 Civil Rights Movement of the south and present. This is an emotional story of how one malicious act in the past can haunt a community in the present. Thanks to author Diane Chamberlain, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book for an honest review.

Diane Chamberlain did it again. It is a story told from two different timelines. One current of a newly widowed mother struggling to move into the house her and her husband designed together. The other is back in the height of the civil rights movement. Ellie feels such a draw to change the world and no one in her small town can understand why.
As the characters develop I kept trying to guess how they were intertwined. Chamberlain did an excellent job of character development. I could feel how they were feeling. I gasped, I cried. It left me looking for a sequel just to find out what happens in the future for these characters.

This was a good story covering 2 different women- Ellie in 1965 & Kayla in 2010....
Both have a story, Ellie being a white, southern girl interested in civil rights & some sad back story & Kayla a mom of a young child & also carrying a sad story.

There's a bit of mystery & there's a connection between these 2 women as they meet in Ellie's former home town.

I liked each woman's story, Ellie's was deeper yet I felt Kayla's character was more developed.

Thanks for Net Galley for an advance copy & thank you St Martins Press

To be released in January

This book was a page turner from beginning to end. Things are not always what they seem. A mom and daughter move back to her home town, against the advice of her father who told her to never come back. He warns her to keep her child away from the woods, people warn her to not buy the house, and weird things happen all over the place. Did she make the biggest mistake by moving her family here? I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Diane Chamberlain’s The Last House on the Street was a captivating thriller that will haunt me for a long while. The two main characters are sixty-something Ellie and a much younger Kayla, who is a recently widowed mother to a three-year old daughter. As the story unfolds, the chapters alternate between 1965 and Ellie’s involvement in getting rural North Carolina African American voters registered in anticipation of the adoption of the Voting Rights Act and 2010 and Kayla’s grieving from the death of her husband and moving into the home they had jointly designed. The book intertwines suspense with history and social justice. The novel was extremely well written, and I just couldn’t put it down. Highly recommend. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my review.

This begins as just another book. Kayla Carter and her husband designed and built their dream house, but her husband was killed in a freak accident during construction and now Kayla is not sure she actually wants to move into the house. Just before she is to move in, a strange woman comes to see her, pretending to discuss an addition to her house, but actually warning Kayla away from her new house. This strange woman seems to know too much about her life, her young daughter, and her husband's death and adds to her fear of occupying what should have been her forever house, where she would raise her family and live "happily ever after".

Then the book shifts to a young girl, Ellie Hockley, in 1965. Ellie has been brought up as a proper Southern lady, but finds an interest in the civil rights movement and volunteers to help her fellow North Carolinians register to vote, much to the dismay of her family.

For over half the book the story alternates between the stories of these two women and finally discloses their connection, leading to a sad discovery that solves a decades-old mystery. It is both horrifying and compelling and once I got into the book I found it hard to put down.

One geographic area in the southern United States, two timelines almost five decades apart, and a secret that has remained buried. The story begins in 2020 when Kayla Carter is left alone to raise her four-year-old daughter after her husband dies in a construction accident. Reluctant to move into their dream home, which is the last house on the street and surrounded by dense woodland, she is lonely until she finally meets the only neighbors, in their original family home, living on the same deserted street. After unexplained events begin happening to her and her home, she isn’t sure she and her daughter are safe. In a parallel storyline set in 1965, Ellie is a white girl who enlists in SCOPE (Summer Community Organization and Political Education Project), against the wishes of her family, to help register black voters. Surrounded by civil rights unrest, she finds herself intertwined in bi-racial relationships that ostracize her from her family and friends, some of whom have connections to the KKK. The author has expertly crafted stories from both eras eventually intersect in a twisty way reminiscent of one particular gnarled tree in the haunted-feeling forest behind Kayla’s home. With artistry, Chamberlain deconstructs the mystery that is begging to be solved one strand at a time, often shocking the reader, who may be lagging one step behind her. I appreciated how the author brought some of her personal history and interests, along with intensive historical research and sensitivity to themes she was writing about, to creating this historical fiction thriller which kept me engaged to the last page. #NetGalley #nancybrashearauthor #bookreview

The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain

I enjoyed The Last House on the Street. This is the second book I have read by Diane Chamberlain and it will not be the last one. I like her style of writing. Her chapters switch back and forth, either between time periods or between characters. In some books this distracts from my reading but not with Ms. Chamberlain.
Initially the story was slow to develop but once I got into it, I was hooked. Her characters are people I have known in my life. Some of them I would like to be friends with. Some of them I was very concerned as to what would happen to them. I never expected the story to end the way it did. This was good!
09.30.21

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This story is told in 2 timelines: Kayla, a recently-widowed mouth of a young daughter in 2010, and Ellie, a white college student in 1965 who joins a summer program to help black people in the south register to vote.

This is such a beautifully-told narrative. With Kayla, we have a young woman deep in the throws of grief having to reckon with the dark history of the land her new house is built on. With Ellie, we see a tenacious spirit, a woman who is not okay with anything going on around her and can't understand why no one else sees the problems.

I did find Ellie's chapters much more compelling. There were times when Kayla's story felt disjointed, and her complaints in comparison to Ellie's seemed a bit inconsequential. But I do think the stories were tied together nicely in the end.

This author is able to write white characters in racist settings without them coming across as white saviour types, which is appreciated. While Ellie was the main character, I felt like Ellie wasn't centered as the be-all-end-all of the good being done.

I highly recommend this one. So beautifully written.

I was intrigued by the publisher's description when I agreed to review The Last House on the Street. However, none of the reviews share that this book is really two stories intertwined as one. Both deal with terrible loss and how the women involved forge ahead. The book begins with the story of Kayla and her daughter moving into a house designed by her and her recently deceased husband. She meets an elderly neighbor that has a story of love lost all her own. Just when you think the story is moving along slowly, the reader encounters an unexpected surprise that turns the plot on its end.
Please pick up The Last House on the Street. You won't be disappointed!

I absolutely loved this book and could not recommend it more. Two timelines, one dealing with the Civil Rights Movement, and the other a recently widowed mother moving into a house that seems to have a haunted past. These seemingly unrelated plots come together in the most wonderful way. A top read of the year! Thank you Net Galley for my ARC!

This book was great - I really liked the characters and plot lines. Definitely a page turner. Not what I expected from the title though… could be better suited to a different title. I also would have liked Young Ellie’s story to on a little longer to have better ties the two timelines together more.

I absolutely love all of Diane Chamberlain's books!! And this one didn't disappoint. This book was so intriguing full of family drama and historical fiction. I would recommend to all.

This book had a very slow start. It ended up being a decent book. Time switches back between present and past.