Big thanks to Simon & Schuster Australia for a copy on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Shades of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None stirred with a horror movie makes for a clever, extreme and enthralling read.
The Other People opens with a bang and ends with a twist that I can guarantee you will not guess.
A group of ten strangers.
An isolated manor.
Locked doors and no way of escaping.
No idea how they got there.
A killer with an agenda.
The bodies begin to add up.
A missing girl puzzle that the guests need to solve to survive.
And who is the beast in the cellar…….
A locked room mystery that will give you the chills.
I don’t think it will be for everyone, the pace is cautious but the suspense, tension and intrigue is right from the start.
It does come across a little darker than it appears on the cover.
I dare you to predict the outcome and you will not be right, it’s a strong and smart ending.

The blurb for The Other People by C.B. Everett (a pseudonym) intrigued me and though it wasn't necessarily a book I'd usually go for but I thought I'd give it a go. It kind of gave me The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle vibes.

Ten strangers wake up in a locked mansion with no idea how they got there and no idea who each person is. They are summoned to dinner and told that in order to escape, they have to solve the disappearance of a young woman. How did they get here? Who is the missing woman? What is the presence lurking in the cellar? Before too long the strangers are picked off one by one by an unseen killer.

Unfortunately this book was just not for me. I did not care for any of the characters, there were too many and they were hard to keep track of. Their actions while supposedly desperately trying to escape were questionable. The interludes from the "Beast" in the cellar were jarring.

I will give the author credit though for the twist at the ending. It took me a long time to pick up on where the ending was heading and I did think it was quite clever but the lead up was definitely not my cup of tea. I probably should have not requested this book!

Thank you to @netgalley for my #gifted copy. The Other People is out now.

this was a unique take on the locked room mystery, but not really one for me. the constant inserting of the witty commentary by the beast detracted heavily from the story for me, and i found that the amount of pov characters made it hard to follow when i wasn't overly attached to any of them, so i kept getting their individual plotlines confused. i semi-picked the twist about 55% of the way through as well, and so getting to the ending of this book was not really a surprise to me, which for some reason also made the payoff feel worse.

however, while i was reading this i could visualise this really clearly playing out in a movie setting. it felt like a book that had been specifically written because this was the way to get it published and out into the world, when what the author truly wanted was to see this story play out on the big screen. if it did make it to the big screen as well, i think that it would become a much more interesting story, and some of the foreshadowing that didn't work as well here for me (both in a sense of being too subtle and then also too blatant) would have been able to be much clearer through the mise en scene. if this ever gets optioned, i will in fact be watching.

I am going to keep this one simple - I was utterly engaged!

I love a good "locked room" mystery with a killer stalking their victims, until only one remains.

"... shock follows shock as surely as tick follows tock .."'

There are multiple characters and narratives. The use of multiple narrators can be hit or miss - this was definitely a hit - and my favourite narrator was .. yes, the Beast in the Cellar - and the Beast does have some wonderful lines .....

"... don't you find it confusing when so many characters are introduced in such a small space of time ..."

The Beast keeps the reader on track and up to date with where things stand in the story - provides a bit of a recap and some critical analysis, with some dark humour and satire thrown in for entertainment.

The use of the mystery of the missing girl as an additional impetus for the guests to interact and move about the place was curious and I was initially not sure if necessary - but as we move through the house and the body count rises, things do become clarified.

As the Beast in the Cellar notes .... the reader " .... came for the murders and got them and the murderer ..."

There is of course, a twist and the denouement. The reader is apprised of the true situation involving the all the characters. I am wondering if a little more time could have been spent with this - though certainly not a rushed resolution, I felt a few pages more would not have gone astray, but that's just me.

I, personally, was entertained and consider this one well worth a second reading.