The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
I haven’t read a spooky book (see: thriller) in so long… I forgot how off the wall my imagination can get without any type of graphical assistance.
Honestly, two pages into The Last House on Needless Street, I put the book down in disgust. The writing seemed child-like, Paige was already texting me asking why a grown man was referring to his mother as “Mommy.” It was a mess. Find Paige’s own musings here.
I pushed through (solely because Stephen King was a huge fan of this book) and realized almost as quickly as I had written it off, that the writing was stylized that way because the author became a different narrator depending on the chapter. Which, ironically, actually turned out to mean she is an incredible writer, not a bad one.
About a third of the way in, I was gripped.
SPOILERS AHEAD! Not explicit, but enough to take some of the magic away from the experience.
Writing this one without any spoilers at all is a nonstarter; this is your fair warning. If you plan on curling up with this masterpiece, but haven’t yet, stop reading this now. Otherwise, it’s full steam ahead.
For a bit, everything seems pretty simple—a grown man (Ted) who still says “Mommy,” which is a dead giveaway for some creepy sh*t going on… anybody who regularly watches scary movies knows that. But I’d already judged the book by its cover (sorry, Dad); it was already going to be super creepy.
Missing children, a dangerous lake? Ted’s cat, and his daughter Lauren who comes to visit from time to time. That was sort of where I started lifting one eyebrow—what’s the deal with you, Ted, being so childlike yourself, having an alleged daughter, and also being a prime suspect for the missing children storyline? I was on my high horse halfway through thinking I had already solved the entire mystery. My writer’s intuition.
No. The twists, turns, and reinventions of the truth were relentless—sickening in the very best way. Nothing was as it seemed, nobody existed the way they were once described. The story seamlessly became a study of psychology, and I found myself recalling many passages from Good Morning, Monster just to make sense of anything as I turned each page.
A book about survival, indeed. Trauma, and the armor it becomes, is grotesque, horrific, and disturbing; but it is the mangled reality that can keep a victim alive, and give them a fighting chance to one day heal.
Paige remarked that she will be thinking about this story for months to come, and that is exactly the nature of this novel: a slow burn, packed full of realization after realization—out-loud gasp after gasp. This will occupy my thoughts for a long, long time.
I encourage you to let it occupy yours.
