 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about Catriona Ward's The Last House on Needless Street. But first, a word from our sponsor. They are terrifying. Were Tales is a collection of scary, thrilling, dark, mysterious, and even humorous short stories and poems of shapeshifters. From the talented minds of Jonathan Mayberry, Clara Magigano, Gambino Iglesias, Cindy O'Quinn, Linda Addison, S.H. Cooper, Laurel Hightower, the Sisters of Slaughter, and many more. Coming September 21, pre-orders available on Amazon. Thank you to Bridget's Gate Publishing for sponsoring this video. Now on with the review. Okay, so there's been a lot of buzz around The Last House on Needless Street. It came out in May in the UK. It comes out in September here in the States. I'm not sure if the book is already out, but I'll leave a link down there in the doobly-doo for you guys to go check it out. This is going to be a very different review. I will let you know way ahead of time before I get into spoilers. I want to actually talk about this book. I want to be down there in the doobly-doo with you guys discussing this. So there might be spoilers down there. Just be careful, okay? I will let you know before I start talking. I'll give you a countdown, three, two, one. I will post, if there is more content that is not a spoiler after the spoiler, I will put the time signature down there in the description. So I don't think there will be. I'm going to try and get all my thoughts out about the book that are not spoiler-heavy. But unfortunately with this book, if I say anything whatsoever about the plot, I feel like it's going to spoil you. I do not suggest you reading any of the reviews on Goodreads or on Amazon. This is one of those books where if you trust someone, just go by their star rating until you actually read the book for yourself. Three things I liked about this book right up front. It's always the same. You guys know it's a character pacing and dread. And all of that was off the charts. Several times in this book I was very, very confused. And then everything, every single little detail was explained. And I'm going to talk about that in the spoiler section because I am impressed. This is one of the best thrillers. I guess you could call it a thriller. It's kind of thriller, kind of horror. It's one of the best ones I've ever read, period. In fact, I'm thinking about adding it to my top 20. It's definitely number one for Book of the Year so far for me beating out The Other Black Girl. You guys know how much I like that one and where the truth lies by Anna Bailey. I love both of those books in Nightmares Were Alone by Greg Sisko. It's beaten all those. This is the leaps and bounds above those books and those books are fantastic. I truly cannot express how good this book is if you pay attention. I knew going into it that it was going to be a windy trip because very early on it is super obvious Ward makes you feel like you know what's going on. A lot of people that I talked to actually put the book down because they thought it was too predictable at first. There was someone who mentioned they looked at the look inside and said, oh, I already know what's going to happen. No, no you don't. There's not really any Easter eggs or anything up front to let you know what's going on. There are little tidbits that I will mention in the spoiler section but I plead to you. If you want to read this book, do not read any other reviews. Now, before we get into the spoiler section, I want to talk a little bit about the characters, the dread and the pacing. As far as the characters are concerned, my favorite character because of the arc, their character arc, was the Bugman. But the book does not follow the Bugman. The book is about Ted Bannerman who lives in a boarded up house on literally Needless Street. It's called Needless Street. There's that. There's a point of view from his cat Olivia. There's a point of view from this woman called Dee Dee. And there are other POVs sprinkled in throughout, but again, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. The characters were fantastic, especially the Bugman arc. I truly love it when an author takes a small side character that you think is just there to kind of pad things out and kind of give you character development and make them one of the biggest parts of the book. It's a sleight of hand, I feel, when you're like, OK, well, this person is just there for the character development. And then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, OK, I'm here for that. Next up, we have the pacing. The pacing at the beginning is a little bit slow because you're getting to know Ted and he likes making recipes. I'm trying to go through here very, very, very specifically, very slowly because I don't want to give anything away. I know I'm harping on that, but good God, people, for real, you don't need to know anything. And it's a little bit of everyday slice of life for this person, loads and loads. I thought interesting character development, but the Bugman was, yeah, anyways. The pacing at the front was not boring, it was interesting, but I was wondering when something was going to happen. And then things started happening and I went through the last 150 pages of the book in an afternoon. I'm a very slow reader. I know it doesn't seem that way, especially now. I'm the type of reader, and I said this in a live stream the other day, I'm the type of reader who reads every single word. I play everything out in my head, I narrate it in my head, I do character voices and all that stuff. But the last 150 pages, I never read 150 pages in a day, not of one book. I might bounce back and forth between other books, but usually I read about 50 to a, maybe, maybe if it's really good 100 pages. I blew through the last 150 of this one. Now, the dread. The dread is very interesting here, because you're dreading something that doesn't ever really come. Oh, that's so, okay. There is a payoff, but it's not for the characters that you think it's going to happen. And that's one of the things that Ward does so well early on in the book is confusing you just enough with the surreal aspects of the book. And everything is explained. This isn't like some weird abstract art that's not like that. Everything is explained, and that's the brilliance of this book. I don't say that often, but this book I feel is actually brilliant. When I read how the author came about writing this book, I saw it. I understood where she was coming from and how it evolved, and I was just impressed with the story behind the book as I was the book itself. So character, pacing, dread. I'm giving this five stars. It's my favorite book of the year so far. Easy number one. And now we must talk about spoilers. I will reiterate once again, because people like to scrub. We're going to do a three, two, one, going into the spoilers. But if you watch the spoiler section and you haven't read the book, I'm going to completely ruin the experience for you. Okay? So in three, two, one, spoilers. The first thing we're going to talk about is a thing that I am the most impressed with. I'm not going to leave it to the end. The thing that I am most impressed with is, as I said at the beginning of the video, the bug man. The bug man is Ted's psychologist, or shrink, or psych, yeah, I think I said that right. Psychologist, yeah. He's the person Ted is going to. Ted has convinced himself that... I don't even want to go into too many spoilers here, but even in the spoiler section, but Ted has convinced himself that he is trying to help Lauren, his daughter. He also has a cat named Olivia. There's reason for the air quotes, I promise. But the bug man, so many times in thrillers, you wonder, or I wonder, when I say you, I mean me, I wonder why did things escalate? What is the purpose of this character? There's a bunch of different questions I ask when I read thrillers, because thrillers tend to be more on the simple side. But this one is so multi-layered. The bug man's character was absolutely perfect. You come to find out, okay, spoilers, please, please, because this is the best part of the book for me. You come to find out that the bug man, his psychologist, has been feeding Ted's psychotic, well, medicines that make his condition worse. Now throughout the book, you know the bug man is always talking about this book that he's writing. So it's set up very early on, so anybody who screams cop out is full of it, because it's set up throughout the whole thing. The reason why he's setting Ted up trying to make him go full psychotic is because he's doing a character study on him or he wants to. And it's built up brilliantly even how Ted gets the medication and how the bug man, when Ted asks, you know, can you just give me a prescription, the bug man's reasoning seems legit. You never suspect the bug man's part in this whole thing, up until the point where you have the reveal that, you know, he's writing the book about Ted. Now, it's a while longer, it's much, it's right there at the end of the book, you find out that he's been giving in those pills and I had an actual jaw drop, what the fuck, moment. It happens very rarely for me. Jaws on the floor. I was like, holy shit, that was just so perfect. I got goosebumps right now just thinking about it. It was such a brilliant setup, and I'm going to say that word probably more as we go along. It's such a brilliant setup, such a, it just, first it came out of nowhere, but it shouldn't have because it didn't really come out of nowhere because if you look back, you see all the little, you see the breadcrumbs that Ward was leaving you the entire time. Now, the twist with, I did read some reviews, people are tired of seeing this twist. That's not the twist that Olivia and Lauren are in Ted's head. I think that one is, I think it's kind of obvious at, you know, early on in the book, especially when Dee Dee comes into the story and there's no attic. If you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about. There's no attic, there's no basement, none of these things that Ted's been talking about in the house. So it's very, very clear. One of the creepiest points in the book is when Lauren is described as this scarred and limbless thing. And the absolutely nutty stuff that Ted supposedly did to her with her feet and her not being able to walk. And then Olivia, all this stuff was so beautifully done. How his mother ended up being the killer and how she died. All that stuff. I cannot think of a single thing to criticize about this book. Nothing. Because even though you've, if you pay attention early on, you can tell that, you know, it's got that fight club twist that, you know, these characters are just in this one character's head. And I saw another thing that completely, I guess people are just, when the people who aren't enjoying this, I don't want to talk badly about, I don't think they're paying attention because there's one question for the author asking if the bug man was in Ted's head also. Definitely not. It's very, very clear on the page that the bug man was the catalyst for the whole situation. It started escalating because he was feeding in the psychotics. There's so much that I can talk about in this book, but I want to talk, down there in the doobly-doo, I want to talk to you guys about the twists and turns of this one and how well they were done. I would especially like to hear from people. Rachel, if you watched this video, Rachel Shades of Orange, if you watched this video, I saw you gave it 2.5 and I read your review. I'd love to talk to you about it. I'm not as familiar with you. I don't feel comfortable DMing you on Twitter or anything, but if you'd like to, hit me up. If you didn't like the book or the twists or you didn't connect with the characters, by the way, Rachel isn't one of the people that I think didn't pay attention. That's not one of those people. But there are some reviews in there. And I find it funny that the lower star reviews, like the ones and two stars, Rachel's was 2.5, I think. They don't know what they didn't like about it. I read several reviews like, I don't know why this one just didn't work for me or this one just didn't work for me. There must be something wrong with me, so on and so forth. There were no specifics. I haven't found yet. I have not found a negative review of the book that was specific. I don't consider 2.5 stars from Rachel to be negative. I think some very good points were brought up, but I still... Yeah, I'd love... Anyway, Rachel, if you watch this, I'd love to talk to you. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is the character of Dee Dee. There is... I feel that the only unreliable narrator in this book is Dee Dee. Now, I know Ted has his issues, but Ted's not lying. Dee Dee has lied to herself and Dee Dee has convinced herself that the lie is true. I like how that was done. There are going to be people complaining because one story is told at the beginning from Dee Dee's point of view that something happens a certain way, then at the end, you find out it's completely different. I understand how that can feel like a cop-out, but people lie and people believe their own lies, especially when there's trauma involved, and good God was there trauma involved here. That is a big theme of the book is trauma, but this is the spoiler section, so you know that because you read the book. Hopefully, you're not here spoiling the book for you because I want you to go out and read it. Anyway, so my question for you today, if you've read this book and you do not like it specifically, you do not like it, tell me why you don't like it so that we can have discussion about the things that you don't like. Maybe you will open up my eyes. You're not going to ruin my reading experience. I love the book anyways because the book fooled me and it's a little braggadocio, but it doesn't happen often. I usually, that's why I tend not to read thrillers. I read this one because a lot of people said that it was more of a horror novel, and it is, there's some horrifying stuff in here, but it is built on the chassis of a thriller because you're talking about missing persons, murders, that kind of thing. It's something supernatural in the book, but if I had said that in the other section, people are going to know because right off the bat you meet Olivia, you meet Lauren and all this stuff, and it seems like it's supernatural. Like you actually have a cat that has been connected with this person by God. Yeah, so I would love to talk to you down there in the doobly-doo, especially if you did not like this book. Again, if you are here and want to talk about spoilers, please put some kind of spoiler tag so that people just skimming through the comments, don't come across something. Give it a few spaces so that people will have to click read more when they read your comment. But that's all I have to say about The Last House in Needless Street, easily my favorite book of the year so far. But until next time, I have an E. You have an U. This has been another book review. I hope you guys read this one. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!