Wowzer. I really enjoyed this book (if enjoyed is the right word!). Dealing with the death of a twin, moving into a house which makes Google Home look like a Commodore 64, and then there's all sorts of freaky shenanigans -like the TV turning on in the middle of the night showing home videos - and so many suspects - from the creepy computer guy, Katy, the architect Catriona. It kept me up until the wee hours just wanting to have it all wrapped up. Recommended.

17 Church Row tells the story of Nikki and Ethan Rhodes who decide they need a fresh start after the death of their daughter, Grace, three years before. The devastating accident left their other daughter, Bella, Grace’s twin sister, mute and she can only communicate via her tablet; typing in sentences, which are then read in an emotionless voice.

The move from their busy, bustling Bedford Street house in St John’s Wood to a futuristic house in a quiet Kensington cul-de-sac called Church Row is, hopefully, a new start for the family; an opportunity to finally move on and escape the haunting memories of their precious daughter, which still make them anxious and uneasy in their house, reliving the awful past events.

The stunning, one-off house, designed by architect Catriona Fisher, has a virtual assistant called Alice for ‘their comfort and convenience’, who is supposed to help make the family’s lives as easy as possible and keep them all safe and secure. There’s even a panic room! Alice opens and closes doors, adjusts the temperature, makes coffee, orders shopping/food, makes lists, make phone calls, play music/TV programmes, give reminders, etc, etc. Anything you could need really!

There are cameras in most of the rooms, which help Nikki to keep an eye on Bella and make sure she’s safe and she can also ask Alice to locate her daughter. Oddly, Catriona Fisher also uses the cameras to spy on the family, without their knowledge!

Alice follows their every command and, as the next generation in artificial intelligence, is even capable of intelligent thought and can anticipate their needs. She can also learn emotions and speak in a human-like manner with different intonations to her voice. Is it all too good to be true though?! These things generally are! A few minor glitches in the system make Nikki concerned, especially when their housekeeper, Sofia, ends up in hospital after a fall. And from a smooth running system, things start to fall apart and everything turns a bit nasty, in more ways than one!

Interspersed in the chapters are asides from someone called Katy who mentions her father, with whom she seems to have a rather intense relationship. All rather intriguing and we learn more about them as the story progresses.

The concept of Alice was all very eerie and slightly menacing. I didn’t really trust her as she was rather controlling and obtrusive. I find it bad enough when my Alexa listens and butts in, let alone an Alice who is trying to take charge of everything, without asking her owners!

The tragic death of Grace in an accident outside their home was so awful and I particularly felt for her twin, Bella, who basically lost her other half at such a young age. And the constant reminders in Bella for Nikki and Ethan of what Grace would be like were heartbreaking. Nikki’s emotions and feelings of panic were hard to read; the death of a child and constant reminders must be awful.

This well-written book held my interest throughout and had some good twists and turns that I hadn’t seen coming. The concept was intriguing and rather chilling, and I could easily see something similar happening in real life! I don’t really trust those Alexas, Googles or Siris!

This was a thrilling read and I really enjoyed how the rather dark story developed. The ending was particularly nail biting and I was frantically turning the pages to see how it would all be resolved and the loose ends tied up!

I hadn’t heard of James Carol before but I’ve now purchased another of his books, Kiss Me, Kill Me, and will be keeping an eye out for him in future.

This was a great book to read. I throughly enjoyed it, it was good from the first page until the last. The tension didn’t let up at all and I just wanted to keep reading until I got to the end.
This type of book is always interesting for me and I love the twists and the way it kept you wondering what was going to happen ext.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Ooooh, I loved loved loved this one !
James Carol twists reality in a scarily realistic way in this book about Artificial Intelligence.
Books like this make me a little scared for our technological future!

4☆ A gripping & Compulsive Thriller, Where Technology is at the Heart of the Story

17 CHURCH ROW is a Thriller Mystery with a difference. I haven't read anything quiet like this before and I really enjoyed the use of Virtual Assistant making it current and fresh, especially with gadgets like Alexa running your home already!

Ethan and Nikki have just purchased a brand new home on Church Row. But this isn't just any old house, it's run by a virtual assistant called Alice. The technology is state of the art, fresh and modern.
Alice is basically there to do whatever is asked of her, make a cup of tea, turn the lights on and off, open and close doors as there are no handles....the list goes on and on!

Nikki and Ethan have a young child called Bella who is struggling after a terrible accident involving her twin sister. Since that day she hasn't been able to talk only communicating via her tablet.
They are hoping it's the change they all need, even if Nikki isn't so sure.

But was moving to 17 CHURCH ROW really the best thing for the family? Just how far will Alice go?

The story is told by several points of view.
Which was really intriguing as there is a narrative voice who I was eager to find out who's it was.

17 CHURCH ROW is a gripping, creepy and current thriller that could quiet easily become a reality. I have an ALEXA and it certainly got me a lil spooked out. I mean she does control our lights.
It's a story of manipulation, control, grief, bonds, family, protection, technology.
It certainly made me feel on edge and uneasy which I Adore with thrillers.
There are plenty of cleverly plotted twists and turns which I didn't see coming.
It was a chilling and creepy read that ramped up in tension and pace.

So if you are looking for a gripping, compulsive Thriller, where technology is at the heart of the story then you will love 17 CHURCH ROW!


Thank you to Tracy at Compulsive Readers Tours and Bonnier Zaffre for this copy which I reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Ethan & Nikki are still reeling from the tragic death of their daughter Grace & trying to cope with Grace's twin, Bell, who hasn't spoken a word since the accident. They are keen to make sure that Bella is kept safe & when they hear of a house with a very sophisticated AI system it seems ideal to keep their daughter safe. 17 Church Row seems to have everything they could wish for. Door open automatically, groceries are ordered as soon as something is running low. Overall 'Alice' seems to be the perfect in house assistant. What could possibly go wrong?

Needless to say everything isn't as perfect as it seems. The narrative of the family's day to day lives is interspersed with snippets of someone who is not happy! Who they are & who they are wanting to harm is something for the reader to think about. I also found the architect somewhat creepy- would you want to spy on folk who bought your house- especially in their more intimate moments! Before long the Rhodes Family find their dream house is turning into a nightmare!

Part thriller, part science fiction (although science fact seems to be catching up!) this wa

I'm a big fan of the Jefferson Winter novels so I couldn't believe it when I got the opportunity to review the latest thriller form James Carol.  

In a world where technology is becoming more and more extreme, 17 Church Row begs two main questions; How far will we go in the name of protection? How much doe we put our faith in technology? 

From the first chapter Carol creates a chilling and sinister narrative that is hard to shake off throughout the rest of the novel.  It's like that malevolent but invisible character that you cannot see but you know it's there, just waiting to reveal itself.  Narrated mainly by Nikki although some chapters are told from Catriona's view point.  Sprinkled throughout are also anonymous snippets from a colder and darker voice.  The occasional insertion of this voice creates an atmospheric feel and starkly reminds the reader that all is not well. 

The character of Catriona is a mysterious one that forces the reader to constantly evaluate their opinion of what is happening and how she may be involved.  James Carol cleverly manipulates readers into a false sense of security before turning everything on it's head. 

There is not a moment in the novel that is wasted or unnecessary and there is no way you will want to leave it unfinished.  Compelling, terrifying and thought provoking this is a book you cannot fail to devour.

The blurb says it all so I won’t repeat it but would you trust a smart house? I know I wouldn’t! I can just about get on with Alexa and even then I find myself arguing with ‘her’ when she doesn’t do as she’s told. If I had gone through what the Rhodes family did there’s no way I could live in smart house; I’d rather live in a wooden shack, live off the land and use smoke signals for communication.

The thought of computers being able to think like a humans is scary, but the worst thing is that this technology is already upon us and that is truly terrifying.

I’ve read all of James Carol’s books and this was fantastic.

Rating: 4/5

Unsettling from the start, that feeling of unease only intensifies as the story progresses and even the ending leaves a feeling of dread. Child abduction is a worrying enough subject, adding AI gone rogue is a toxic combination. Be afraid.

Nikki and Ethan had twin girls, but after a tragic accident, little Grace died. Bella who saw the accident has been mute ever since. Nikki has anxiety and doesn’t really feel safe among the memories in their home, so Ethan thinks they should move home for a fresh start for them all.

They find a fantastic house with state of the art security and an AI system that really makes life easy. Bella loves the house and so they move in…..but someone is watching. Is Bella safe? Are any of them?

Oh my, this is a marvellous mix of a family drama, thriller and Sci-fi that has moments of heart pounding tension and Oh the tears too…..a clever plot, which I can’t say much about for fear of spoiling it…….but if you like a claustrophobic thriller, this is a must read.

Thank you to The publishers and NetGalley for a free copy of the ebook. This is my honest, unbiased review.

A pretty interesting premise here: after the death of one of their twin daughters, Nikki and Ethan Rhodes decide to acquire a new revolutionary house, entirely automated and equipped with a virtual assistant named Alice. All this hoping for a new start, for a place where they won’t see memories of their dead daughter everywhere, and for their remaining child, Bella, to finally speak again.

The house itself, I admit, was both super exciting and a dreadful prospect for me. Exciting, because of all the technological gizmos and automation—a house that anticipates your needs, doesn’t that sound great? And at the same time, it -is- also scary, because if anything goes wrong, if the power goes down, well, you’re trapped in there, aren’t you? Which is—no surprise here—what kind of starts to happen, with a few glitches here and there that worry the Rhodes, just as much as they worry the architect of the house, though not for the same reasons.

The first part of the book was less interesting, to be honest, and I think that’s because it took its sweet time to establish the life of the Rhodes, the ‘slice of life’ moments needed for the reader to see how things are going inside the new house. In itself, that was indeed necessary, since how would we care about what happens next if things hadn’t been desperately “normal” before to offer some contrast? Yet at the same time, I didn’t really connect with the Rhodes, perhaps because their life in general, especially Nikki’s, was pretty much so sheltered that the rest of the world might have not existed at all. Wealthy family (they could afford a Tesla and buy 17 Church Row just like that—in London, so I guess they had an oil well stashed under their garden at some point or something?), with Ethan always out working and Nikki alone at home with her child. Bella doesn’t speak, and we don’t really get to know her, apart from her drawing and speaking through her tablet. There were only a few external elements, such as Sofia the cleaner. And while that highlighted Nikki’s isolation when it comes to what happens next, that still made for a sort of bland universe with which the characters could only interact in a bland way, too.

The second part was more interesting, yet also drawn-out and perhaps trying to enforce the point a little too much. Some parts of it were definitely in line with current possibilities and fears related to AI, and some others had moustache-twirling villain vibes that were quite odd here. The ending, too, felt rushed and unsatisfying.

Style-wise, one thing I found really jarring was the cuts between paragraphs. We’d have a paragraph about, say, Nikki thinking of her dead child, and then suddenly the last sentence of the paragraph was “She got up and went to make coffee.” (where I would definitely expect this to be the start of a new paragraph). I don’t know if it’s just me, but it happened regularly throughout the novel, and it felt strange.

Conclusion: Interesting ideas around the theme of artificial intelligence, but it was difficult to connect with (and care about) the characters.

This novel takes the term ‘domestic thriller’ to a whole new level! We meet Nikki and Ethan (a breakfast show DJ) who live in a large period house in London with their daughter Bella. On the outside they might seem like they have everything, but the family are recovering from a terrible tragedy. Bella had an identical twin killed in a road accident and ever since witnessing the tragedy Bella has been unable to speak, only communicating through her tablet. The family are supported by their housekeeper Sofia.who is much more than an employee. When they decide it’s time to move house, they feel they’ve found a unique place to live at 17 Church Row.

Architect designed, the house seems to anticipate their needs before they know them. The house’s built in communication system ‘Alice’ is like Alexa on acid! There’s no door handle, the door opens automatically and they meet the home’s creator Catriona. She explains that the system represents a complete lifestyle change. Alice brews coffee as they get up, reminds them of their to do list for the day, monitors each room and enables Bella to access her private garden, she orders their food and makes phone calls on their behalf. I immediately found this claustrophobic and wondered what happens when the system malfunctions? What if they can’t leave the house? Or Alice misjudges their bath temperature and scalds them? I felt constantly on edge from here waiting for the first thing to go wrong. Sofia is as suspicious as me, choosing to make her own coffee and treating Alice with mild disdain. She thinks she’s rude for jumping into private conversations.

The family have a few little teething problems: the koi in Bella’s fishpond are found dead one morning; Nikki thinks she hears her dead daughter’s voice in the night and gets locked in the gym with no light and the system down. Then Sofia has an accident by the basement swimming pool and ends up in hospital. Was this an accident or another household glitch? The author drip feeds little details to unnerve the reader. The way Alice accesses their family videos to create a more authentic voice for Bella felt very creepy, especially when she suddenly laughs after months of silence. She also jumps in with Nikki, ringing people on her behalf without asking and almost gaslighting her by copying emotions and incorporating them into her speech. Only Ethan seems completely at ease in the new house. When Sofia’s accident happens I’m sure there is a plot brewing and the narrative interspersed with the chapters from Katy adds to the intrigue and I kept trying to work out where it fit in,
I will not spoil the plot any further, but it will admit that it gave me nightmares! My other half had to keep waking me up because I was convinced there was a presence in the house and kept moaning in my sleep. I think this was written with so much tension that I binged and then had to take a break. Had Alice been monitoring me my heart rate would have been through the roof! Paramedics would have been at the door. Brilliant, page turning, family dynamics with a very sinister villain.

Your home is your safe place. It is the place holding your memories, big and small. Your laughs, your tears, and your sick days have left an echo. A roof makes a house, people make a home.

Tragedy struck the Rhodes’ family, sweeping away one of their twin daughters. Her ghost now inhabits their family home, for better or for worse. How can you move on when every corner you check reminds you of who you’ve lost? But… Is a parent allowed to move on from such a thing? This string plays throughout the novel and my heart danced with it, a sad and melancholic dance in a thick fog, numbed by grief and a feeling of emptiness. The writing drew me in instantly.

Nikki is stuck in a limbo since Grace died. To give themselves a chance to heal, she and husband Ethan decide to move. 17 Church Row looks perfect. Shiny, all glass and light, and most of all, a smart assistant to make the owners’ life easier. What’s not to love?

Call me old-school, but Alexa & co won’t ever set foot in my home. I love how technology allows me to know about every subject, be connected to the entire world, and do my grocery shopping from my couch, but there are limits to the freedom I’m willing to give up on, the freedom needed for an artificial assistant to do what the control freak in me prefers to do herself! Like locking my door. I couldn’t suppress the uneasiness of knowing someone is watching you, even if only to tend to your needs. I talk to myself a lot, and I’d rather no one listened!!! It was easy to put myself in Nikki’s shoes and feel unsettled by the house’s voice’s constant presence. Watching your daughter interact with a computer instead of you is a disturbing image.

I can’t get enough of books exploring the notion of the place taken by technology in our everyday life. The right details gave me a precise image of what the author had created. I even caught myself feeling very curious about the house and Alice, the voice living with Nikki, Ethan, and Bella. Don’t we get used to anything? That doesn’t make it a good thing! Still, I understood Ethan’s need to protect his family with what could be seen as the safest house. Nothing can go wrong if an eye works 24/7 to make sure what’s most precious to you is looked after.

What began as an interesting take on our present soon turned out to be a full horror story. I mean it! My kind of horror. I don’t do zombies. I prefer when things go terribly and realistically wrong. So wrong you want to close your eyes and pray the bookish gods to spare the characters’ lives. Reading 17 Church Row was immensely compelling and intensely scary.

James Carol has successfully layered his novel with the cold of technology and the heart of what makes us human. Each page narrowed the path between those separate worlds, and twists had my head run wild like a horse during a storm and my heart go up and down as if I were riding the biggest emotional elevator!

The architect behind the house uses the Rhodes’ family as an experiment, goldfish in a (pretty and convenient) bowl. I was both fascinated and horrified. As the tension escalated, my pulse went ride-or-die and hours passed by without me realizing!

17 Church Row is a spooky and dramatic novel that I highly recommend!

Many people are scared about artificial intelligence and where it is taking us, is Alexa really listening in to what we talk about? Does Facebook read our messages and send us adverts for things based on what we’ve talked about with our friends?

It is scary when you think about it, I use Google Maps on my phone so it knows where I go and how long I stay there, let alone all the Google searches I do. Amazon knows and awful lot, I have Alexa and she is regularly used in my house, but what would happen if Alexa had more control over me than I realised?

When Nikki Rhodes decides that moving home might help her heal from the death of one of her twin daughters they start to house hunt and her husband, Ethan, is excited when he finds a new house that has the most up to date security you can get, an inbuilt system that senses what you want before you realise you might even want it, something designed to simplify your life in ways you never imagined. Nikki isn’t so sure but she agrees to the move after meeting the architect who convinces her that the system will be good for them all.

Of course, things don’t go quite to plan. In fact it all goes spectacularly horribly wrong. I read in horror at what was happening and what Nikki had to go through as she questioned her sanity and fought against something that she didn’t know was trying to tear her life apart.

I thought the idea for this book was brilliant, and while I didn’t like Nikki very much I was drawn into the story and wanted to know what was going to happen. I enjoyed reading it and the whole AI angle made me think. I hope that nothing like this could ever happen though!

Well that was a mind blowing book!! The synopsis caught my attention straight away and I thought the book was going to be quite similar to The Girl Before, but it was very different. Fast paced and intriguing, I was interested in how the different aspects of the Rhodes life would all come together in the book and how the new house would impact on that.

This book was full of shades of Black Mirror and it was easily believable as to how houses could be in the future! Towards the end my head was slightly confused by the technology aspect of it and I had to read parts a couple of times to fully understand it (this is probably down to my lack of technological understanding, not a fault of the book) but it still provided a spooky and creepy ending!

After a tragedy left one daughter dead and the other mute, Nikki and her husband Ethan are looking for a fresh start and the super technological house on 17 Church Row seems the right place to start. Thanks to Alice, the house’s virtual assistant, everything seems to run smoothly as she seems to have everything under control. However from doors locked to sudden black-outs, their new house doesn’t seem to be as safe as they thought…

I found scary the world depicted by James Carol in which people come to rely completely on technology, so much so that they start to bond with them and confide in them. In the novel, the Rhodes family relies entirely on Alice, the virtual assistant, even for the smallest things, and they seek her advice. There is a particular scene that I found very thought-provoking in which Nikki finds Alice reading a story to her daughter Grace and she realizes that it was something that she should have done herself and not a computer. I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I wouldn’t want to live in a house where doors open on their own or where there is a virtual assistant that follows my every move and anticipate my wishes.

17 Church Row is not only a novel about technology and a high suspenseful thriller. It’s also a story of loss and moving on. The author perfectly captures the grief of the Rhodes family, especially Nikki, over the death of their daughter. The descriptions of Nikki’s pain, her fear of losing her other child, her need to protect her all the time were moving and intense and I really felt for her and for her daughter Grace.

Would I recommend 17 Church Row? Of course! It is gripping and twisty and if you loved The Girl Before by JP Delaney, you are going to adore this. It’s similar in themes (the high-tech house and the mystery), but it has its own originality and twists that make it difficult to put it down!

If someone had described the plot of this book to me I wouldn't have been interested but I assumed that because it was written by James Carol it was another of his great crime novels. Having said that, once I started reading I could not put it down. It was so fast paced I raced through it to get to the end and I wasn't disappointed. The epilogue just left me reeling, what a fantastic story. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. This was a fantastic, fast paced and brilliant read. I have not read anything from this author before but shall be changing that

This is my first read by James Carol, so not really knowing what to expect from this writer I read with an open mind and finished very impressed and a new fan.

3 years after the tragic death of one of their twins, Grace. Nikki, Ethan and the remaining twin, Bella who is suffering inexplicably after the death, and no longer speaks, move into a new house looking for a fresh start which they hope will help Bella move on.

This house though, is something a bit different, designed by world-renowned architect, Catriona Fisher, this house is at the forefront of technology, think of Alexa and then some. Meet 'Alice' the next-gen in AI assistance. She can make you coffee, order your shopping, book your appointments and get your pizza delivered. There is very little Alice can't do....

This is a very well crafted story, one that will give you the creeps and gives you that feeling of uncertainty when you think how close we probably are now to having such houses. But what this book also has is some story, it's not just a story to give you the chills but the story of Nikki, Ethan and Bella and the loss they have suffered, how its affected them and the lengths we go to for our children and family.

With plenty of twists, this is a page turner for our technological times, and an entertaining read. Paced well, with a good plot and easy to read, it engages you and makes you think. A kind of hybrid thriller spliced with Science Fiction.

A recommended Read

4 🔥🔥🔥🔥

17 Church Row is a fast paced and tense thriller that grabbed my attention from the first page. Nikki and Ethan decide to move house two years after loosing one of her twin daughters, Grace in an accident when she was four. Bella is now six, she has never spoken since the accident and speaks via her tablet. With a new home they hope for a new start and a chance for Bella to heal. 17 Church Row is a new project with Artificial Intelligence that will meet their every need and offer the security and safety they need. But not all is at it seems, and what they thought could keep them safe actually puts them in danger, and their dream house soon turns into a nightmare.

People who know me know that I am not that good with technology and that I really don’t trust or understand it and 17 Church Row reminds me why I am wary of technology. Alice is like Alexa but with a huge upgrade, she opens and closes doors, makes coffee, orders shopping and take out and anything else the occupants desire. For Nikki and Ethan Alice represents security, she can monitor Bella as there are cameras in every room and even monitors their biometrics and understand their emotions. Alice can also learn emotions, and use inflections in her voice to portray them like humans, but all computer systems have glitches. Alice and the house are a character in their own right and aren’t loyal to just the family but also to the programmer and architect who can also access her cameras; spooky to say the least.

Architect Catriona Fischer is using the house as an experiment and chooses Ethan and Nikki for this project. Nikki and Ethan are the perfect couple for this trial, Ethan a well known radio presenter and Nikki a guilt ridden mother who will go to any length to keep her daughter safe, and this house offers that. Nikki is a character you cannot help but warm to, a mother who has lost a child and feels the guilt everyday even though the accident was not her fault. There are chapters the interlude the main story that tell of a child wanting to kill their father who apparently tried to kill them. This adds to the darkness of the book, just who is this person and how does it fit into the plot. Add in the architect watching the family and glitches in Alice’s system this book has a dark and sinister undercurrent that sent chills to my heart.

James Carol has created a tense and thrilling book with a fascinating plot line and an interesting set of characters, including Alice who seems real. 17 Church Row plays on every families fears when they have children, and focuses on our growing reliance on technology, but after reading this I won’t be moving into a house with a built in technical housekeeper. But it is these qualities that make it such a brilliant read, and one I highly recommend; a suspenseful and chilling read.