4.5 stars

This was on my most wanted list for a while. Well it was the entirety of my most wanted list,so I was really excited to read it.
I cant find the words to describe it well without spoilers.
But it took every assumption I made and turned them completely on their heads,leaving me wondering all too often what and how?
Absolutely cracker of a book,that's going to stay with me a long time I think.
Believe all the hype you've seen.

Wow...where to even start with this one? I knew very little about the book before going in, just some hype - but it's completely well deserved. This is the kind of book that's impossible to pin down, it's truly unique and off in it's own little world. It's wonderful though, the writing it so gorgeous and completely draws you and and keeps those pages turning. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this very special book.

To say this book was not what I had expected is an understatement. I had expected gothic horror - what it delivers is rather more fanciful and infinitely more complex than that. That it is part-narrated by a cat explains the 'fanciful' - at least initially. But what could have so easily been an attention-seeking device settles into a surprisingly delicate study of loss and 'lost' people of every sense. It is gentle where it could be salacious and kind where it could simply be cruel. By the end, the only character I really didn't buy, even as a 'type' (as Mummy rather is), was Dee, who was written with the same oddball pace and behaviour as some of the more extravagant characters in the novel. But it's a good read - dark and funny and compassionate and far, far more humane than its positioning might suggest. Recommend.

This is a unique book told by different voices, Ted, Olivia the cat and Lauren the young child. The story is disturbing and also left me quite often scratching my head! With some excellent descriptive writing, I felt as though I was there and also could smell the places, like the forest.

It did take me a while to get into the book but once I did, I found I couldn’t put it down. This story is well written and I found myself thinking about it even when I wasn’t reading it.

My thanks to Viper Books and NetGalley for my copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have absolutely no idea how to review this without spoilers, and this is a book which truly deserves to be read with no prior knowledge or expectation. What I can tell you is that "The Last House On Needless Street" is a compulsive read. Catriona Ward's plot is inventive and pushes boundaries. It's an ambitious piece of work, and work it does - extremely well.

I spent the first half of the book having little clue what was happening (whilst absolutely needing to know) and I was fully invested from the start. When the pieces started falling into place, I felt as though my brain was going to explode and my eyes were like this 👀 and continued to bulge out of my head for the entire second half of the book. I can see a migraine on the horizon but boy, will it have been worth it! At 95%, I had to keep taking a break for a wee minute because I felt as though I was going to combust from the sheer emotional overload. The experience was incredibly intense and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself once I'd finished.

Overall, the entire book took my breath away. If it's not the most talked about book of 2021, then I shall eat my not inconsiderable words. In saying that, those words have been taken from me temporarily as a result of this reading experience. Just... wow!

PS Please do yourself a favour and stick around for the Afterword. It's crucial.

I loved this book - everything about it, from the setting, characters and story! A creepy and atmospheric book that's so hard to read but also so hard to put down. This is an original & unsettling gothic/horror/psych thriller mix that will totally blow your mind & rip your heart into shreds. Fascinating backstory behind the plot too.

I requested this book for 2 reasons. Firstly, I kept hearing about it on some of the book vloggers I follow as a title on their TBR, and also because it sounded right up my street - a missing girl, a creepy man in a house on his own near the woods. Ooh, I thought, a good crime detective novel with a twist. So I started reading, and boy was I confused! Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different character, and at first you're wondering what on earth is going on. Where's the detective to come and solve the crime? Well, that was my main misunderstanding before coming to the book. This is no detective drama, this is a psychological horror story, so if that is more your thing then you'll love it. I think the author might have tried to cram too much research into the story and it ended up being a tad too long for me, as she tried to tie up all the loose ends. The topics covered in the story are fascinating though, and would definitely interest anyone studying fields of psychoanalysis or mental illness.

Wow this was a breathtaking, scary, terrifying, head exploding, twisty turny, utterly mind blowing story. I loved all the characters which we get to delve into, I also loved certain view points from a cats perspective. I don't want to spoil this, because its just brilliant. I was left gasping at the end with how brilliantly I was led along, I did not see the end coming. I would beg anyone to pick this fantastic, gripping on the edge of your seat book. Stephen King eat your heart out.

The Last House on Needless Street is an incredible novel and the first in a long time that I have re-read in its entirety as soon as finishing. The narrative dexterity within these pages is a literary tour-de-force. This is a heartbreaking, beautiful, brutal and scary book that will stay with me for some time. It fully deserves the buzz surrounding it and I just think everyone should read it as soon as possible!

I have absolutely no idea where to start with the review for this book. I'm not sure any review that I write will do this book justice. This is a hard one to review without giving away any spoilers.

This book is intelligent and extremely well written. This is my first read by this author but it is a book that has definitely converted me as a fan.

The fact this book has a stylish and intriguing cover put it straight on my radar. The synopsis sold me completely and it became one of my most anticipated gems for 2021. Any book that is also praised by Stephen king is an added healthy extra.

I like that this book is told from multiple viewpoints, it is interesting and really gives you an insight. I particularly found it unusual that one viewpoint is from the perspective of a cat.

This is a book which is deeply disturbing and full of atmosphere. I have found myself completely torn between wanting to devour this quickly and wanting to savour every page.

This book has been completely impossible to put down. The plot is unique to anything I've read previously and has been gripping and filled with twists. This has made this completely unpredictable.

As this is one of the most anticipated and sought after books in the bookish community, I feel incredibly thankful and lucky to have a copy of this stunning read. I have to say a huge thank you to Viper books for this one. I have been completely blown away.

This is a novel which is horrifying but heartbreaking, completely unique to anything else I've read and completely addictive. Five stars really doesn't do this justice! It is an amazing book and will definitely be a 2021 bestseller.

Years ago a girl went missing from the lake. That day Dee became an only child and Ted became a suspect. He lives in the last house on Needless Street where nobody bothers him and he can do as he pleases. The outside world is a strange place for Ted but inside his house is not much better.

This book epitomises why I love reading as the highly descriptive manner means we get right inside people's heads and this cannot be matched by any film or TV show. Catriona Ward masterfully does this with not one but four characters all with only a small piece of the puzzle. I was blown away by things I could never see coming because the writer only gave me access to exactly what she wanted me to see at the exact time she wanted me to. I was a captive audience that could not draw myself away from the story and it needed full concentration as I did not want to miss any detail no matter how small. I devoured every morsel of information and was hungry for more. I did manage to work out one aspect of the story before it was revealed but it really only scratched the surface of the much bigger picture. The Last House on Needless is so much more than your standard horror as it terrifies you with the realness and raw emotion of the characters portrayed. Throughout the book I felt like a fly on a wall somewhere I really shouldn't have been. I have never read a book like this before and I doubt I will again. It is a one of a kind.

Thank you so much for the ARC NetGalley!

This is a compelling psychological thriller that has a very surreal twist where different characters become the narrator, for example… a cat.

A lot happens in this book, so you need to make sure you do not miss anything! It is a whirlwind, full of information and eeriness. The whole plot feels tense and creepy and at times, I felt afraid of Ted! The narrative is filled with gothic fiction, horror and mystery where the story unravels and develops throughout, with so much excitement! Catriona Ward’s writing is very clever and unique!

Go grab yourself a copy on March 18th 2021!

I finished this novel in a sort of shell-shocked silence. I felt like I needed to go straight back to the beginning and start again. It is extraordinary and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It’s also very difficult to review without spoiling other reader’s experience of it, but I have to give it a go.

The house in question is the home of our first narrator Ted. As we read Ted’s view of the world we start to realise there is something unique and odd about the way he experiences the world. He made me feel uneasy. We get a sense that something is very wrong when the birds he loves to watch, are trapped and killed. Ted spends a lot of time thinking about an incident several years before when a little girl disappeared from the lake nearby and was never found. Others might have forgotten, but not Ted and not the girl’s sister who has a huge sense of guilt about her sister’s loss. Ted was a suspect at the time and it’s not hard to see why; he’s a slightly strange loner, living nearby in a ramshackle home with boarded up windows. The girl’s sister hasn’t forgotten that Ted was a suspect and decides to rent the house next door and watch him, in the hope of finally discovering where her sister is. CCTV proved Ted’s alibi at the time, but the sister’s convinced she has found the culprit.

Things take a very strange turn when we meet another narrator, Ted’s cat Olivia. In other hands this might have seemed twee or whimsical, but here it isn’t. It did give me a shock in the first instance, when a narrator I’d assumed to be human, stopped to lick the back of their legs! I loved the way the author played with language in these sections. Olivia doesn’t realised Ted is a name, she thinks it’s a word for his species, so all people are ‘teds’ and dogs are ‘brouhahas’. She describes her love for another of her species, a beautiful cat with emerald eyes that she sometimes spies preening herself, through the cat flap. She also has a belief system, including her very own god who she refers to as LORD. Yet there are aspects of this cat, that are distinctly not cat-like and I started to wonder if all wasn’t as it seemed. Could this cat be someone or something else entirely?

Other narrators are introduced and I was sometimes thoroughly confused, but never contemplated putting the book down. The beauty of the language and cleverness of the structure kept me going, determined to work out what exactly was going on. I was starting to be unsure which sections were real and what was illusion. The author is clearly hugely skilled at creating that sense of the uncanny - when everything seems normal and recognisable, but there is just that sense that something is off-kilter and sinister. This was so psychologically clever and I enjoyed Ted’s visits to the ‘bug man’ who appears to be some sort of psychotherapist, until he appears where we don’t expect him. I was so involved in this world of Ted’s that I was starting to forget the original crime, the loss of a little girl on the beachfront of the lake. The writing is so involving that I was inside Ted at times and the uneasy feeling is that you will never be able to get out. I guessed some of what is going on, but not the whole and I love the ambition and audacity. This is a unique, original and deeply creative piece of work that enthralled and stunned in equal measure. Ward is a writer of immense imagination and talent and I feel privileged to have been given the chance to read this before it hits the shelves and becomes a phenomenon.
I will be reviewing this on my blog just before publication in March.

The Last House on Needless Street has been featured in National Book Tokens' 21 books to look out for in 2021 article on Caboodle.

The Last House on Needless Street is truly a gothic thriller with horror elements throughout. The plot is difficult to describe without spoiling anything. I will say that what you think is going on is not what’s happening and there are more layers hidden underneath. Take that for what you will. The plot is well-researched and I will be looking out for Catriona Ward from now on. Highly recommended to those who enjoy Stephen King or enigmatic gothic thrillers.

Jeepers what have I just read?
Brutally brilliant.
No other words to describe it
I need a lie down now

The Last House on Needless Street. I absolutely loved it. Creepy, poignant and devoured in a day. A five star read. Highly recommend - Casey Kelleher

Cleaver!!
Dark!!!
Total page turner!!!!

Absolutely love this!! Will definitely be recommending this book to anyone who will listen to me

The Last House on Needless Street is a chilling, heartbreaking, clever thriller, that twists and turns like a dark alley. The story concerns a murderer, a missing child, an ordinary man who lives in an ordinary house on an ordinary street - and yet nothing is quite as it seems. A page-turner that will linger in the mind long after the book is finished.

This is the best thriller I’ve read in years, one of those books that keeps you turning and turning the pages, following the trails and traps the author has set out for you with a tremendous sense of building unease. It’s impossible to describe without spoilers, but the setup is that a little girl went missing at the beach some years before. Her older sister, driven by guilt and trauma, has never let go of the case and had been conducting her own investigation, which has led her to a man named Ted. She begins to live in the house next door to Ted’s and continues her investigation…oh, and there’s a talking cat involved. It’s cleverly plotted, with little snippets of information being doled out at precisely the right times to keep you off balance and make you reassess what you’d thought was going on up to then. All the characters in the book are orbiting a core of darkness, a hole in the world where something is very very wrong, but the nature of that wrong doesn’t come into focus until the end. There’s one scene in particular, maybe two thirds of the way through, where it will only dawn on you much later what was really going on, and the lurch in perspective that realisation brings is emblematic of this twisty, turny, unputdownable novel.