Alessandra is reading…

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

“Killing things is hard, sure, but keeping them safe and alive is much more difficult.”

A family of three lives between a dead-end and the woods of Washington – a man who drinks, watches TV, and ignores the gaps in his memory, a teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, and a cat who naps and reads the Bible. When a new neighbor moves in next door, life changes exponentially and grievous secrets start to be revealed.
🏚
What a crazy book – this took me on an emotional roller coaster and the mystery kept me going.

My booksta friends who recommended this were right – if you decide to read this, keep going. The first 80-90 pages are confusing, rough, can be a bit boring at times. But the pace picks up and you’ll surely be pleased that you kept reading.

❗️Spoilers below ❗️

The author’s note at the end perfectly sums up her fictional use of DID and I’m so glad she had a bibliography as well.

I love the DID component- making me think a lot psychologically wise. I know in the field that people detest books written about DID, but it really helps me think about how the illness could potentially work. Armchair psychology can be unhelpful for therapists or researchers because it’s only from the client’s perspective or not all of it could be “true,” but when it comes to such an information heavy (and controversial) topic such as DID, there has to be some way for people to think about it.

Overall, once I saw that DID was a component in this story, I turned off my thriller/horror brain and I mostly tried to figure out how the alters worked together and if Ted killed anyone, but with a wariness to see how Ward was going to depict DID.

I was still looking for the horror part when I was figuring out how the alters worked together. I thought maybe Night-time was the murderer and Ted, Olivia, and Lauren just didn’t know it because they were unaware of what Night-time did and Night-time was mysterious, didn’t have any chapters from his perspective. So maybe that was one of the psychological twists Ward played on the reader’s mind.

“Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through.”

Read on.