Like to be creeped out to the point of getting actual chills? Like to be dazzled by so many twists, your head'll spin faster than Linda Blair's in "The Exorcist"?
Hoo boy, have we got a book for you.
Mark that 9/28/21 date on your "books I gotta have in my in my hands, ready to read on the day they come out" list......
This one plunges so far down a twisted abyss of psychosis, dysfunction and heartbreak, you may never think you or the book will ever crawl out again.
Four narrators tell the story here......Ted, a lonely, strange man in a lonely strange house with all the windows boarded up, except for a few peepholes. (Feel free to say "Uh oh....")
Lauren, supposedly Ted's young daughter......though it seems she's most likely Lulu, a missing child who vanished some years ago, presumably abducted from her family's lakeside vacation.
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Olivia, Ted's cat. (Yes, she's an active narrator too and a character as vividly portrayed as Ted and Lauren.
And finally Dee, Lulu's haunted ,driven older sister, who's moved to Ted's street in the obsessed belief that Lulu's still alive......and in that forbidding house, a long time captive of Ted, who was initially suspected in the child's disappearance.
Is it possible that these three humans and the feline may or may not be unreliable narrators?
Are you kidding us or what? This book takes unreliable narration to almost unheard of stratospheric heights. This may be the first thriller we've read where virtually every sentence might prove untrustworthy.
As the novel progressively turns sicker, sadder and weirder, author Ward slowly but surely peels away all the secrets and twists like multiple layers of an onion.
And none of these secrets, twists and stunning surprises are anything we'd expect when we started reading it. Yes, there's horror aplenty here, but as the revelations unfold, we could see this author had way more ambitious intentions ......to move her readers emotionally.
And she achieves that brilliantly. This story's designed to haunt and unsettle you long after you've turned the last page.
We'll dare say not say one more word other than circle Sept 28th on your calendar and prepare to move in to Needless Street. Keep the lights on, it's a BQ 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.
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