The premise of this story was good, and the ending has a nice twist which sort of brings the two narratives together.

The plot is across two timelines, with some of the characters appearing in both.

Ellie is a young girl in the early sixties, living in the South. She is compassionate and very civil minded. She joins an organisation called SCOPE to educate those who don’t get the vote prior to the laws changing. This part of the book is thought provoking and deals with the bigotry of the time well.

On to 2010 and Kayla is a young architect, recently widowed, with a little girl. She and her husband designed and built a beautiful home in a part of town that has a lot of secrets. Her family are well established in the area, with her father being a past mayor.

The main problem for me was that the narrative was repetitive and very slow, the book far too long and I feel the story didn’t really pick up until the the last third, and by then I was losing interest. Thankfully the last part of the book saved the day and I’m glad I finished it, but it was a struggle.

Thank you NetGalley.

This engrossing and poignant novel is written in dual narrative and in dual time frame. It features the stories of two strong women living on their own, fifty five years apart. Both ladies have lost the love of their lives and both ladies live in the same small town, The historic story is the story of a young idealistic student fighting for civil rights and the modern story tells us about a young woman who moves into a new house with her four-year-old daughter shortly after her husband dies in a tragic accident.
Ellie lives with her Mother, Father and Buddy, her brother, in North Carolina. Her Father is a pharmacist and Ellie is determined to study hard at Uni so that she can follow in his footsteps. It is 1965 and Ellie hears about the SCOPE initiative. Students have been encouraged to join in and canvas through their long holidays. She thinks it is a very worthwhile cause and she decides that that is what she will do. She likes the thought of helping black Americans understand the importance of registering for the vote so that they will have a voice. She travels south and passes through the induction. She is paired up with a young black man and gradually they fall in love. Interracial relationships are taboo, so they conduct their clandestine courtship very carefully. Eventually tensions run high. Their secret is out and Ellie has to return home to save her boyfriend from getting beatings or even worse.
Kayla and her husband designed their new house together. They will soon be moving in it with their young daughter. It was to be their forever home, but then tragedy struck just as her husband was finishing off the extra bits and bobs so that they could move in. He slipped on some nails and screws and fell down the stairs. It was a tragic accident, but now she and her daughter are living with her father. Soon Kayla’s father is helping her move in. It is a bitter sweet day. She loves the house and its wooded surroundings, but she also hates it because it had cost her husband his life. She has already had to deal with a strange lady who visited her trying to spook her out and sell her house. Then there had been a last minute bid on the house as well. It seems as though someone is trying their best to frighten her away. Then, in the first few weeks of residency, her trash bin is emptied out all over her lovely front garden and later again dead squirrels ware launched up into her tree Kayla has reported these events to the police who are friendly and supportive. She just can’t understand why someone else wanted her to leave her beautiful new house. Ellie and Kayla live on opposite sides of the same street. When Ellie and Kayla meet the fireworks are well and truly lit as the past and the future collide and questions just have to be settled.
Diane Chamberlain is a wonderful and highly rated storyteller. She has based her storyboard about Ellie on real events that actually happened. Even some of the characters and their actions are genuine. The other characters are born in her creativity and merge in well to the actual historical events. Her fictitious characters are richly developed and are true to life in their diversity, opinions and actions. This novel exquisitely merges both threads bringing together Ellie and Kayla. There are years between them in age, but they both want to know why Kayla’s new house and her recent residency has caused so much trouble. Gradually as their friendship deepens, long held secrets from the past are revealed and the full story becomes evident. Some of the content is harrowing but the novel is informative and very interesting.
I received a complimentary copy of this novel through my membership of NetGalley and from publisher Review. Thank you for my copy, sent out to me in return for an honest review. I really enjoyed this novel and recommend it as an excellent read. I award it a 4.5* review

his story was a dual timeline with two points of view, the timelines ended up tying in perfectly with each other.

I was significantly more interested in one of the timelines and it’s characters, as opposed to the other. Which I suppose is probably inevitable.

The writing wasn’t spectacular, some of the narrative and situations felt a little stretched. Especially in Kayla’s parts.

The plot picks up substantially around 60% of the way through, which saved it for me.

I found the premise and history associated with the story very interested but I felt more could have been done with it. It wasn’t a thriller for me…

I’m giving this one a 3/5, not really sure how I’m left feeling about it if I’m honest.

5 stars gripping, twist I didn’t see coming at the end. Brilliant read, will certainly recommend to others

This is a very powerful book. It had me gripped from page one and tells an emotional story set over two timelines. I will definitely be recommending this for book club!

The Last House on the Street is a haunting character driven dual timeline story. Set in a small town in North Carolina it centres on racial tensions in 1965 and a new housing development built in mysterious woods in 2010. The early years are dominated by Ellie, a privileged young lady with a strong social conscience who becomes swept up in a campaign, the Scope program, to encourage negroes to register to vote. This is against a background of an active Ku Klux Klan, segregation and extreme poverty. Ellie goes against her family, boyfriend and best friend to pursue her mission. Concurrently the story in 2010 centres on Kayla, an architect, who has just lost her husband in a tragic accident, and her daughter Rainie. Diane Chamberlain assuredly plots the story using steadily increasing tensions with several shocks along the way as the two stories start to merge. I was more invested in Ellie’s story than in Kayla’s as the former was a more relatable character for me and easier to visualise. All in all a well written and plotted historical story which unfortunately will still resonate with many today. Thanks to NetGalley and Headline Publishing for the ARC.

I have read and enjoyed many of Diane Chamberlain's books and this gave the great story telling which I have come to expect from her. Really engaging and well written read, very much enjoyed, thank you.

I really enjoyed this book and couldn’t put it down.

The premise draws you in and is believable enough to be real which made my heart break for the characters.

The part of the book set in the past brings another side to the book and stirs such rage at what the characters were put through.

The Last House on the Street features the parallel stories of two women - one thread set in 1965, the other in 2010 - and revolves around themes of extreme racism and intolerance, and of secrets long-held but widely known by all except the young mother on whose patch they occurred.

Ellie is the 1965 character who goes against the wishes of her family and her community to work with Civil Rights activists to promote the constitutional changes which will soon make it much easier for people from the poor black communities to vote. It's a fascinating storyline and one which those of us outside the USA may well find even more horrifying than we expected. Who is under that white hood and should you be surprised if it's your uncle, your neighbour or even a member of your own family.

Meanwhile, back in 2010, Kayla is recently widowed with a small daughter and needs to move into the house that she and her husband designed and built as she no longer has anywhere else to go. The house is spectacular but it's the place her husband died and people just won't stop telling her to 'stay out of the woods' and giving her advice to tear down the treehouse. Can she get to the bottom of what happened and be able to live there in peace? And there's the mysterious woman in the red wig and mirror glasses who has threatened her and her daughter. How does she fit into the story?

Ellie appears in both threads - as a young woman in 1965 and as a cool yoga-practicing, rooibos-drinking Californian in 2010, looking after her brother and mother.

Diane Chamberlain is a very reliable author. You know that what she writes will be well crafted and dependable but - forgive me, I've only read a few - they books never quite seem to rock my world. I know they'll be good but I may not remember then a month later. Aside from the horrifying racism, I'm not sure how much of this is going to stick with me. I also found a few of the themes didn't seem to be tied off fully. I'm still unclear if her husband's death was or wasn't entirely accidental. I still don't understand why the bumper was hanging off Reed's car given that what we are supposed to think happened, doesn't seem to have happened (if you see what I mean). Chamberlain makes you care about her protagonists so that they feel very real to the reader.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for my review copy.

Such a very powerful story which had me gripped till the end. I'm looking forward to reading more by Diane

Set in the Deep South two lives whose histories eventually join. Part told in an era of deep bigotry Ellie wants to help and joins an organisation called SCOPE involved in trying to help black people register for their forthcoming right to vote. Her family and neighbours are deeply against this and when she starts a relationship with one of the other helpers the outcome is bleak.
Part told in present day we learn exactly what happened to Ellie and why the same neighbourhood are determined that Kayla should not settle in her new house
Distressing at times an interesting read that lays bare past attitudes to civil rights.

aw i loved this book and did not want it to end yet i was very eager to finish it to see how it concluded. Such a good book and will deffo read more from this author. Highly recommend.

Another good read by Diane Chamberlain, and so topical with' Black Lives Matter', they really do and this book showed that. In mnay ways a sad book but very sensitively written.

The Last House on the Street is not your average thriller!

In 2010, Kayla is about to move into the house that she designed on the new Shadow Ridge Estates alongside her architect husband, who sadly died as a result of an on-site accident. Already nervous about the move and the future she has to build for herself and her young daughter, Kayla begins to receive threats both anonymously and from a mysterious red haired woman demanding that she stay away.

While, in 1965, naïve but earnest teenager Ellie is beginning to find her voice in support of racial equality and voting rights. She joins a local campaign, attending protests and voting drives, and finds herself in the middle of a terrible situation trying to help her new friends and avoiding becoming a target for the racist views of the people she has known all her life.

Told across the two timelines, Diane Chamberlain has crafted a story full of friendship, family, love, mystery and suspense, which also provides a powerful yet sensitive insight into the heart-breaking treatment black people have experienced (with period typical racist language, segregated schools and physical violence).

This story was so gripping, emotive and immersive – I really couldn’t put it down! Highly recommended!

Thank you to the author, publishers Headline and NetGalley UK for access to this as an advance reader’s ebook. This is an honest and voluntary review.

A strange woman with red hair and a birthmark on her arm tells Kayla that she wants to murder someone and that Kayla should think again about moving into the new house she designed with her husband. The house Kayla’s husband tragically died in.

This story flips back and forward in time to share a forbidden romance born in the civil rights movement, and a young woman willing to risk her family to do the right thing.

The alternating of history with more recent events works well. The 1965 sections told through the eyes of 20-year-old Ellie are the best parts. She’s a privileged and relatively naïve young white woman in North Carolina who bravely stands up against her family and the friends she has grown up with to help the civil rights movement and support voting rights for all. The book doesn’t pull any punches on the impact of that decision. The 2010 sections as Kayla and her four-year-old daughter move into a house no one seems to want them to live in aren’t as strong. The connections between the past and the present, and in particular the identity of the red haired woman, seemed fairly obvious long before the plot revealed the truth which meant sections of the last third of the book really dragged for me. But, the overall ending was satisfying.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought i would as not my usual type of read. The characters were interesting and the theme of racial tension was dealt with very well .

Wow! What a story. I absolutely had no idea which way this was going. A story told through the eyes of two people in two different time lines.

Kayla's story is in the present, she is a widow, living in her newly built house with her daughter Rainie, the same house she designed with her husband and the same place where he died. Many strange people come into Kayla's life, suspicious events but Kayla won't be deterred from living and loving the house she built with her love, Jackson.

A second timeline starts of a young and frustrated Ellie who doesn't want the life of every 20 something year old in the 1960s. She has no interest in the social norms of falling in love and getting married to have babies. Although she lives in South Carolina, an area still deep rooted in racism and the Klu Klux Klan, Ellie has other ideas and wants to be part of the social change to bring equality to all races.
Cue a series of events which bring the 2 women together in the present time where shocking events are revealed.

This book provided me with a historical lesson of the 1960s and how rasicm was still rife, through inequality and oppression.
This story will stay with me for a long time.
I absolutely recommend this book. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my ecopy of this book.
Diane Chamberlain is a brilliant author bringing mystery to general fiction. A real page Turner.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book which is set in the 1965 and 2010. It is the story of Ellie who gets caught up in the Civil Rights movement in 1960s North Carolina and Kayla, a recently widowed architect who is moving into her new home with her young daughter Rainie.
Ellie is a pharmacy student who decides to join Scope, an organisation which helps register black voters at a time when it is incredibly difficult for them due to the fact that they have to pass written tests to do so and many are illiterate. This unnecessary test puts them off. A Voting Rights s Act is coming but hasn’t been signed yet.
As an English person reading this novel I had no idea these obstacles were put in the way of prospective black voters to prevent prevent them exorcising their constitutional rights.
Ellie is keen to spend her Summer doing this Civil Rights work much to the disgust of her family.
When she meets Win, a passionate young man who is inspired by Martin Luther King, she starts to have feelings for him but there is a major problem. He is black and she is white and they live in the South where inter racial relationships are not accepted.
Kayla is trying to move on after her husband’s death but she is threatened by a strange client in her office and she almost feels that her house is haunted when strange things start to happen there. Supported by her father, Reed , she carries on resolutely and finally moves into her finished home where she meets a new neighbour Ellie who is caring for her sick family, having recently moved back from San Francisco.
This is a wonderful story which cleverly brings these two timeframes to a devastating conclusion when they collide in the present day.
I loved the descriptions of the South in the early sixties and was horrified by what went on and the prejudices expressed by the characters. It is strange to think that these views were accepted as normal a mere 50 years ago.
As well as being a moving family story, “The Last House on The Street”is also an interesting historical novel which has been well researched and taught me a lot about the Civil Rights Movement I’ve read and enjoyed other books by this author and this one certainly did not disappoint.
.For me this was definitely a five star read and I highly recommend it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Headline for my arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to the publishers and Net Galley for my free e-copy.

Let me start by saying this is up there with my favourite books! One of the best I have read so far via Net Galley for sure!

This is a real page-turner. Set 50 years apart, this story flicks between the 1960's where racial tensions are high in America and the 2010's present day. Each chapter gives you more of a background of what the characters went through and how they all link.

I liked this book as it doesn't glamorise any of the racial tension but there is violence and bloodshed, which at times were upsetting and made me get a glimpse of how horrific these attacks could be and what it must have been like for people back then. It really is hard to comprehend what some people went and still to this day continue to go through due to the colour of their skin

Amongst all the hate there is also love and hope and courage and I loved Lucie as a main character as she is so strong and stands up for what she believed in.

I will definitely be recommending this book and looking out for others by this author!

Although it was a slow burner it is definitely worth preserving with this read and it picks up pace from the middle to the end. Heartbreaking in its narrative but also the links to history, this will stay with me for a long time. Initially I enjoyed Kayla’s narrative more but Ellie fought her way through as her story was revealed. Left me feeling satisfied having read a good book, but a little sad, much like having heard the Mariner’s tale- I’ve left this party a sadder and wiser man.