How many times am I going to let myself get burned by trusting in a Stephen King blurb? I love the guy, but his tastes are a little more democratic than mine.
Before fans of this novel come at me, bro, I’ll offer the disclaimer that I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator’s voice, or should I say voices, really annoyed me.
Anyway, the Last House on Needless Street is about Ted, a mentally unstable man who lives with his daughter Lauren and a cat named Olivia who narrates her own perspective in dedicated chapters. Ted has been emotionally stunted since he was a child, a result of horrific treatment from his overbearing mother and traumatic memories of a young girl who disappeared from a beach one day.
Ted is extremely irritating to listen to, what with the way he continually refers to his “Mommy” and digresses from the story to include his childish culinary concoctions. Olivia’s chapters are even more annoying.
I’m sorry, I just don’t have the energy to go through more of the plot, which I also barely remember since I was so turned off by the prose style. Mostly, I was just stunned that so many people had praised the novel for it’s “shocking” twist. I had a pretty good guess what was going on right from the jump, and only kept listening to see if I was right. I was.