The Street - Susi Holiday

Description

Their neighbours welcomed them with open arms. Now they’ve vanished without a trace.

Anna and Peter desperately need to escape London for a fresh start. And they’ve found just the place: a perfect house on a perfect street in a perfect new development on the Scottish coast. But before they’ve even unpacked, they discover that the community they’ve moved into might be keeping secrets of its own…

Eager to fit in, Anna and Peter spend their first evening with their new neighbours, a couple who turn up on their doorstep to welcome them with open arms. But when Anna pops over the next morning to thank them for their hospitality, there’s no answer. The house is bare and unoccupied, and the neighbours have vanished without a trace. What’s more, everybody else on the street is convinced that no one ever lived there at all.

As she battles a growing obsession with the mystery, Anna finds herself becoming increasingly paranoid. She thought she’d escaped her own troubled past, but as the truth catches up with her, life starts to unravel. Maybe she’s not the only resident of The Street with something to hide…

Review

Overall a page turning read.

Anna and Peter have moved to a brand new estate, and it felt a little like Stepford wives to me. With everyone seemingly living in a dream house and denying anything was amiss.

After their neighbours disappear and the other people on The Street deny their existence I needed to suspend disbelief. If it had been one person they could have been delusional, but two was stretching it a little. Anna won't let it go though and keeps digging as something feels off to her.

There are flashbacks into the lives of some of the residents before they lived on The Street. There is also some narration by an anonymous diarist which was very was intriguing. Certainly the writing did leave me feeling more than a little uneasy at times, but still wanting to know, why was everyone acting so strangely?

With so many characters it did get confusing at times. I thought that we never really got to know any of them, not even Anna and Peter. So I did feel a little disconnected from them all, but maybe that was intentional as part of the ambience of the plot.

I'm giving this book 4 out of 5 stars.

The Street is published on 6 June 2023. My thanks to netgalley for the ARC to review.

Comments

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