Actual rating 3.5 stars

A decent read, not overly memorable. Enjoyable enough. I liked Ellie, but found Kayla’s bit of the story pretty unnecessary. I feel like it would have worked fine if it had been set entirely in ‘65.

Not my favorite Chamberlain story, but still good. I don’t regret reading it. As always, I’m looking forward to her next novel.

There was an instant ease I fell into while reading “The Last House on the Street”. It’s a page turner told in duel time lines. (1965 and 2010).
Both storylines are emotionally powerful and intimate….and blend beautifully together.
Themes cover racial prejudice, interracial relationships, forbidden love, resentments, small town community, love, loss, death, activism, social justice, family, friendships, heartbreak, warmth, and humor. It’s the type of novel that keeps you reading well past midnight.

The dramatic tensions and mystery kept growing to the very end. Its a story that could have ended several different ways…(readers ‘will’ think about this long after the final page). I respect the ‘ending-choice’ that Diane Chamberlain made. It was a wise choice….but it was still a little fun for me to explore alternate endings.

When Ellie Hockley grew up in North Carolina, a Southerner from Round Hill; Derby County, her Aunt Carol, a bold, blunt, activist, left a great impression on her.
Aunt Carol was the only person in the family who seemed to understand Ellie. Or, as Aunt Carol told Ellie, one time, Ellie was the only person who seemed to understand ‘Aunt Carol’”.

The year was 1965. Ellie was twenty years of age. She was home from the University of North Carolina for spring break. Ellie was in a five year pharmacology program. She still had two years more to go.
Everyone was sitting in the living room. Daddy was reading the newspaper. Ellie’s older brother, Buddy,(mechanical genius), was tinkering with some small mechanical part from a car. Mama sat between Ellie and Brenda, (Ellie’s longtime best friend and dorm mate; practically a second daughter to Mama), admiring wedding dresses in a magazine.
Brenda, pregnant, would soon be marrying the love of her life: Garner Cleveland.
Garner’s best friend was Reed Miller.
Reed Miller had been Ellie’s boyfriend for the past four years. Reed was crazy about Ellie…..(wonderful, well-respected, smart, twenty-two year old, successful, handsome man).
Reed graduated early and was working a desk job at a bank. He was going to be the bank manager one day.
Ellie & Reed, and Brenda & Garner spent years double dating.
During this spring break…..Ellie had a ‘moment’….she could suddenly see ‘her’ future …. and it wasn’t at all what she wanted.
Her Aunt Carol, once an army nurse, and a champion of civil rights, was no longer alive…but Ellie wanted to follow more in her Aunt’s ‘fight-for-justice’ footsteps. Ellie had no interest in marriage.

Usually during summer breaks - home from college, Elli worked at the local pharmacy owned by her father. But this summer hundreds of white students from Northern and Western colleges were spending their summer in the Southern states registering Negroes to vote.
The students would canvass door to door, (live with assigned families in the area), and do all they could to get folks registered to vote. The program was called SCOPE, (Summer Community Organization and Political Education project).
Five hundred volunteers were being sent into seventy-five rural counties with the aim of removing racism from American politics.
It was exactly the type of program that Aunt Carol would’ve signed up for to help.
Most white families from lily white Round Hill, didn’t like the idea of crazy white kids from New York, or wherever descending on Derby County.
Nobody in Ellie’s family was an advocate for justice. Neither was Brenda, or Garner. Reed admired Ellie’s humanity - but he didn’t want to be away from Ellie an entire summer.
Being a white Southern girl, wanting to help Black folks vote was not an every day occurrence — it could also be dangerous. Ellie would need to be watchful.
North Carolina had more Ku Klux Klan members than all other states put together. White supremacist terrorist hate groups primarily targeted African-Americans. However, “The thing the Klan hates more than a Negro man is a white person who tries to ‘help’ a Negro”.
Ellie’s, parents, Buddy, Brenda, Reed, ….even Reverend Greg Filbern, from Darville, pastor of a Negro Church,(AME church in Turner’s Bend), in Derby County, on other side of town from Round Hill, tried to discourage Ellie in joining SCOPE.
Ellie joins anyway - determined to make a difference….to be on the right side of human rights.


In the year 2010….
Kayla Carter, an architect, had been designing a dream home for seven years — along with her husband Jackson, who was also an architect.
Jackson died from an accident while building their new home.
Kayla had many reservations about moving forward- moving into the house without her husband. She was still grieving. But she had a three year old daughter: Rainie, to think about….and her father, who lived near by. Kayla and Rainie would move into that large home. Kayla would have her sixty-five year old fit and healthy father nearby. And Rainie would grow up with a Grandfather in her life

The house was spectacular. Large. A contemporary home on four wooded acres.
It had floor to ceiling windows and was considered the best and largest of the lot in the new development (in Shadow Ridge Estates), surrounded by gorgeous thick greenery of trees.
Those woods were filled with Kudzu back in 1965. Children played in those woods. They thought they heard strange noises coming from the Kudzu plants. Those vines are treehuggers—bad for the ecosystems…
it was easy to imagine how kids thought the area was haunted.
Memories don’t die easily ….and even people still living in the area in 2010, thought the area might be haunted. Some tragic history lived in those woods….history that Kayla was unfamiliar with.

These two stories emerge…..
We meet a wonderful extended cast of characters in both time periods.
Diverse students - interesting families - in 1965 - horrific prejudice -
and some very emotional heartache.

We meet interesting neighbors - puzzling neighbors - Kayla was bumping up against mystery and history that she had no prior knowledge of in 2010. Secrets, rather withheld information, doesn’t rise to the surface easily….but when it does….it’s quite emotional.

Wonderful novel. I’ve come to admire and love Diane Chamberlain more and more each time I read her books. I could be friends with this woman. She’s wonderful. She is a best-selling author, having published thirty novels in more than twenty languages.
I say that’s a woman to admire.
Diane Chamberlain is a great gift to many readers for many years!!
Funny, I think the last time I read one of her books… I was going to be a retired reviewer. I failed - I’m still hanging around.

Thank you Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press (a wonderful publishing company with a staff with hearts bigger than the whole wide world),
and a special thanks to Diane Chamberlain.

There are many characters and their interaction and their role in this compelling story is so real it was easy to get lost in the story and forget it is a story. It begins in 2010, but goes back and forth to the mid-1960s when there was much racial tension and a movement for civil rights that Martin Luther King Jr. was heavily involved in.
In 2010, Kayla, a recent widower, is planning to move into the new house that she and her husband designed together. Both were architects. A woman with flaming red hair and sunglasses she refuses to remove visits Kaya at her office and warns her about moving into the new house. She also has way too much information about Kayla, her family, and the history of the neighborhood the new house is in.
In 1965, Ellie, home from college for the summer, with plans to work in the drug store owned by her father, hears that several hundred white students from colleges in the north and west are coming to the south to encourage Negroes to vote and to help them register. Lyndon B. Johnson, the President, is about to sign the Voting Rights bill Act into law. Currently a literacy test is required when registering to vote and this new law will eliminate that. This movement really appeals to Ellie and she want to join the other college students in this important endeavor. Her parents, and friends, along with her long-time boyfriend, Reed, are all very against her doing this. She feels very strongly, however, and joins anyway. This is a very volatile, as well as violent time in our history. Being from the south and white, Ellie, inadvertently ends up amid some dangerous situations.
Despite the warming, Kayla goes ahead and moves into the new house with her young daughter Rainie with the help of her father, Reed, who is also a widow and often helps her with Rainie. The only other house on the street is the old house that is Ellie’s family home. Ellie left town 45 years ago and never came back, however, her mother and brother are both ill, so she is back to care for them. Kayla, just up the street, where other new houses are being built is experiencing unusual, and scary situations and has involved the police.
There are many interesting developments and twists to this intriguing, and in some cases, heart-stopping story. I found it difficult to put down, and yet occasionally I had to lay it aside and take a deep breath before continuing. Diane Chamberlain is certainly a master storyteller.

This is a story that will both hit you in the gut with aspects of social justice, but also touch and warm your heart with the compassion and love in the story.

There is a dual timeline in this book - Kayla is in modern day, dealing with the loss of her husband from a freak accident, and preparing to move in to the new home that they designed together. She is approached by an almost creepy woman who warns her from moving in to her new house, and now her nerves are constantly on edge. There are some secrets hidden in the area, and Kayla has no idea what those are.
The second timeline is focused on Ellie and focuses on her story as a young woman and the work to help register black people to vote, the challenges that she encounters, and how her eyes were opened.

Ellie is back in the neighborhood now caring for ailing family members, and she and Kayla connect, but know that there are untold stories and unknown facts of past events.
I couldn't put this book down!

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my review, and honestly, I adored this book. I enjoy most (all?) of Diane Chamberlain's books, they always have great story telling and are engrossing from start to finish. That being said, I was a bit hesitant when I heard the theme of this book, because I often don't find that a white author can successfully tackle this subject matter in a way that doesn't make feel emotionally manipulated. I felt that way (a little) about Jodi Picoult's book 'Small Great Things' for comparison. I feel very differently after reading this book than I did Jodi's. Both were captivating while reading, but this one, I really did fall in love with Ellie and felt all the emotions. I think with Ellie being such a central character and being a white woman, it handles the race issue with a different perspective than trying to authenticate the experience from a lens we might not fully appreciate. It tackles the civil rights issue on both sides of coin with grace, anger, sadness, passion, empathy and a little romance. I admit, I read this right around "Loving Day" and I had recently seen a lot of "Loving Day" celebrations on social media, so the romance part tugged at my heart a bit. Overall, this book was just engaging from start to finish, evoking fury from where we were, and frankly, how far we still have to go. It's well worth reading. Notice the dates are 1960's. That isn't really all that long ago.

I was given this book by NetGalley for an honest review - What a book!! love, violence, prejudice --- a story that will quickly draw you in---
Kayla and her husband build a beautiful house -her husband has an accident and she is left with her little daughter. People say she shouldn't live there - the land is haunted - as tools go missing, garbage all over the yard etc. she wonders why someone doesn't want her living her? Why do they say this land is haunted?
Ellie, who was raised in the house down the road has returned to care for her ill mother and brother. She left when she was young to help with the group helping the blacks get a right to vote. Her parents were so against this. She hasn't been home for years.
As she is paired with Win. a black boy, to canvas - feelings begin - each knowing nothing good can come from this.
As Kayla and Ellie become friends the happenings on the land Kayla has a house emerge....and what a shocking truth it is!

2010: Kayla Carter, an architect and young widow with a daughter, is grieving the death of her husband, He died in an accidental fall while working on the house he and Kayla designed, a breathtakingly modern structure at the edge of a forest. Kayla has felt threatened by a new client and is worried about the move to a new neighborhood in Round Hill, NC.

1965: Ellie Hockley, a college student, is helping her best friend plan her wedding when she reads about SCOPE, the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project. (During a ten-week initiative, the SCOPE Project registered an estimated 49,000 new voters through the combined efforts of the local community and the SCOPE college volunteers, from June 14 – August 28, 1965. In addition, SCOPE educated thousands of citizens in political and voter literacy education classes. Wikipedia) Ellie is a student at UNC and has covered protests so she is drawn to the SCOPE project and becomes the only Southern volunteer. What happens to her and her friends during the summer of 1965 will change her life forever.

How these stories come together makes The Last House on the Street compulsively readable, tragic, haunting and intense. This is a book I could not put down…even though there were many times I wanted to. Diane Chamberlain brings small towns in a small county in North Carolina to life as we see them change over 45 years. Vivid characterizations, especially Kayla, Ellie, Reed and Win pull the reader in. You will care what happens to these young people. You will cry, you will want to rewrite sections and you will want to change history. Thank you Diane Chamberlain for telling this story. If I could rate this with more than 5 stars, I would.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Diane Chamberlain for this ARC.

There is a mystery here that is more explosive than even the synopsis would lead a reader to believe. So, I want to be very careful in my review; I don’t want to give anything away. Author Diane Chamberlain has created a winning tale, carefully building to an ending that is fully deserving of its moment. The characters are believable in both time periods, some inhabit both periods, first as youth and then as seniors, others are their descendants. THE LAST HOUSE ON THE STREET is literal, it reflects a place, but perhaps it is also metaphorical. Something happened there that belonged to a different time, one that should have ended.

This is a very good book, the artistry of which grew on me after I had finished it. I read it all in one sitting. I could not put it down. Diane Chamberlain is a very talented writer. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Diane Chamberlain is one of my favorite writers and her latest novel sustains her reputation. I feel she is unheralded compared to her contemporaries so I shall sing her praises loudly. The Last House on the Street tells the story of two generations of women ,alternating chapters ,between 1965 and 2010. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement ,she deftly weaves the plots together as the two women relate their histories. Diane tells the story of the unsung heroes of the movement to desegregate the south and promote voter registration in North Carolina. She also tells of the horrors that ensued due to these efforts. It is a chilling novel realistically drawn by an accomplished artist. Bravo! Don’t miss this one.