I want to start with the things that I enjoyed with this book. The setting really shines through with a dark and twisting mansion of your nightmares. Feels like the classic Clue, Agatha Christie murder mystery and it totally drew me in. The cast of unreliable narrators did keep me guessing and the shifting perspectives gave the novel a very dynamic feel. I will say the “Beast” breaking the fourth wall was starting to feel very obtrusive and patronizing towards the end. Some of the dialogue felt very clunky and repetitive, with random I could have done without some of the more gory/gruesome scenes, I would say this feels more aligned with a horror than mystery.
Overall, I enjoyed this fast-paced locked-room mystery.
Thank you, NetGalley and Atria Books for the free eARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

The Other People is an interesting concept in practice with characters all trying to figure out what is going on but I never connected with the characters or the mystery as I read and felt disappointed with the book as a whole.

I feel like this story has now been told a million times and each time the authors try to put their own spin on it. But here I am, still reading them because overall they are enjoyable. Ten people in a country house and they start to die one by one. This book wasn't horrible but it wasn't great either and that may be because I am always expecting something new and big and that never comes. This did have a few twists I didn't see coming but nothing spectacular. I will continue to read these type books and will also give this author another chance on future books. Thanks NetGalley.

While I did finish reading The Other People to find out how it ended, I unfortunately did not truly enjoy my journey to get there. I had considered dnf-ing around the halfway mark, but read some reviews that said the twist was make or break for them, so I had to find out what it was.

The setting was truly creepy, I think this is where the novel shines. You do feel eerie and on edge, especially with the beast POV even though I didn’t really enjoy the breaking of the fourth wall with them and a lot of the other characters; “you’re probably thinking this…” etc., did not add anything for me and rather made me break out of the story a bit which made it hard to immerse myself again.

The writing was literally repetitive in spots which I can’t tell if it was a style choice or an accident, sentences repeating, “Dodged a bullet didn’t I?” And then at the end of the page “I really dodged a bullet.”

The characters were what really got me, in a not great way, and unfortunately the end twist did not justify the entire development of the plot and their stories for me. It just left me confused and feeling kind of like it was a cop out for lacking depth to them. They all kind of felt the same which… I don’t know, I can’t say anymore about that but it’s part of what made the experience reading them rather wanting. And leaves me in a bit of a rating conundrum.

I did enjoy the horror and the mystery aspect, I wish it had leaned into being fully satirical or a little more puzzle-y or a little more horror-y, it all just kind of felt a half step away from being right THERE, if you know what I mean. I was entertained though. It was a quick read and will be someone else’s perfect cup of tea!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Absolutely love love loved this book! I read the physical ARC. The story pulled me in from the start and kept me hooked the entire time. The mystery of why were these characters brought to this house and who brought them kept me turning the pages. All the antics between characters was highly entertaining and I especially loved how the author used chapters that talked to us. They nailed it on thoughts a reader would be having. So fun!

The element of suspense was perfectly weaved throughout the book and was always looming there in the background. It made for a suspenseful and fun read!

Thanks to Atria for the early copy all thoughts are my own!

I think I've said this before, but I really need to stop picking up books that compare themselves to Agatha Christie, specifically And Then There Were None. That book was such a masterpiece and I set my expectations way too high. This book tried to follow in its footsteps and fell way short. It was predictable at times and unbelievable at others. I am actually sad I wasted the time reading this one.

This book sent shivers down my spine. No one has any clue how they got here or what’s going on. They are all trying to escape but slowly they are being picked off one by one. I audibly screamed numerous times while reading. Straight devoured this book!!!

Where am I?

What is going on?

Everyone has been waking up in a room that they had no idea how they got there or why their phones were gone and why they had some wrist band on that they can't take off.

Then the doors unlock and they assemble in the dining room still not knowing how they got there or where they were before they ended up in this house.

Weird things happen with things being locked including their dinner plate covers which once revealed show that each person has a plate of food that is one of their favorite foods.

What is going on and what happens?

How will they get out?

What does the person who did this want?

Find out in this evasive, chilling, locked room thriller/horror with unlikeable characters.

Cleverly done, but a little too out there for me. 3/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my ow

In The Other People, C.B. Everett throws ten strangers into a nightmare they can't escape. They wake up in an old house with no memory of how they got there and soon realize they're playing a deadly game: find a missing girl and unmask a killer before time runs out.

Think Agatha Christie meets psychological horror. A London PR exec, a stripper from America, and a retired cop are just a few of the players trapped in this twisted game of cat and mouse. As they creep through dark hallways and uncover the house's secrets, their dark pasts start catching up with them.

Everett (actually Martyn Waites in disguise) keeps you guessing with unreliable narrators and shifting perspectives. The story races forward at breakneck speed, each revelation more unsettling than the last. While some characters lean into familiar tropes, the real star is the suffocating atmosphere and how Everett plays with your mind.

For thriller fans who like their mysteries with a side of psychological warfare, The Other People delivers. It's a clever, dark ride that will keep you up past your bedtime, trying to piece together the truth before the characters do.

Rating: ⭐⭐
Publication Date: March 25, 2025

I really wanted to love The Other People. I’m a huge fan of locked-room mysteries, and the promise of a big twist at the end had me hooked. And while I did appreciate the twist (it was the kind I would normally love), it simply couldn’t make up for the first 95% of the book.

The story begins with such high stakes—“Find this girl, or you all die”—but it quickly fizzles out. Despite the dire circumstances, the characters barely seemed to try to solve the mystery, which made the plot feel sluggish. Then there’s the structure of the book: every time something happened, the outside narrator would step in to recap the events and tell the reader what they should be thinking or questioning. This disrupted the flow of the story and became frustrating to read. The narrator’s personality was also insufferable (though the reason for this is explained in the twist). Unfortunately, that explanation didn’t retroactively make the experience enjoyable.

There were also some noticeable issues with the writing. At one point, the author used the exact same wording to describe two different characters’ reactions in separate instances, which felt repetitive and clunky. Additionally, the characters’ inner monologues all sounded the same. Without the chapter headers, I would’ve struggled to tell whose perspective I was reading.

That said, there were moments I enjoyed. The visuals in some scenes were vivid, and the character deaths were dramatic in a good way. These were the bright spots in an otherwise disappointing read.

Overall, I’m giving The Other People 2 stars. While the twist was clever and the book had some strong visuals, the repetitive writing, unengaging plot, and insufferable narration made this one a letdown for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an eARC of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Topline: Ten people wake up in a house with no memory of how they got there. Aside from being a mass amnesia event, they are being killed off one by one unless they can solve a murder.

What drew me to the book was that it seemed to be well-blurbed — Harlan Coben, Lee Child — but for the *other* novels of this pseudonymous author, as I realized.

This has an interesting construction, not a straightforward narrative of chronological scenes, but multiple (10! + the Beast) POVs. Some have starring first person roles; others are described by the narrator; everybody gets at least one chapter to star in, including a baby. Everyone also has an unremovable wristband, and apparently there’s a posh dinner to immediately attend upon waking. The logistics of kidnapping/roofie-ing ten gullible people and getting them to wake up simultaneously makes it all unbelievable, especially since everyone seems to be playing along like it’s an escape room experience and isn’t the slightest bit angry over the loss of freedom and memory right away. And everyone gets their favorite meal served (what a clever, resourceful cook the perpetrator must be!). Agatha Christie at least invited her willing victims to the island and they all ate the same thing. Immediately, the plot, whatever it is, becomes annoying, especially when the mysterious Goth-y Amanda shows up at dessert time with a PowerPoint presentation telling them they are trapped in a Christie-esque scenario, so prepare to be picked off one by one, unless they can rescue the fifth victim of a serial killer who has already been sexually assaulted, tortured, buried alive and will run out of air in exactly twelve hours. Amanda then exits as the first murder victim.

Here is the “cast” in order of their chapters:

Narrator — the Beast in the Cellar who tells us at least someone is lying about themselves. Plus, we know someone survived/escaped but the “girl” hasn’t been rescued yet. And the narrator devolves into tales about carnival pirates instead of sticking to the story, because — why? — are we to empathize with someone adopting the name “Beast”?
Kyle Tanner — nightmares of being buried alive and terrified of lightning storms, 22 year old student
Diana Landor — self-described cougar, has reinvented herself, Queen bee
Captain Jimmy Saint — military man, sees things in absolutes
Desmond Blaine — sleazy pedo
Ramona O’Rourke — bright and perfect Texan, Black girl
Iain Wardle-Roberts — drunkard, otherwise a dullard, woke up drunk?
Sylvia Moult — older, harridan, works in HR
Monica Herbert — baby
Cerys Herbert — single mum, frumpy
Len Melville — old bloke
Plus:
Amanda — aging Goth with the projector
Epilogue: Charles Boyd, owner of the house

OK, I’ve written enough, but should you actually read it, my compiled list might help your thoughts stay organized. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And the ending: stupider. You can read just the opening chapters and then the last few to get the whole picture and then you’ll wonder why you invested time in the middle 250 pages. 2 stars. Using a pseudonym was a good decision.

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO In fact, of the last 500 e-books I’ve read, this is the first book that never mentions the color green. What a drab story we have…
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO All the plants are decaying and dead.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

4 🌟

I love a locked room mystery, I love creepy weird houses, I love disparate casts of characters who are all a little horrible, forced together by circumstance. All those boxes, checked! Also, the final twist: absolutely excellent. I saw part of it coming, but I was still surprised.

I will say the book became unexpectedly gruesome at times, but it didn't bother me too much. Overall a very enjoyable read that I finished in one day - that's how absorbed I was!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

3.5-4 stars.

I love these Agatha Christie-type locked-room mysteries. And that’s exactly what we have here on “The Other People:” 10 people wake up in a creepy countryside manor, with no idea of how they’ve arrived there or who the others are. They are then told they have 12 hours to find a young woman being held captive. And that there is no physical way out of the house. Chaos ensues.

The story is told from multiple POVs: several of the characters are given chapters to narrate, but there are four characters who could be considered “main characters” and narrate most of the chapters.

As you can imagine, I was immediately drawn into the story- who wouldn’t be with a premise like that. And there’s no slow build-up in this one either; We’re thrown right into the action from the beginning. And like any good Agatha Christie tale, the murders and mystery build up fast. It was really fun to watch play out. Things get weird, quickly, which was really fascinating to try to figure out. I don’t want to give too much away.

The characters, including a mysterious “Beast in the Cellar” are also really good, even though some of them were deplorable, if you know what I mean. The 10 main “captives,” I guess you could call them were all so different that you just felt like you had to know who was going to be next or what they were going to do next.

BUT. And there’s a huge but. I don’t know how I feel about how things played out. I don’t want to give things away, but the solution/ending will be divisive. I certainly feel mixed about it.

So, I think you need to go into this one with an open mind. The plot is great, but the ending may leave you wanting.

I liked the ending of the book. It started to drag on towards the end. Like come on, get on with the story. I’ve read a few books about people trapped in a house and start getting murdered one by one. But this ending was different and I liked it.

I don’t like multiple first person and running narrative. I find it annoying and lazy. Way too many ‘I went’, ‘I found’ and the Beast in particular was irritating to read. Like a teenagers diary that only they would find interesting. A little more editing and the writing would have been so much sharper.
I did like the story and the twist at the end was unexpected. That is what gave this book 3 stars.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC.

This story kept me captivated from start to finish, with multiple points of view that really added depth to the plot. It was one of those books that made me feel like I was experiencing the events firsthand. The way the different perspectives came together was really well-executed, offering fresh insights and a unique take on the situation. I couldn’t help but stay glued to the pages, desperate to find out what would happen next.
The setting was intense—being trapped with strangers made me question how I would react in the same circumstances. As the characters struggled to find common ground while trying to save someone, it made me reflect on human nature and the lengths people will go to for others. The suspense built up so well that I found myself racing to finish, unable to put the book down until I reached the end. It’s definitely a story that keeps you on your toes, full of twists and turns.

Please remove the reference to Agatha Christie in the blurb for this - it was absolutely nothing at all like And Then There Were None and I would highly recommend any fan of Agatha Christie not read this. It’s more horror than mystery. It’s set in present time and is … not written like a traditional British mystery. ‘Like I said, I don’t know if that’s what the writers originally intended, but walking through this hideous cellar right now all I can say is, if this was a novel they wouldn’t be right in the head.’

The Other People by C.B. Everett is a captivating psychological thriller that masterfully keeps you on the edge of your seat with its twists, tension, and unsettling atmosphere. The story follows Gabe, a man who becomes obsessed with the idea that someone is stalking him, and soon, his paranoia leads him down a dark and dangerous path. The narrative moves between multiple perspectives, offering readers a rich and complex view of a chilling mystery that slowly unravels with each chapter.

Everett’s writing is sharp, engaging, and immersive. The pacing is excellent, with just the right balance between moments of suspense and character development. The author skillfully builds tension, leading to moments of shocking revelations that keep you hooked. The characters, particularly Gabe, are well-developed and relatable in their flaws, and the way their motivations and fears play out adds depth to the story.

What I particularly appreciated about The Other People was the author’s ability to create a constant sense of unease. Every twist, every new piece of information, keeps you guessing about what’s real and what’s imagined, and that psychological element adds richness to the overall narrative.

That said, while the book is incredibly engaging and suspenseful, the ending felt a bit rushed and left some questions unanswered. The conclusion, while satisfying in some ways, didn’t quite have the emotional impact or resolution I had hoped for. Some readers may also find the multiple perspectives slightly confusing at times, though the overall structure is still effective.

Overall, The Other People is a strong 4-star read—thrilling, smart, and full of suspense. It’s an excellent choice for fans of psychological thrillers and mystery lovers who enjoy books that keep you guessing. Despite a few minor flaws, C.B. Everett has delivered a compelling, fast-paced novel that will certainly keep readers turning the pages. I was given an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my review.

I really wanted to like this one. When I started the story, I was intrigued. Who doesn’t love a good murder/thriller/who dun jt type book?

I found the book extremely hard to follow, between the narration, the shifts in the story.. to be honest I had to go through the pages sometime and refresh myself on what just happened.

I really enjoyed this book. Towards the middle I just needed to know who this missing girl was. I also loved the suspense of it all. I love how it kept me guessing!