The Street

Product Information

Horrible characters can be cool. See Anti-Heroes. These characters are stupid, terrible, and straight up ridiculous. If you identify with any of the 4 main characters you should take a long deep long at yourself. Horrible characters can be interesting. These are just HORRIBLE characters. Caricatures of characters real authors have created.

I loved the idyllic Swiss Alps setting in this story. Somewhere so beautiful but can also be so dangerous. Cat, Ginny and their husbands aren’t experienced hikers but the route they take should be a fairly easy one. I find this book too convoluted to describe as I was unable to gain a foothold in the story. I was interested enough in the characters, who were by turns rotten and relatable, and their conflicts, both internal and with each other, to follow it all through to the end. But I never really got how the scenes all related to the ones behind and in front of them. It's all just kind of a big shrug for me. As I'm reading I can't wait for the psychological twist, when I go "ahhh there it is, this is so great" moment. Sadly to say I didn't get it. However the story was a good, although a little unbelievable, I mean who leaves their phone behind when going on a hiking trip?! Seriously that is beyond stupid and they all deserved to die, ok die is a little extreme, but they should definitely never procreate.She wrote this odd way a couple of times I spotted that is just not how anybody speaks, as in, ".....they're reserved for the participants to tell, are they not ?" and, "That's what you really wanted, was it not ?"I spotted some apostrophe errors, she missed a few question marks and she wrote straight and not strait-laced. 'Cat been stunned' lost the word had but that was way better error-wise than the first book I read by her, which was good to see. I started losing interest in Anna and Peter around the mid-way point. I felt more interested in and was running purely on seeing the other residents’ “secrets”, as the last line in the synopsis states. There’s a lot of interaction with these residents and, as small pieces of the “puzzle” are revealed, it was made up like all of these secrets might be intertwined. It honestly would have made more sense for that to be the case.

Substitute” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2021. Three people live, and three people die. You make the choice. I had to stop myself from reading this in one sitting, it was fast paced & full of intrigue. I did kind of guess what was going on, which made the book more fun for me, as I haven’t read any other books with this concept; very original, loved it. 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.

Netgalley Approved

There were other inconsistencies. For example, one minute Anna throws a piece of paper on the floor - but the next minute Peter takes it from her hand. This is my second experience of Susi Holliday's work, having previously read and enjoyed "The Last Resort". I was looking forward to being equally impressed by "The Hike" and the premise and the accompanying marketing blurb gave me every reason to hope that I would enjoy it just as much. But, unfortunately, I didn't. Susi cut her teeth on short stories and flash fiction, and was shortlisted for the first CWA Margery Allingham Prize in 2014. The story is amateur, the writing is amateur, the squabbles are amateur, even the “accidents” are amateur.

The street started off so well and suspenseful, but after 10% everything was so damn obvious! The writer can write but she was trying to give off an eerie feeling that didn’t need to be there nor WAS THERE!Susi Holliday shows off her writing chops, encompassing many voices and styles. Innernaratives range from snarky… Susi Holliday grew up near Edinburgh and worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years before she started writing. A lifelong fan of crime and horror, her short stories have been published in various places, and she was shortlisted for the inaugural CWA Margery Allingham Prize. She is the acclaimed author of ten novels and a novella. A film adaptation of her Trans-Siberian-set thriller, Violet, is currently in development. Many have had the dream of a fresh beginning, the one where you and your other half relocate to an idyllic location with scenic views and endless possibilities. Only Anna and Peter’s experience is accompanied by paranoia, incredibly odd neighbours, and a coastal location that harbours many-a-secret and not a single boat.

Ok. This is going to be very brief. Let’s simply say that there are a variety of personalities, and they are all written expertly. They are compelling and thought-out. You often know something is bubbling just beneath the surface of each character, and The Street, as a whole, but you won’t know what. And that keeps the suspense gaining momentum till the end. The Street” is the fifth stand alone novel and was released in 2023. Their neighbors welcomed them with open arms. But now they have disappeared without a trace. There were other elements that I could identify with – such as the idea that others see being an author (and some would extend this also to being an academic) as being “cushy”. But mostly, I was glad that I couldn’t imagine being in the situation that the characters find themselves in.every character had their own personal agenda and it was not good, and they are all not nice people. They have done things in their life they try to justify as ok when it’s not. Affairs, financial abuse, etc. All the arguing or little snarky comments from the get go just wore on me. Oh c’mon! Can’t we just all try to get along??? No As much as I loved the concept, I cant say I was super jazzed about how it all wrapped up. But this was a solid English suspense novel. Susi Holliday is one of my favorite authors, I highly recommend The Hike by her. Can't wait to read Substitute by her next! As Anna & Peter delve more & more into things, all becomes quite sinister, and the mystery unravels. My parents used to live on a road called “The Street” – thankfully it was nothing like the one featured in this book. Also, it was not in Scotland – a country which, up to now, hasn’t featured much in the books I’ve read (I’ve been particularly aware of the country hopping I’ve been doing in books read this year). I don’t know who is writing blurbs for books these days but give them a hefty raise because I have been bamboozled way too many times with promising blurbs ending up to be flat reads.