North Carolina Miscellany
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE a review by Janna McMahan Diane Chamberlain. Big Lies in a Small Town. St. Martin’s Press, 2020. —. The Last House on the Street. St. Martin’s Press, 2022.
JANNA MCMAHAN earned a BA and MA in journalism from the Universities of Kentucky and South Carolina, respectively. She is the author of three novels and a novella selected for the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. She’s also an award-winning short story writer and personal essayist, with work included in numerous literary journals and anthologies. McMahan moved to Raleigh in 2015 and currently lives in Historic Oakwood with her husband. DIANE CHAMBERLAIN, A New Jersey native, received both her BA and MA in social work from San Diego University. She focused on medical social work in San Diego and later Washington, DC, before establishing a private practice where she worked with adolescents. The New York Times, USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling author has lived in Raleigh, NC, for decades and sets many of her twentynine novels in her adopted state, including The Dream Daughter (St. Martin’s Press, 2018; reviewed in NCLR Online 2020).
It would be challenging to read Diane Chamberlain’s work and not think, I never knew that. Her reflective stories expose impactful, yet often overlooked, connections between our past and how we live today. Such is the case in her recent novels, The Last House on the Street and Big Lies in a Small Town, both critical and commercial successes. Generally, Chamberlain’s work isn’t classified as historical fiction; rather, she uses history to elevate the genre of domestic suspense. A hallmark of domestic suspense is characters caught in uncomfortable situations like bad marriages, unhappy work lives, and houses or towns where they feel threatened. Check. Other elements are a fast-paced timeline and rising tension right up to the denouement. Check and check. In both The Last House on the Street and Big Lies in a Small Town, Chamberlain once again proves herself the master of dual timelines. Readers wonder at how the disparate storylines, set decades apart, will collide. Chamberlain deftly blends multiple narratives to reveal a larger worldview. The Last House on the Street, for example, will resonate with those concerned with disenfranchisement and the current push for voting restrictions. Perhaps this is one of the reasons this book was chosen for the Goodreads list of most popular historical novels of 2022 – a true compliment as Goodreads members are dedicated and discerning readers. In The Last House on the Street, Kayla Carter is a successful architect, grieving widow, and dedicated mother to her three-year-old daughter. Her husband is tragically killed
N C L R ONLINE
129
in a freak accident in their nearly completed modern home at the end of a lonely road. Kayla must decide if she can endure the heartache and raise her daughter there. It had been their dream home and she’s hesitant to let go, but common sense dictates she sell and move to a more manageable house in a populated area. This novel opens in 2010 in Kayla’s Round Hill, NC, architecture firm. An aggressive older woman with bright red hair and sunglasses that obscure her face shows up unexpectedly. Thinking she could have simply forgotten the woman’s appointment, Kayla graciously lets her in, but the meeting quickly takes a threatening turn. The woman brings up Kayla’s husband’s death and suggests their young daughter shouldn’t be raised in such an isolated house. When the woman threatens physical violence Kayla demands she leave. Kayla’s house is new construction at the end of an old established street. It backs up to dense woods and the floor to ceiling windows that were meant to bring in natural light and provide a view now make Kayla feel exposed and vulnerable. When vandals target her house, Kayla is so rattled she asks her father to stay with her. He seems to have some latent knowledge of the woods and lake behind her home, but tightlipped on the subject, he leaves Kayla to wonder if he knows why her property has the reputation of being haunted. Kayla befriends her next door neighbors, the Hockleys, an established Round Hill family still living in the only original house on the street. They are holdouts who won’t sell their property to developers, and