The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

The Turn of the Key

by Ruth Ware
Published: Scout Press, 2019
Pages: 352
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Amazon, Goodreads

After a while he just stopped sleeping. He just used to pace backwards and forwards all night long.Then he went mad. People do go mad, you know, if you stop them from sleeping for long enough…

About the book

When Rowan Caine stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss -- a live-in nanny post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when she arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten -- by the luxurious "smart" home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare -- one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unraveling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn't just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn't just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn't even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant. It was everything.

She knows she's made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn't always ideal. She's not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she's not guilty -- at least not of murder. Which means someone is.

Review

I devoured this bitch in one day. The Turn of the Key is chilling, spell-binding and crazy.

A British nanny travels to remote Scotland for an in residency job, only for things to go horribly astray in the worst way - the death of an innocent child. The novel’s strongest selling point is how it’s told in the form of a letter of the nanny, who’s facing charges of the child’s murder. Rowan tells her story in a desperate plea to convince a top-natch solicitor to defend her in court.

The story is given that much more mystery and intrigue by this story-telling technique; it makes the reader immediately drawn into the plot and questioning who killed a child and WTF is actually happening? Even once Rowan reveals her tale, the author keeps up the level of suspense and mystique. Rowan also proves herself to be a somewhat unreliable narrator - she’s prone to quick anger and readers can tell she’s hiding something, though it’s not clear what until the end of the novel. Seriously though, the twists and turns in this novel will leave you with whip lash!

It’s really interesting how The Turn of the Key is both modern yet Victorian, like an older Gothic mystery story. At times I kept forgetting that the novel is set in this century. To me, this juxtaposition shows how evil and horror can take place anywhere, even in modern times.

The Turn of the Key is a FANTASTIC read; I’d recommend it to anyone wanting a good, spooky read.

RATING (out of five puppies):