Review: The Turn of the Key: a heart-stopping pulse-racing psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of In A Dark Dark Wood

The Turn of the Key: a heart-stopping pulse-racing psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of In A Dark Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Did you download Happy?’

Ruth Ware’s “The Turn of the Key” is even better than her last novel, “The Death of Mrs Westaway”. Like the previous book, the story takes place in a remote Victorian house and is reminiscent of many classic gothic novels, but this time the house in question, Heatherbrae in northern Scotland, is a chimera, its ancient stone walls extended in modern steel and glass, every function, every utility, (almost) every lock controlled by smart devices - du Maurier meets Crichton...

The story is told from a prison cell as a nanny, jailed for the murder of a child, writes to a lawyer, pleading for his help, protesting her innocence. Rowan Caine, engaged by successful architects, Bill and Sandra Elincourt, is almost immediately thrown in at the deep end - left to look after the couple’s children as her employers attend a conference. As well as struggling with the unfamiliar house, the unintuitive, highly complex Happy interface, and Mrs. Elincourt’s detailed childcare ‘manual’, Rowan is met by hostility from the girls in her charge. Maddie, the elder of the two girls at home, seems particularly determined to reject any attempt to build a relationship, the prospect of a returning moody teenage daughter is daunting, and a series of strange noises in the night, accompanied by a malfunctioning Happy, suggest that there may be truth to the stories that previous nannies left their posts in fear.

Ruth Ware builds tension through the book and some passages are really creepy. And there is the suspicion that Rowan may be an unreliable narrator, the only version of events we get being hers. The pages start to race by as we build to the inevitable conclusion, the inevitable death. And when the end comes, there is a devastating twist which leaves the reader exhausted.

I have been on a really good run of satisfying novels recently and “The Turn of the Key” can sit on the shelf with any of them.


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Review: The Family Upstairs

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In ‘The Family Upstairs’ Lisa Jewell has written a deliciously dark and horrifying psychological thriller full of twists and unreliable narrators. I spent large parts of the novel not knowing fully who the characters were and what exactly was happening or where we were going. And it was great.

When Libby turns 25 she inherits a multi-million pound house in London’s affluent Chelsea. She is also told the story of how, as a baby, she was found in the house with the dead bodies of her parents and an unknown man, seemingly cult members, who appeared to have taken their own lives in a suicide pact. Libby discovers that she had siblings, a brother and sister, but no trace of them has been found since.

Meanwhile, in Nice, a down on her luck mother of two, struggling to survive, receives a message that ‘the baby is 25’ and begins to make plans to travel back to London. A first person narrative reveals the story of what happened in the house in the 1980s. There were in fact four children and six adults living in the house in what can only be described as a very non-traditional unit.

Lisa Jewell skilfully and thrillingly weaves these narratives together and we gradually discover what happened in the Chelsea house a quarter of a century ago and the fates of the people who were living in the house. It is a breathless ride, the pages fly by and the shocks keep coming. At no time did I feel that I was being cheated - the reveals arise naturally from the narrative, both in Libby’s investigation into her family history, and in the ‘as it happened’ first person narrative. Highly recommended.


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#Blogtour - The Undoing of Arlo Knott by Heather Child

My rating: 5 of 5 Stars

From the press release

What if your life had an 'undo' button?

Arlo Knott develops the mysterious ability to reverse his last action. It makes him able to experience anything, to charm any woman and impress any friend. His is a life free of mistakes, a life without regret.

But second chances aren't all they're cracked up to be. As wonderful as his new life is, a mistake in Arlo's traumatic childhood still haunts him and the temptation to undo, undo and keep undoing could be too much to resist.

———

Soon after his mother suffers a terrible accident, 13 year old Arlo Knott discovers that he has the ability to jump back in time, only for a short time - enough to undo the punches he has just inflicted on his sister, but, unfortunately, not enough to save his mum. Always a mummy’s boy, already abandoned by his father, Arlo initially uses his ability to fit in, to try out approaches to conversations, to relationships, taking back ‘errors’, seemingly always saying or doing the perfect thing. But, self-centred as he is, Arlo uses his trial and error gift for his own benefit, trying multiple lottery scratch cards until he finds a winner, building a name as a mind reading magician. Even his desire to use his gift for good is motivated by how others will see him. He craves the recognition and reward he once got from his mother.  And Arlo’s decisions become increasingly careless and even unethical...

In truth, ‘The Undoing of Arlo Knott’ crept up on me. Heather Child is a very talented writer who has that rare gift of deceptively simple prose, a writer who disappears and lets the story tell itself. What started and a pleasant novel with an intriguing concept completely drew me in. I became invested in Arlo, who narrates his own tale. Child made him sympathetic even as I questioned his choices and then, too late to go back, I realised where she was going with this, and it is devastating.

I had never read Heather Child before but am really glad I did. ‘The Undoing of Arlo Knott’ is a thought provoking and moving book. I am still thinking about it days, and weeks, later. Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the invitation to take part in the BlogTour and to Orbit Books for the review copy.

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