“The Turn of the Key” by Ruth Ware

Title: The Turn of the Key
Author: Ruth Ware
Publisher: Scout Press
Year: 2019    
Genre(s): suspense
Part of a Series: No

Why I read it: Once Upon a Book Club pick

Summary: Rowan Caine, a young woman from London, is hired as a nanny for the wealth Elinscourt family. They live in a beautiful house in the Scottish highlands that is historic but also completely modernized on the inside. Technology is watching the entire time and mysterious noises in the attic prevent Rowan from finding any peace. Left alone with four girls who aren’t happy with her presence, she worries she is losing her sanity when tragedy changes everything.

Rating: 

Review: Yeah, I didn’t really like this book. There’s one blurb that compares Ware to Agatha Christie and after reading this book, I definitely don’t agree.

Christie was the queen of suspense. Ware…not so much.

Look, I’ll do my best not to focus on the negative. I wrote out a separate rant so I think I got it out and can avoid too much focus here.

My opinion boils down to this: I felt Ware laid some aspects for suspense. Mysterious noises, missing items, etc. She even had the technology going haywire at one point and Rowan did worry about always being watched. However, I think she could’ve taken this a step further. Have Mrs. Elincourt constantly talking to her over the electronic systems or make a comment about seeing her do something. The constant surveillance wasn’t really established to my liking or enough to believe Rowan was paranoid.

I also feel like the timeline was too compressed. The summary made it seem like the plot would unfold over weeks but the story seems to only take a week at most. Not really enough time to truly build that suspense or make Rowan truly sleep-deprived.

So I guess my main belief is that Ware had the tools to build suspense but just didn’t use them well.

I did like our main character/narrator, Rowan. Ware did a great job drawing us into her story and making us root for her. And maybe want to shake her and tell her to run far away. Either way, I got invested in her and that’s always a good thing to me.

Most of the characters were interesting and I think Ware did a good job with them. Once again, I wish she had slowed down and really built up Rowan’s relationship with each other them. I think that would’ve really helped the story and the suspense.

Ware also did a good job describing the house and how isolated it was from the rest of the town. It was again a good start that I believe she could’ve taken a few steps further.

Bottom line: The start of a good story but needed more work.

Sex: Some mentions but nothing too graphic.

Moonlight Musing

Would you cut and run if a job turned out to not be what you were told?