The Turn of the Key

A young daycare worker looking to change jobs sees an advertisement for a position as a live-in nanny to four children in a country house in the remote Scottish Highlands. Salary, £50,000 per year. A dream job. Although, in the past year four nannies have quit suddenly, one on her first day and another leaving her belongings in her haste to get out. Also the locals say the house is haunted. And a little girl was killed there a few decades ago. But other than that, a dream job. As in all good gothic novels the young woman of course takes the job. The house turns out to be a cozy, welcoming Victorian country house with a beautiful view. The back of the house is a modern glass addition with a state of the art kitchen. The house is also a super wired up smart house, with an app that controls everything from door locks to lights, music and air vents. And there are lots of cameras. Ruth Ware masterfully sets up the story, then powers it forward with suspicion, clues, misdirection, twists, and red herrings. This created such suspense for me I had to finish it in one day -- I just couldn't wait for the answers! She has written this novel in the form of a letter the protagonist is writing. I thought it would be off-putting but it wasn't -- once I accepted that this was the longest letter ever I became so enmeshed in the story it wasn't a distraction. I would definitely recommend this book.

Wow! Ruth Ware proves once again that she is the reigning <b>Queen of Suspense!</b> This totally addictive <b>4 Star</b> thriller was worth the wait. <b>SUMMARY</b> This book is written as a letter to an attorney from a prisoner awaiting trial. The narrator is a nanny who is in prison for allegedly killing one of the small children in her care. The letter recounts the story of how this the narrator was happily working at a day care in London until she saw an ad for a live in nanny position. This job would be taking care of four kids in a large estate, with an exceptionally generous compensation package. Even though she wasn’t really looking for a new job, she applies immediately. Who wouldn’t? Before the interview, she is given a warning that the last several nannies have left quickly because of rumors that the house was haunted. Undaunted by the warning, after all, Rowan is not a superstitious person, she puts on her <i>perfect nanny</i> outfit, her <i>perfect nanny</i> personality and boards a train to Scotland for the interview. She is blown away by the enormous property and the large hybrid Victorian/ modern house. The mom, Sandra Ellencourt, seems to be a lovely person, the girls are adorable and although she didn’t have a chance to meet Bill, the father, Rowan really wants this job! And of course, since she is the main character and it’s her story, she gets the job. Almost as soon as she starts, she begins to realize what she’s gotten herself into. When she has been there less than twelve hours, both Bill and Sandra leave for a week long out of town conference. Yikes! The three girls who live at home are 1, 5 and 8 (the older daughter, 15 years old is away at boarding school). Since Rowan is the fifth nanny is six months time, they are not interested in making friends with her and are not at all happy to be left alone with her. In addition to the kids being a handful, the house is a smart house, totally wired with cameras. The lights, music system, door locks, shower, refrigerator etc are all on a smart system, which is great; until it malfunctions in the middle of the night. If only her problems were just misbehaving children who are tired of the nanny parade and absent parents... On her first day alone with the kids, weird things start to happen; doors locked that she didn’t lock, strange noises at night, the doorbell ringing when no one is there and it just gets creepier from there. Did I mention that there is a historic poison garden on the property?? That’s right, a <i>poison garden</i> that’s protected by some sort of historic heritage group. This job just keeps getting more and more weird. And to top it all off, from page one, hints are dropped that Rowan may be hiding something or she may have a hidden motive for being in Scotland. <b>WHAT I LOVED<b> This is exactly how I like my haunted thrillers; creepy, filled with the constant <i>is it or is it not really haunted</i> question and taking place in a big old house with a questionable past. You just never know if it’s going to being the a real ghost or not. It’s go fun speculating! I LOVE my Brit lit! Especially in a big old drafty, remote estate in rainy Scotland! And how amazing is it to read about people sweaters there in the summer while I’m sweating my butt off on Texas when it’s over 100 degrees and humid enough to ruin my hair within 5 minutes of being outside! Lots of love to the UK! I love what a disaster Rowan is. That girl is a hot mess! She is a terrible nanny, has horrible judgement and couldn’t talk her way out of a paper bag. Speaking of bags, she has a ton of baggage. She is not a bad person, but just seems to have no idea how to deal with children over the age of two. Speaking of being a mess; Sandra is an awful mother! Who would actually leave on an week plus long trip and stick their kids with someone she and her children barely know. On her first day on the job??? We won’t even get into Bill here, but a few choice descriptive words come to mind. While all the above mentioned factors make this book good, suspense is the real star of the show! Each day, there is some new oddity or coincidence that makes you wonder what is really happening. This would make a FANTASTIC movie! It would play out so well on screen. <b>WHAT I DIDN’T LOVE</b> I have to say the ending made me ANGRY! I need more resolution, a pretty package tied up in a neat little bow and preferably an epilogue that lets me know where all the characters stand later on down the road after all the dust settles. <b>OVERALL</b> Although the ending annoyed me, I would still recommend this book. Double thumbs up from me!

Ruth Ware writes the best books! This one had a twist you will never see coming. Do yourself a favor and read it.

It pains me to leave this review, as I’m such a fan of Ruth Ware. I’ve enjoyed all of her other books — especially her knack for describing settings and atmospheric tension. But in this book, it fell flat for me. So did the characters, the motivations, the light horror aspect, and most of all, the ending. It was just disappointing in every way .... after I pre-ordered at the first opportunity and waited months for it. Ruth’s writing was as good as always. And despite the book dragging and dragging with mundane details, I still wanted to finish. That said, I read her other books in 1-2 days, this one took over a week. I remember at one point looking down the Kindle page, seeing that I was at 70%, and thinking, what?! Nothing’s happening! What I didn’t like: As much as I love (mentioned earlier) how Ruth usually and brilliantly immerses us readers into the settings, it didn’t work this time. The house sounded like a clown house — I absolutely hated the half Victorian, half severely modern aspect — and the “smart” features sounded like the most annoying way to live ever. I kept thinking more would be explored concerning cameras everywhere, etc, but no, it was just how lights wouldn’t come on because of confusing panels or the out-of-town mother telling her kids goodnight. It seemed like being a “smart” house would be a huge factor in the book, but it really wasn’t. I just didn’t have a sense or feel for the house/gardens/etc; it all seemed one-dimensional. Ok, readers, it’s old and maybe haunted and has weird architecture and cameras and a secret attic. It’s creepy, ok? (It wasn’t, at all.) Every character was annoying, yet not well fleshed out. It almost felt like even Ruth didn’t like them much and was very unsympathetic in writing about them. Much like the house, they seemed one-dimensional. In fact, I kept getting the kids mixed up because they were just cardboard cutouts (except the baby, who we heard too much about and didn’t need to). Too many outlandish scenarios that pretty much had no purpose (page filler) ... I don’t want to give away spoilers, so I have to be a bit vague. The hunky handyman there to rescue the damsel in distress, the fact of the parents just leaving a stranger with their young children out in the middle of nowhere for a long time and we hardly hear from them again, the cliched rebellious teenager coming home and acting the fool for really no good reason in the story, how negligent and annoyed the nanny always seemed around very scared, unsettled young kids in her care, the silly footsteps in the attic every night, the story of the previous owner which went nowhere, the descriptions of spit-up, the stories of former nannies/pervert husband that went nowhere, the identity thing, etc. Even being vague here, it’s clear to see how many plot lines with potential just fizzled out. The book plodded along slowly until the very end ... then the twists were all crammed in confusingly and abruptly. And one of the biggest “reveals” came off as too little too late and silly to me. Would someone take things that far? Doubtful. Didn’t ring true. I hated the ending. Hated it. It was unnecessarily cruel and was a terrible twist. It wasn’t shocking, it was just sad. But the worst part for me, the most disappointing — the entire book being written as a letter (in this case, to an attorney). UGH. I cannot stand letters, journals, etc used as plot devices for an entire story. It’s cliched, it’s lazy, it’s juvenile, it NEVER works well. Who would write out Every. Single. Detail. in a letter like that? Every daily thought and emotion? No one. Especially when time is of the essence, this person is going to pen a novel in letter form? Of course not. And we don’t find out much after the big reveal, so what’s the point of the letter-to-attorney pretense? Sorry, Ruth. I’m still a fan and happily look forward to reading your future books, but this one didn’t do it for me. I think it could’ve been a truly great book, there were some unique and original ideas (poison garden, for instance). But it just kind of felt all over the place instead of cohesive and determined. It’s certainly not the worst book I’ve ever read, not even close, but I know you have the abilities to do much better! *Review from paying customer, not given free book. ....................................................................................................

I will not call this an excellent book, but The Turn of The Key is my favourite one by Ruth Ware to date. I have found Ware to be a good writer who keeps the audience interested while giving the least surprising twists. This book is a bit different because it has more than one twists, and a couple of them are quite good too. The book starts with a nanny imprisoned for murdering her charge, a little girl, writing to a well known lawyer about how it all came about, and how she is not the one guilty of murder. The book is in the form of a letter, where the nanny is writing about the whole nightmare experience in the first person. Rowan came across the ad for a nanny by chance. She was intrigued by the ad as well as the unbelievable salary being offered for the post, and decided to apply for it. She expected to be rejected, so when she got the job she was determined to last longer than the other nannies who had ran away before her. Rumour was that the other girls all got spooked by the ghosts living in the house. Rowan, who is practical and has no time for silly things like ghosts, thought that she was above all this nonsense. However, once she started working at Heatherbrae House, she couldn't help but be scared by the unexplained things happening to her. The house itself was a technological miracle, with surveillance cameras and smart controls, which seemed to overwhelm her at all points. Add to that, the absence of her employers, and the presence of four girls of varying ages, three of whom were visibly antagonistic towards her, was enough to drive Rowan almost mad. It didn't help that Rowan herself was keeping some secrets that made her look quite guilty when they came to light. As she tries to set the record straight, you can't help but wonder at what really did happen if she is telling the truth. I admit the book was too boring in the beginning to keep me interested. It was only my determination to finish it that kept me reading on. However, as I read on, I found myself wanting to know how it all came about. I wasn't expecting a scary book, or even for it to be too unexpected, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read the thrilling bits and was suitably spooked. This was the first Ruth Ware book I read where the ending wasn't neat or the matters resolved to everyone's satisfaction. This just shows that she is getting better at thrills with each book. A good book, if you can get past the first quarter of it.

At the time that this book came out, I wasn't in the right headspace for it. But having just finished her latest (One by One, SO GOOD), I tried this one again. The format is a little odd; it's an epistolary format but it's mainly one long letter to a potential lawyer, so there aren't traditional "chapters" per se. There are breaks that work like chapters since the letter writer writes it over several days, but I know this was one of the things that put me off when I first tried reading the book. If it does, PERSERVERE! Because this book is worth it. This is Ruth Ware's take on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. You don't need to have read that book to enjoy this one (although you should because it is EXCELLENT), but one of the things that I appreciate about Ware is that when she does a "retelling" she usually has very clever updates to the original story but also doesn't feel the need to keep to the plot of the original. So yes, this is the story of a nanny isolated with children who behave in odd ways, but knowing the plot of The Turn of the Screw won't help you figure out the plot of this book. For one, Ware actually gives you the answer at the end which I appreciated. There are still unanswered questions and some of them quite important to me, but the major questions are answered. Tl;dr: if you enjoy gothic thrillers, unreliable narrators, or ghost stories that are really about the people involved, you'll enjoy this one!

Her name was all over the papers, in every headline, and her face insinuated guilt. She tried to plead her innocence to the police but no one would listen. From her prison cell she wrote to her lawyer about her time working at Heatherbrae House. She pleaded for her innocence in the only way she knew how by writing letter after letter hoping he was reading them. Overall: The entire book was written as a letter to a defense attorney from prison. Even formatted as a letter the story was so compelling that I often forgot it was written this way, with her testimony of innocence. The delivery of information was crafted with pure artistic talent. Even knowing from the beginning why Rowan was in prison didn’t inhibit my enjoyment of the story. With so many factors coming into play I was still unsure of who actually was killed. It could’ve been any child. I found with the way Ruth wrote this story that highlighting certain details was imperative for me in determining what facts were true so as to confirm or dispute her claims of innocence. Believe me you will question everything. Ruth constantly led the reader into the direction she wanted the reader to focus on. With so many clues being dropped it was both easy and difficult to decipher what should be the focal point. There were many obstacles of disturbances to keep the readers mind busy. Ruth Ware wrote a very clever book providing just enough details to engage the reader into reading more. The little snippets of suspicious activity gave a chilling and eerie feeling to the doom that was about to occur. I got chills during several scenes. There were so many facets to this story and trying to process every tiny detail was tricky. Ruth Ware kept the reader captive to her words. Everything she wrote was meant as a clue or a distraction. All very clever. The twists and turns kept coming at me in every chapter.

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine 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 events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the home’s cameras, 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. 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—but somebody is. My Thoughts: A spooky, surreal setting that had me anxious from the very beginning, The Turn of the Key had me questioning everything that happened. From the parents to the children to the “Smart House,” this story kept me guessing until the end. I knew that Rowan Caine had told some little lies to get the job, but she certainly didn’t deserve all the events that unfolded in that eerie house in Scotland. Or did she? First of all, how could she be the perfect nanny in a house in the middle of nowhere, with cameras pointed at her from every room? Cameras that seemingly triggered weird sounds and strange creaks in the night? The children were weird and sneaky, and the parents, calling from unknown places, seemed overly strange, if not nefarious. But when some of the details of “Rowan’s” life became clear to the reader, everything intensified. Not knowing what would happen next kept me turning the pages until the shocking end. 4.5 stars.

The mistery takes you away into the journey. The final sensation after reading is similar to watching a good suspense movie. No big surprises or plot twists though.

spannend!! Ich liebe Ruth Wares Bücher

Thriller psicológico muy entretenido! en un ambiente inmersivo en donde la casa y los parajes son también protagonistas. Lo recomiendo, ya que los capítulos son cortos y se lee en un suspiro. No es de terror, pero sí hay tensión y clímax a medida que se acerca la conclusión.

Great read

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am a huge fan of Ruth Ware's books she is an auto buy author for me. The turn of the key is now my second favourite book of hers, the first being In a Dark Wood. I loved everything about this book it kept me up at night it was that atmospheric and addictive. A nanny living in a smart house....alone with the children whilst the parents work overseas....creepy things start happening....why have other nannies left after working here for only short periods....a child dies....the nanny writes to a lawyer to tell her side of the story.... a twisty, compelling read. #ruthware #theturnofthekey #tea_sipping_bookworm #goodreads #litsy #thestorygraph #amazonkindle #thriller #twisty #bookqueen #bookstagram