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Rowan has been working in child care for some time; her current job is at a child care center. When she happens across an ad online for a live-in nannying position for a family with four daughters, it seems too good to be true: high pay with almost no expenses, a room in a stately home in the starkly beautiful Scottish Highlands. Of course, she looks into it. And gets an interview. And ends up taking the position. The mother who hires her warns her she’s had a difficult time keeping nannies to stay on past a few weeks, and some have hinted the house is haunted. But Rowan takes the job, sure it won’t be as bad as that. Little does she know that her story will end much more badly than she could have imagined: with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
She tells the whole story in a letter to a lawyer she has heard may be able to get her acquitted. She admits to some errors and how they make her look more guilty. But she insists she’s innocent of murder, and she’s afraid because she doesn’t know how that child ended up dead — someone else, very likely someone who was living in or near the house, is guilty. And that means there are precious few suspects: She had to take care of three young girls full time while the parents were away at a work convention, plus the older teen sister who came home from school later in the time she was nannying. There’s a woman from the village who comes in to the house to do some cleaning and a man around Rowan’s age who tackles a variety of jobs and lives in a small apartment right behind the house.
Most scary of all? The house. The parents are architects and made their abode a smart home in the extreme, with everything automated, regulated —and visible on camera. How much can her employers see or control from a distance, while she is home alone with four children? How much that unnerves Rowan is simply paranoia?
The Turn of the Key portrays the unsettled feeling the narrator experiences living in an unfamiliar extra-smart home, hours away from anyone she knows and with no support. Ruth Ware ratchets up the tension just so, and the twist (or two) at the end is devastating. Great stuff. If you’re considering a smart home, read this book first. (Wink.)
Rated: High. There are two dozen or more instances of strong language. Sexual references are fairly minimal, with one sex scene with very few details, and some references to affairs and a male character making some small advances on another character.
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* I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
