When Rowan stumbles across an ad for a live-in nanny, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—with a staggeringly generous salary. And when she arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” house fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.
What Rowan doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and Rowan in prison awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her lawyer from prison, Rowan struggles to explain the unravelling events that have 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 children, 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.
Rowan 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 else is.
This book was such a page turner, and had me hooked from the first page. Usually books take me a couple chapters to get properly into the story, but the moment I picked this book up and started reading it, I couldn’t put it down.
I got so invested in the book and the characters, I was feeling genuinely fearful for the main character, and at points I was nervous to keep reading and find out what might happen next! Trying to predict what was going to happen, and trying to guess the twists/how it might end was really fun for me as well, it was the perfect amount of mystery.
Parts of the book were quite spooky, so if you’re not into that sort of thing then this might not be for you. I don’t normally feel freaked out from reading a book, but there were certain bits where I felt quite on edge while reading it – her writing really does transport you into the world of the story.
The ending was a bit strange and unexpected in my opinion, if I’m honest. In a way it felt a bit rushed to tie up all the loose ends. It was a tiny bit anticlimactic, but not in the sense that it ruined the rest of the book. I’m not trying to say I was disappointed in the ending, but as I was reading I felt like it was being built up to go a certain way, and then suddenly took a turn towards an ending that nobody could have guessed – or maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to pick up on the clues that lead us to this ending haha! Either way, I’d still highly recommend this book.
If you end up reading this book, please let me know what you think of it below – I’d love to hear other people’s take on it!
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