Here we meet our narrator, sitting in a prison cell in Scotland being implicated in the death of a child in her capacity as a nanny. She is writing a famous defense attorney and overshares her story to create a full context. It’s not a super inventive or super successful narrative convention, but it allows the whole of the novel to take place in a very particular way, in which we as the audience are treated to a slow trickle of essential information as the novel progresses. She takes a job as a nanny for a very rich English family in Scotland, where previous nannies have left after very short stints. When she visits for the interview she finds a fully automated house, an overpreening mother, and an absent father. She also finds a hot Scottish caretaker. She decides to take the job and eerie things keep happening. It’s weird because we know a child is going to die, so it’s tough to experience those interactions because of that outcome.
I don’t know why I keep reading Ruth Ware. I am somewhere between offended and annoyed throughout many of her novels, all of which start out promising, and then take lazy turns near the end.
I liked a LOT of what this novel set out to do. There is a kind of narrative tension throughout where you can tell as a reader you are being lied to by the narrator. That’s a really hard thing to pull off and it works here for a lot of the novel. But it fails spectacularly to me when big reveals happen.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Key-Ruth-Ware/dp/1501188771/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=turn+of+the+key&qid=1567018609&s=gateway&sr=8-1)