Rowan Caine is ready for the interview of her life. Instead of her job taking care of infants at Little Nippers in London, she has a chance at a nanny job, a very well paying nanny job, near the mountains of Scotland. She would live in a modernized Victorian home with the latest in smart technology. She would be taking care of an infant, two older girls, and occasionally helping with the family’s 14-year-old daughter. The job would be a lot of work, but the salary and upscale lifestyle would definitely help offset that.
Architect and mother Sandra Elincourt needs a nanny. Despite the beautiful home that she rebuilt and decorated with her husband and the generous salary they offer, the last 4 nannies all left in rather a hurry. She needs someone who is not only good with children but also reliable, someone who will stick around for a long time, at least a year. The Elincourts have a successful business, and she needs to stay plugged in to that. In order to do that, she needs someone at home who can take care of the kids. Rowan’s paperwork is all in order, and she says all the right things at the interview.
In other words, they Rowan and Sandra need each other.
Rowan gets the job and moves into Heatherbrae House, and she is immediately thrown into the deep end. Sandra has to leave for a work engagement right away, so Rowan will be charge of the three youngest girls by herself for the entire first weekend she’s there. There is a woman who comes in to help with the cleaning, and there is a handyman on site, but Rowan is left to care for three children she just met. And they don’t seem to like her much.
Rowan struggles at first to get the girls under control, get them fed and in bed on time. But as time goes on, they accept her and fight against her less. However, just as she’s starting to make headway with the girls, the house seems to turn on her. She knew it was a smart house, and she had downloaded the app to control it to her phone, but neither the app nor the control panels in the house are very user friendly, and Rowan struggles to get through the night without the lights suddenly coming on, or being blasted by music, or hearing footsteps over her head.
That last one isn’t part of the smart house, and Rowan starts to worry that there is someone upstairs from her bedroom somehow. There is no attic, and no floor above the one where her room is, so she can’t understand how she’s hearing the footsteps. But that’s what she hears.
With interrupted sleep and the struggle of handling three small children while the parents are out of town, Rowan has to figure out the best way to protect those children and herself from whatever danger—humor or other—that seems to be coming at that house. But then one of the children ends up dead, and Rowan is in prison for her murder, and all the secrets have to come out.
Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key is a beautifully told story of a horrible tragedy. A family is destroyed, a woman is jailed, and a child has lost her life. But the story of Rowan and her time working for the Elincourts is not necessarily what it seems. Reminiscent of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, there are secrets, lies, and hints of something supernatural happening. But you won’t find out the whole story, the entire truth, until you read to the very last page. So be sure to set aside lots of time for this one, because you will need to read it through all the way to that very last page to find out what really happened.
And be sure of this too—it will break your heart.
Reading The Turn of the Key is an experience you won’t soon forget. And I can’t recommend it enough!
Galleys for The Turn of the Key were provided by Gallery/Scout Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.