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 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 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. Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. 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. 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. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss-a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. Now do what I did: Grab this book, grab a coffee, and lose yourself in this story for the day. And boy, does that ending pack an emotional punch. This is one of those books that doesn’t announce how clever it is, but once you’ve finished, you’ll find yourself turning plot points over and over in your head. Each page crackles with claustrophobic tension as we follow twist after turn until the breathtaking finale. Through these letters, we then see the story unfold: how Rowan-who we somehow don’t quite trust-applied for a job in a remote smart house, how she buried her secrets, and how her life became a nightmare that ended in murder.įull of genuinely creepy moments, this novel-a clever play on the classic The Turn of the Screw-has hints of a ghost story played out with modern technology. The novel opens with Rowan, a nanny, writing to a lawyer to explain why the charge leveled against her-the murder of a child in her care-is wrong, despite how guilty she looks.

I love a book that starts with the ending, and that’s what we get in The Turn of the Key.

There’s nothing better than an author you can absolutely rely on to deliver clever plotting and tight writing, and for me, Ruth Ware is the real deal. Whenever I pick up a Ruth Ware book, I’m reminded why she’s such a star in the over-crowded field of psychological thriller writing.

Turn of the key ruth ware