Rating: 4 🔪 
Author: Ruth Ware
Publisher: VINTAGE
Release Date: 2nd April 2020
(Thank you NetGalley and VINTAGE for the free early copy!)
Synopsis:
IT WAS THE DREAM JOB. IT WOULD BECOME HER WORST NIGHTMARE.
‘So clever and original . . . from the first gripping page to the last shocking twist’ ERIN KELLY, author of He Said/She Said
'Ruth Ware just gets better and better. The Turn of the Key is her most compelling and addictive to date; I read this in a two sitting frenzy, barely able to turn the pages fast enough' Lisa Jewell, author of The People Upstairs
When Rowan stumbles across the advert, it seems like too good an opportunity to miss: a live-in nanny position, with a very generous salary. And when she arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten by the luxurious ‘smart’ home fitted out with all modern conveniences by a picture-perfect family.
What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare – one that will end with a child dead and her in cell awaiting trial for murder.
She knows she’s made mistakes. But she’s not guilty – at least not of murder. Which means someone else is…
'Will hold you captive until the brilliant ending' SHARI LAPENA, author of Someone We Know
Full of chilling menace and sinister secrets, The Turn of the Key is a gripping modern-day haunted house novel that will keep you reading through the night.
My Thoughts:
This is my first ever Ruth Ware. I've had her books on my shelf for the longest time because I only ever hear amazing things about her, but have never gotten round to trying her books. After discovering her amazing writing skill and attention to detail I am going to have to change this and bump those books up my list! Ruth ware is a delight and a treasure! What a haunting book!
Right from the off I was hooked with this one. The usual layout, here's where I am, here's why I'm here, I shouldn't be, here's who I am, here's what happened.... it's unique and it's clever. I really liked how we the reader are left not really sure whether or not Rowan was actually innocent or not until the very end. It really made the whole book stand out for me from my other reads this year!
Another thing is just how creepy and haunting it is. I actually found myself worried about the bumps in the night after reading this before bed and being very jumpy. I'm hard to spook, especially in literature so this reaction alone is high praise. I'm really fond of a ghost story like thriller and this is one of the finest I've ever read. The publisher description of it being a chilling menace is most ardently correct. It's brilliant!

Just superb. Every book I've read from Ware was great and this one is no exception.
It starts with a letter of plea, where a nanny tells her innocence and the whole book is actually a long letter written to a lawyer by the nanny's hand.
She's hired by a rich couple living in a remote Scottish estate and soon after she arrives, she's left aone with 3 children and two dogs, in a house she doesn't know how to operate (the whole house is being managed by a app called Happy) and things start happening...
I could not drop this book, literally, didn't stop until the end. it was SO good!
Highly recommended, and this is my favourite of Ware together with In a Dark Dark wood!

Ware writes a mean thriller and ' The Turn of the Key' is proof of that. Rowan, a nanny awaits trial for the murder of a child. But she claims she is innocent and thus we are taken back to the chain of events that led to her arrest and subsequent trial.
Rowan talks about the family she is hired by, a family obsessed with technology, living in a mansion surrounded by a garden of poisonous fruits and said to inhabit ghosts. Rowan's interaction with the children is disturbing at best and her time in the mention is strenuous and freaky.
'The Turn of the Key' is a book that gets better with every chapter. It gave me a bone-chilling ending, an eerie atmosphere, freak technology, a Victorian backdrop and a plot that held up the mystery and tone effectively.
A book I will be recommending to all.

It's a nanny job that's too good to be true in an old house with new intrusive technology. Should Rowan be scared of her employers, her charges or something more supernatural?

Great twists and turns and very atmospheric. Loved it!

I was really looking forward to this one, but I have to confess that I found it a little disappointing overall. It tells the story of Rowan, a young nanny, awaiting trial for the murder of a child in her care, who writes letters to her potential advocate to protest her innocence and explain what really happened. I thought that this was an interesting structural choice, but there were times when the detail of the 'letters' just threw me out of the narrative a little. The house in the story was fascinating and very creepy, with the 'Happy app' aspects and the feeling of being watched from all quarters thanks to the video cameras. The house is definitely the best part of this book and the history of its inhabitants was really fascinating, but for me, it took too long to get there in the narrative. Ware has a real skill at setting the atmosphere and she layered the narrative very well here, with small reveals throughout to keep the pacing fast. My issues were mainly with the dialogue, which I found clunky and wooden in places, and the characters, whose motivations and behaviours just didn't ring true for me. Overall, I think there are many good things about this book, but it was just a bit too ridiculous in places.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Full of menace, The Turn of the Key is a modern-day haunted house thriller from the author of In A Dark, Dark Wood and The Death of Mrs Westaway. It’s a genuinely suspenseful read permeated with a creeping sense of dread, and it’s sure to have you holding your breath right up to the dramatic conclusion.

I am afraid this book didn't quite hit the mark for me, and if I am being honest, it bored me. Following a nanny, as she acclimatises her new job (almost a day by day, minute by minute account) - after being warned several times that strange things may be afoot, surprise surprise strange things begin to occur.

I could go on and on about what I didn't like but there is no point this book just wasn't for me. I felt there was a million and one other routes the author could have taken and I ended up feeling let down and deflated.

Shock horror - this is my first Ruth Ware read, but I am open to giving her other books a try.

This book starts with Rowan, a nanny, in jail for murdering a child in her care. She writes a letter to a lawyer, beginning him to take her case.

As Rowan tells the story of what happened, from lying to get the job in the first place, we learn that Rowan is far from perfect. But is she a killer?

Although the setting is a very modern home in the Scottish Highlands, this book has a very dark, intense atmosphere. Although it starts a little slow, it picks up pace quickly and from then I couldn’t put it down. The characters are all acting so suspiciously that I didn’t trust anyone, even the children!

A brilliant, tense thriller that continued to shock me throughout.

Rowan is fed up with her job at the nursery, she is missing her friend who has gone travelling & wants a change. When she reads an ad for a nanny in Scotland with the most amazing salary she decides it is exactly what she wants! When she goes for her interview the house (a strange mix of old & ultra modern) the setting & the idea of the money is perfect. The four children (one of which doesn't seem very keen for her to come) look manageable & she is thrilled when she is offered the job.

From the start we know that something went very badly wrong! Rowan is in prison for the murder of a child. She is writing to a solicitor to explain what really happened. An explanation that goes right back until the moment she sees the ad.

Beginning the job is not plain sailing. From the start the second eldest is hostile & makes sure the second youngest does what she says & not Rowan. She is left in sole charge when the parents go away to a conference & strange things start to happen.

I enjoyed this book, although they way it was written was a bit odd & I struggled to believe that any parent would engage a nanny & then, without any settling in period, leave them in sole charge in the middle of nowhere. Having said that, it was a good read & it threw up many surprises. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting e read & review this book.

I absolutely loved this book , I think it’s the first I’ve read by this author. Great start writing a letter from prison then going back through the story . Full of suspense all the way though and great ending. Highly recommend

I've never read Ruth Ware before so wasn't sure what to expect.
What I got was an intriguing and tense thriller, told in the first person, through a letter from a nanny in jail on a murder charge to her prospective QC.

The story is an intriguing set up.

Rowan Cain appears to have found the nanny job of her dreams, living in for a family in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.
The house itself is a mish-mash of the old and the ultra modern, which takes some getting used to and creates problems enough for Rowan before we even get to the children themselves.
She is left alone with them for a week only a day into the job.

As she struggles to get to grips with the technology of the house and the children, odd things begin happening in and around the house.
The tension builds as we move through the story until the excellent ending with a couple of great twists in the final few chapters.

This is a real slow burner that ramps up the tension and intrigue gradually and in great detail.

An excellent book. Highly recommended.

In these days where the reader is spoilt by a wide range of psychological thriller it is a real treat to come across something that is completely original and most importantly really well-written.

This spooky tale that demonstrates this particular writing skill that Ruth Ware has displayed time and again by creating a pervasive feeling of spookiness without tipping into the ridiculous, something that I have a low tolerance for.

The book actually takes the form of a letter from our protagonist to her attorney Mr Wrexham. The woman is pleading her innocence and the assumption is that given her job of a nanny the crime committed has something to do with a child. The first person narrative is all important, in fact it was often only when the writer asks a question to her lawyer that I remembered this is an account, a setting down of facts because I was so drawn into the Scottish home, a mixture between old and new, the four children, the odd characters, and most frightening of all the cameras and smart tech that the family use to run their life.

Top marks for an appealing story, perfect for autumn that has come crashing in and top marks also for the skill in keeping the reader guessing whilst ensuring that they remain totally enthralled on every page. Ruth Ware has sealed her place as a 'must-read' author for sure now.

Compare and contrast...

When Rowan Caine spots an advertisement for a nanny position, she’s staggered by the huge salary that’s being offered. So she’s willing to overlook the little detail that it’s a desperate bid by the potential employers to find someone who doesn’t mind that the house is reputed to be haunted. Because obviously ghosts don’t exist, right? The last four nannies who’ve all left in the last year must have been mistaken. Off she goes, way up to the north of Scotland to a house set in splendid isolation, to take on a family of four girls: two small children, one baby and a bratty teenager. Their parents are busy architects running their own business so are often away from home, leaving their brood in the hands of the nanny, with only a hot handyman and a grumpy old daily help for company. And then the strange noises begin...

The title is a give-away that this is based to some degree on Henry James’ novella, The Turn of the Screw. The isolation, the nanny who may or may not be a reliable narrator, the children who may or may not be sweetly innocent, the absence of parents, the suggestion of evil and the doubts over whether the odd things that happen are human or supernatural in origin, are all there.

At the risk of repeating myself, I will say again – if an author deliberately sets out to remind a reader of a great classic, she needs to be sure her own work will stand the comparison. I wasn’t a wholehearted fan of The Turn of the Screw, finding it a rather unpleasant read overall, but I admired James’ technique and ability to create a deeply disturbing atmosphere. He had, I assume, worked out that horror is exceptionally hard to sustain over lengthy periods, hence the novella form, and used ambiguity to great effect to unsettle the reader, never letting us know whether we could trust what we were reading. Ware has gone for novel length, meaning that there’s much repetition of not particularly scary stuff and far too much detail over the “joys” of childcare – do I need to know what the children have for breakfast every day? The framing mechanism is that Rowan, in prison, is writing a letter to a barrister begging him to take her case, so we are told from the beginning that a child has died and Rowan is accused of murdering her. A 384-page letter. The barrister knows the case from the papers, so Rowan repeatedly says things like “You’ll know why they think that I...” without letting the reader in on it. As always, I found this technique utterly annoying, although I know many people enjoy it.

Having got my grumps over with, there are some good things about it. After a far too slow start, it does become a page-turner, and the quality of the writing meant that even during the excessive details about everything I was never tempted to abandon it. The house is well done – a nice mix of Gothic overlaid with ultra-modern, again, I felt, a nod to the fact that this is a modern version of a classic story. It’s a “smart” house with everything controlled remotely by apps, giving plenty of scope for spooky things with a contemporary feel, but it also has traditional touches like the closed-off attic and the poison garden in the grounds. The house has a history of a dead child and a father who was either an evil murderer or a heartbroken bereaved parent – depends which gossip you listen to. The handyman is either a lovely guy who wants to be helpful or a weirdo with an obscurely evil agenda. Rowan herself isn’t clear-cut either – mostly it’s easy to sympathise with her, but sometimes she doesn’t seem to like children much and we quickly learn she has secrets in her background, though we won’t learn what they are until the end.

The last quarter or so is the best bit, when the suspense begins to build towards a chilling climax, where all the hints finally become clear and everything is explained. And that brings me back to The Turn of the Screw, where the effectiveness of the story – and the reason it’s a classic – is precisely because all does not become clear! The reader is left to decide for herself what happened, and thus, in a sense, becomes complicit in the creation of the story. I finished my review of it by saying “Generally speaking, I shrug off written horror as soon as I close the book, but I found myself thinking of this story when I woke in the dark reaches of the night, and I had troubled dreams.” With this one, although I quite enjoyed reading it, because everything was neatly tied up and presented to me as a finished story I was left with no shivery after-effects and slept like a log.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Harvill Secker.

Initially I experienced strong The Turn of the Screw vibes (is Ware alluding to that tale by choosing a similar title?) with a young woman, Rowan, relating her acceptance of a job as nanny to young girls in a remote house after four predecessors in the role have fled due to superstition/ghosts. I enjoyed the first-person narration which lends itself well to the bias inherent in one person's recollection of events, and the possibility of more intentional attempts by that narrator to deceive the reader.

I enjoyed the mounting uneasiness crafted partly through depiction of the house as an uncomfortable mix-up of Victorian tradition and ultra-modern materials and gadgets. The idea of smart technology adding to the atmosphere of surveillance, a loss of control and paranoia worked well. There were two twists towards the which I hadn't guessed.

I was hooked from the first page (I read the whole book through in two sittings with a brief break to walk the dog) but I had hoped to feel scared rather than merely unsettled hence the star rating. I will be seeking out more of Ware's books.

This is a wonderfully creepy psychological thriller. From the start we are aware that Rowan has been accused of a child's murder. Until the close of the bok it is unclear who the child is, or quite what has led to this event. Told in the form of a letter to ger solicitor, this is a slow reveal of a family with a closet full of secrets and lies.
The setting of the book is perfect in the form of Heatherbrae House. It is an isolated period property (with a tragic past) that has been brought bang up to date by the new architect owners who have a penchant for the latest technology. The ghosts of the past and the modern technology create a jarring sensation for both Rowan and the reader, and what seems a picture perfect idyll in the countryside soon becomes anything but. Similarly, the aspirational family are not all that they seem and Rowan is immediately left on her own with the children, who do not want her to be there. There are noises in the night, discovered rooms, wilful children and an unruly teenager to play havoc with Rowan's sense of equanimity and my own sense of what to believe or who to trust. Towards the end of the story, there are some great reveals and the final reveal of the book I found incredibly sad.

It's a great book, perfect for an Autumn night. My thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

What an awesome story with loads of twists throughout. Nothing is quite what it seems and can anyone be trusted?

‘Did you download Happy?’

Ruth Ware’s “The Turn of the Key” is even better than her last novel, “The Death of Mrs Westaway”. Like the previous book, the story takes place in a remote Victorian house and is reminiscent of many classic gothic novels, but this time the house in question, Heatherbrae in northern Scotland, is a chimera, its ancient stone walls extended in modern steel and glass, every function, every utility, (almost) every lock controlled by smart devices - du Maurier meets Crichton...

The story is told from a prison cell as a nanny, jailed for the murder of a child, writes to a lawyer, pleading for his help, protesting her innocence. Rowan Caine, engaged by successful architects, Bill and Sandra Elincourt, is almost immediately thrown in at the deep end - left to look after the couple’s children as her employers attend a conference. As well as struggling with the unfamiliar house, the unintuitive, highly complex Happy interface, and Mrs. Elincourt’s detailed childcare ‘manual’, Rowan is met by hostility from the girls in her charge. Maddie, the elder of the two girls at home, seems particularly determined to reject any attempt to build a relationship, the prospect of a returning moody teenage daughter is daunting, and a series of strange noises in the night, accompanied by a malfunctioning Happy, suggest that there may be truth to the stories that previous nannies left their posts in fear.

Ruth Ware builds tension through the book and some passages are really creepy. And there is the suspicion that Rowan may be an unreliable narrator, the only version of events we get being hers. The pages start to race by as we build to the inevitable conclusion, the inevitable death. And when the end comes, there is a devastating twist which leaves the reader exhausted.

This is my fourth Ruth Ware book. Gothic suspense is definitely the type of books I look forward to reading by her. I hope we get more of those types of books.
This was probably my quickest read by Ruth. I flew through this. I found myself halfway through before I even put the book down.
Although I do hate books with no chapters it made sense to have it this way for this book.
Even though I was flying through this it was a slow burn. Focusing on the atmosphere, making you question things. Why did things disappear? What was the noises she heard?
The side characters left me intrigued. Was Jean hiding something? Why was Jack always magically there? What's his story?
I found that I didn't see any twist coming. But I also think I was just enjoying the book so much I was waiting to be told instead of trying to figure it out. However the ending felt underwhelming. Even though I can see why Ruth decided to go this way, when I look back throughout the book small hints are given away. I just expected a bigger reveal. Maybe even having no reveal and just more questions.

I think right now in my current mindset I have to stick with a. 3.5 (rounded down). I really enjoyed this read - the only things that irked me were:

1) the format. I hate books written in ‘letter’ format like this one because the dialogue and the meticulous attention to detail feels so unnatural.

2) the ending. I didn’t HATE the ending. I understood the overall plot twist. However, it was A LOT of information that my brain just couldn’t comprehend in that short span of what, 20 pages max?

I liked the constant red herrings and the eerie vibe of the writing. It was overall a really captivating read, so I’m excited to pick up more from Ruth Ware.

Yet again Ware has written a compelling novel that you get lost in straight away. The unusual beginning is an inventive way to lure the reader into Rowan’s plight. The atmosphere in the 'smart' house was suitably creepy with supporting characters that you aren’t quite sure are trustworthy. I was engrossed!

This book will keep you guessing right til the end.