I read the first third of this in my paperback copy, then switched over to the audio to see if I could jump start my interest in it again. It worked! For a while, at least. It helped me get through the book, anyway. I liked the audio version better. I was super into this book at first, but as soon as the main character reached the house in the country, something about it lost me. It probably also didn’t help that I was traveling all day while reading this and was super motion sick for a couple hours. Either way, this was just an okay read for me. (I have not read the Henry James novella this book is based on, though I’ve actually got it up for later this year; Emma Thompson narrates the audio!)
As far as I’m aware, this is not a straight retelling, though the beginning shares a premise. A new nanny is coming to work at an isolated house in the English countryside. Our main character, Rowan, takes the job, which four previous nannies in the last year have quit. The book is told in the format of a letter to a solicitor, in which Rowan tries to get him to believe that it wasn’t her that killed the child. So you know a child will be dead by the end, but you don’t know which of the three it will be. The family lives in a creepy as hell smart house, which can be entirely controlled from afar by anyone with the internet and the proper permissions. Malfunctions of the system, misbehaving children, and creepy footsteps at night soon have Rowan believing the house might indeed be haunted. Rowan is also keeping some secrets that might hurt her case and which are revealed over the course of the book.
I was entertained while reading this, but it also really dragged for most of the middle, and the ending I found really unsatisfying. I will probably try one more Ruth Ware book before giving up on her, but this wasn’t a great read for me, just an okay one.