Book Review: The Turn of the Key | Ruth Ware

Opening up a new Ruth Ware book has to be one of my favorite things ever. It’s like getting ready to eat a delicious meal or take a nap—the anticipation of something you know that you’ll love.

Her new novel The Turn of the Key is absolutely gripping!! A page-turner that kept me up late into the night because I just didn’t want to put it down. This is told in almost (but not quite) an epistolary format, narrated by a woman who is in prison awaiting trial and asking an attorney to take her case. This is going to be a perfect fall read so I highly recommend picking up a copy!

About the Book | The Turn of the Key

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it is too good an opportunity to pass up—a live-in nannying post with a generous salary. But there is one condition—most of the salary is paid out only if she makes it one year.

From the moment Rowan arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is intrigued. It is a house of contrasts—old Victorian in style nestled in the Scottish highlands, but upgraded to a “smart” home where nearly everything in the house is controlled by an app.

But Rowan doesn’t know that she’s about to begin a job that will quickly break her down. One that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the well-behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

Review | The Turn of the Key

Ruth Ware is simply amazing. Every book of hers is so unique, but also stylistically so—for lack of a better phrase—Ruth Ware. All of her books have a modern gothic feel to me, particularly the last two books. They have that quality of completely transporting me into the book. The settings are so vivid, in part because she uses such fantastic descriptions to great effect. And she doesn’t just describe the settings up front to set the scene—her books continued to be ripe with descriptive language in a way that makes the settings almost a character in and of themselves.

The opening of this book pulled me right in. It begins with Rowan writing to an attorney from prison, begging him to consider her case. It is a famous case, she acknowledges, and one he has probably heard of. But she also assures him that he absolutely doesn’t know the full story. No one does. Rowan hasn’t been able to tell it until now, and she needs to start at the beginning with the ad. The ad that she wasn’t necessarily looking for. That’s where it all began, and without starting there, the spin used by the police and the press won’t make sense.

This one had some truly fantastic suspense built up. We start out knowing the what—a child died while under Rowan’s care—but not the how, why, when, or who. I loved the twists in this one. There is a twist that is so deliciously unexpected and salacious that I’m still thinking about the moment of the reveal! But of course, you know me better than to think I’ll spoil it… You need to read it and find out!

Ruth Ware really plays with isolation in her books. Typically the main character is not only in a setting that is somewhat isolated (here, a gothic smart house in the Scottish Highlands with few adults around), but they are also sort of isolated in life. Often they don’t have strong ties to friends or family, no one really to rely on in the situation they get into. Rowan is no exception to this! It really adds to the pressure of the situation. They don’t have an easy out, most of the time, so the suspense is ratcheted up to full volume.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot (you;ll notice I kept my review to things unrelated to it), but I do want to just touch on how fascinating this situation is. A nanny left in charge of three kids (soon to be four), with the parents out of town. A house set far away from society. Grounds that are wild and unruly and a bit dangerous, but somehow less dangerous feeling than the house itself. The house truly has a mind of its own, and I was so intrigued by the way the house seemed to be controlling the situation.

An incredible book that I can’t recommend enough! I received an copy from Gallery and then added it to my Book of the Month box so I could own a hardcover. Thank you, Gallery. Opinions are my own.