Book Review: Nightwatching | Tracy Sierra

Run, Hide, Fight. That’s what we are taught to do when faced with an active threat. Running get’s us away from the situation immediately, but what happens if our first response is to freeze? We may lose our chance to run and be forced to move to our next option…hide.

In Tracy Sierra’s debut novel, Nightwatching, a woman and her children are forced into hiding when an intruder enters their home and won’t leave.

About the Book | Nightwatching

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs.

She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.

In the suffocating darkness, the mother struggles to remain calm, to plan. Should she search for a weapon or attempt escape? But then she catches another glimpse of him. That face. That voice. And at once she knows her situation is even more dire than she’d feared, because she knows exactly who he is—and what he wants. (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review | Nightwatching

The premise of this book made me instantly grab a copy, and the opening chapter sent chills down my spine. A woman is home with her two children, who are asleep in their beds. When she hears a creak on the stairs, she knows exactly what might have caused it. It’s an old house, but a mother knows every creak and sound their house makes. This is the sound of someone walking up the stairs. She freezes in the shadows and sees the shape of someone. The person doesn’t see her, and the woman is frozen in place. The person moves away from her, but the woman is panicked—what should she do?

The book chronicles the story of the intruder and the woman and her children hiding in the house. The characters are never named, which can be frustrating for a reader, though in this case the author handled it in a way where the story never felt awkward because of the lack of names. In part, that was because the book has very little dialogue and it doesn’t alternate perspectives.

In between the present timeline are a series of flashbacks from the woman’s life. These don’t go in any chronological order, and they are used more as character development than because of any direct tie to what is happening. They tie to the overall message of the story, which made them not entirely superfluous.

What I liked

The present storyline of this story was tense. The woman and her children must stay completely silent after they hide (nod to A Quiet Place which showcases the terror that comes with being forced to stay absolutely silent in order to keep safe). The intruder is unlikely to find the hidden space they are in, but soon after the book begins it becomes clear he has no intention of leaving. Outside it is a blizzard, so no one will be coming to their house for days. The woman’s husband is not home, and eventually we find out more about him.

By less than halfway through the book, the main intruder part of the story is resolved. The woman and children are free, but a bigger storyline emerges. The police can’t find evidence of the break in, and that led to a lot of questions about what happened that night, how the woman got into the state she was in, and why the kids were hidden behind the wall. From here the story comes together as you realize that so many parts of the woman’s life have led her to feel she is the one at fault in so many situations that weren’t her fault. This theme is repeated over and over through the flashbacks, and in her thoughts in the present time.

The way Sierra explores the psychological impact on women of not being believed time and again was the best part of the book for me. Many of these seemed small in isolation. She told her husband that someone had done something inappropriate. But he didn’t see it himself so he doesn’t believe her. Or maybe he partially believes her but thinks she is blowing it out of proportion. Stories like these happen to women all the time. In isolation they can be brushed aside, but as Sierra shows—they compound over time. They continue to subtly reinforce self-doubt and that compounds over time until the woman can’t easily distinguish her perception from reality. After finishing the book, this message was powerful.

What didn’t work

Going in, I expected this book to fall somewhere between thriller and horror, and overall that is what we got. However, it wasn’t the pulse-pounding book start to finish that I expected. The chapters alternate between the present and various flashbacks to the woman’s life before the night of the intruder. The chapters in the present timeline are tense, heart-pounding chapters. However, the tension is stalled when the book moves back to the past, losing momentum. By the end those moments from her life make sense and contribute to what is happening in the back half of the book, but while reading it I often lost focus or engagement.

The other thing that didn’t work for me I’m struggling with putting into words. The woman isn’t named, and this does serve a larger purpose of her standing in for many women who experience many of the things she does in life (though hopefully not the intruder). At the same time, it made it hard to connect with the characters. It felt like someone was telling the story to me, and not the woman herself. It added a veil between me and the story that made me feel less invested in the outcome. It also added a meandering feel to the way the story unfolds that made it hard to follow. The woman’s narration of the story is interrupted by her intrusive thoughts, and it was hard to differentiate when that was happening. I often had to go back a few paragraphs to figure out what was happening.

Final Thoughts

The message and themes in this book are important ones, and the book deserves recognition for those alone. I was glad that the story moved past the night of the home invasion, because by about 30% I was ready to see forward movement in the story, and we got that. The flashbacks distract from the tension during the first half. However, they become important to events that happen in the second half, which makes them necessary to the story. Unlike many books where the reveal of the person behind the invasion is a twist, the identity of the intruder is known early on. The suspense lies in whether the woman can convince the police that he exists, rather than who he is. The overall impact of the book is effective, and the final few chapters provide answers to some things in the book that were needed for it to feel complete.

An intricate, chilling story that will resonate with many readers!

If you liked Nightwatching, what should you read next?

Thank you to Viking Books and Penguin Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author | Tracy Sierra

Tracy Sierra was born and raised in the Colorado mountains. She is an attorney who currently lives in New England in an antique colonial-era home complete with its own secret room. When not writing, she spends time with her husband and two children. Nightwatching is her debut novel.