INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A superb suspense writer…Brava, Ruth Ware. I daresay even Henry James would be impressed.” –Maureen Corrigan, author of So We Read On “This appropriately twisty Turn of the Screw update finds the Woman in Cabin 10 author in her most menacing mode, unfurling a shocking saga of murder and deception.” –Entertainment Weekly From the #1 New York Times … deception.” —Entertainment Weekly
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs. Westaway comes this thrilling novel that explores the dark side of technology.
When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss–a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. 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.
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.
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 home’s cameras, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. 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 even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman.
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–but somebody is.
Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.
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Excellent book! Highly recommend!
I’m not a big fan of Ruth Ware, yet I’ve read all her books. Everyone seems to rave about her talent so I keep hoping I’m wrong and she’s actually a good writer.
She’s really not.
Good news: If she’s successful, imagine unpublished writers who are actually good. There is hope, young writers, the bar seems to be very low!
The story is pap, the ‘big reveal’ is a big yawn, the characters were predictable and one dimensional. And yet, I waited four months for this book, that’s how many holds were in front of me. Cabin 10 was so bad I could smell it from here – this book is a close second.
One of my favorite reads. A mystery till the end.
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Written in an unusual way, in the form of a letter from the unfortunate Rowan to a solicitor she thinks may be able to help her, it is the story of how her dream appointment as nanny to a wealthy family in Scotland goes horribly wrong and finds Rowan convicted of the murder of one of the children in her care. She protest her innocence. But is she guilty? The reader is drawn in by the complexity of the characters and it’s never clear who can or cannot be trusted. There appear to be dark forces afoot in the house which has a darkly tragic past. Twists aplenty and a gripping climax. Highly recommended.
Unexpected Turns. I love Ruth Ware!
Love, love, LOVED this book! Takes an interesting look at the scarier side of modern technology; story is well written in a very believable way. Couldn’t get enough!
Some things I expected a bit. But the book still gave me two big surprises that I had not expected at all. I read this book in two days staying up until 2am and could not put it down. Ruth Ware did it again! Remind me to never pick up her books on a work night.
This was my first book by Ruth Ware and it definitely won’t be my last. Based on this novel, I would place her more alongside P.D. James and Ruth Rendell than Agatha Christie (all favourites of mine). THE TURN OF THE KEY is very much a classic British psychological thriller, quite Gothic in tone and totally in tune with today’s technology. The Elincourts – Rowan’s employers – have a smart house, which is almost a character in itself as it plays a crucial role in the story, and I can only say that I do not want a smart house!
The writing is excellent, the atmosphere is chilling; the author expertly builds the tension as uneasiness slowly but very surely creeps up. This was a very quick read; I thought the structure suited the plot; the narrative flowed extremely well, and I was swept away, not asking myself too many questions, except keeping my fingers crossed that there were no ghosts… There were however a couple of small continuity issues that thankfully did not affect the overall plot, and twice there was some confusion between bought and brought (they “brought” the house? I think not).
As events unfolded, I had no idea what had happened or what was going on; even as secrets were revealed, I was still in the dark. How reliable a narrator was Rowan? Who was trustworthy? We know a child died, but which one? (There are three). The ending took me completely by surprise, and for fear of spoilers, I can’t say much more other than what happened was how I expected, to a certain extent, but not for the reasons I had thought. What was eventually revealed as part of the premise and the conclusion fell a bit short, but those last few pages were brilliant!
Pretty good read
I’m almost embarrassed to say I couldn’t put this one down. I drank up this book faster than Rowan could suck up all the wine in Heatherbrae House.
Was this an important work of literary fiction? Heck no. But what it was, was a spooky and fast-paced whodunnit that kept me giddily coming back for more. I thoroughly enjoyed this from page one through to the end.
I was so worried it wouldn’t resolve, that all the ghostly questions would linger out there, but OH, THAT ENDING!
I’m a fan of Ruth Ware’s writing. She is one of the best when it comes to plot-weaving in thrillers where female characters face high-stakes danger. This book is set in a smart house, where the technology itself becomes a character and an agent of terror. There are some other unusual aspects to this novel, which I gobbled up in two sittings. It was not my favorite of Ware’s books, but it was a captivating good read.
Compelling, complex, and unpredictable.
I kept worrying that the author would wimp out and fall back on something fantastical. but she did not! I fell into the story right away and couldn’t put it down.
Can’t wait to read the other books by Ms. Ware!
~D. L. Orton, author of the Between Two Evils series. Get the 1st book in the award-winning series, Crossing In Time: An Edgy Love Story (Between Two Evils Book 1), for free right now!
Just wow! I loved this book so much. The characters were all great. I felt they were easy to connect to and imagine as real.
It honestly read less like fiction and more like I self told true crime. I was kept curious throughout the entire story.
The ending was very sad but unfortunately so inline with human nature!
#ruthware #theturnofthekey #bookstagram #bookreview #5star #lallahbookreview #readinginlallahland
A well worth reading mystery/thriller. Very good ending, will leave you pulled up short.
“Don’t take the job. The ghosts won’t like it.” That’s what Rowan Caine hears from a little girl when she interviews for a nanny job at a house in the remote Scottish highlands. Rowan, lured by the too-good-to-be-true salary, takes the job anyway, and lives to regret it. In THE TURN OF THE KEY, Ruth Ware updates THE TURN OF THE SCREW to the 21st century, and the story is just as creepy as ever, with absent parents and odd children. The Victorian manor house (complete with poison garden) has been turned into a smart house, a tech marvel where voice commands open and close curtains and turn the lights off and on. What could go wrong? Plenty. This is a must-read. I devoured it in one evening.
The Turn of the Key begins with Rowan Caine’s letters to a lawyer named Mr. Wrexham. She’s writing from a women’s prison in Scotland and is adamant that she didn’t kill “that child”. Rowan is frustrated that no one will truly listen to what she has to say about the events that led to her current situation.
Rowan was working at a daycare in the London area when she saw an advertisement for a live-in nanny position in the Scottish Highlands. The position comes with a salary of 55,000 pounds per year, which would be life-changing for Rowan. She travels to their home, Heatherbrae, for an interview. She meets 3 of the 4 children and gets her first look at their home. While part of it is old and historic, the rest is ultra modern and everything is controlled electronically. Rowan learns that four nannies have resigned in the past 14 months and there are superstitions surrounding the house being haunted. However, Rowan is willing to overlook all of that for the generous salary.
Rowan takes the job and, shortly after she begins, both parents leave on a work trip. She is immediately thrust into caring for children she has just met and running a house with which she is unfamiliar. Strange things start happening and Rowan wonders if the rumors are true. As a series of disturbing events occurs, Rowan feels more and more uncomfortable and questions her decision to take this position. Things escalate quickly and culminate in a horrible tragedy.
I LOVED the first 95% of this book. I absolutely could not put it down. It starts by immediately drawing the reader in with Rowan’s letter and the comments about the death of a child. The author does an excellent job of building suspense and creating an atmosphere that is chilling and ominous. As things intensified in the book, my sense of dread grew stronger and stronger. I knew the ending would be shocking and disturbing. However, I absolutely hated the last 5% of this book. There were so many twists and turns that it was overwhelming and it felt incredibly rushed. I found the very end to be unclear and unrealistic. It was so disappointing after how gripping and thrilling the rest of the book was.
OMG, OMG, this is the most fantastically creepy book ever. I would think that maybe I might just have it sort of figured out and BAM a big twist. I never expected anything that was in this book! I think I may have found another new best author. Thanks for the great book!!
/ 5
UGH! I wanted to love The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware so much, but I ended up giving it the same rating as I gave The Lying Game which is really painful because I love Ware so much.
The Turn of the Key is about a young woman named Rowan who gets hired to be a nanny at a secluded ‘smart’ home in Scotland. This is indeed the perfect setup for a creepy and spine-tingling book, but I was very underwhelmed with the execution. I really enjoyed what Ware did with The Death of Mrs. Westaway and was hoping for much of the same thing, but while some parts were creepy, I just wanted more. It also felt very tedious, with way too many details of the kid’s routines.
There are good things about The Turn of the Key as well of course. I really do love Ware’s writing style, and even though it took a bit to grab me, once it did I couldn’t wait to find out what was going on. There was one thing specifically that she did an awesome job with, but I can’t say what without giving anything away. Ware really had me fooled, so that was one twist I would never have expected. This was also a relatively quick read, and I managed to read it in just under 4.5 hours. I also loved the format as Rowan writing the book to a lawyer. The letter format in books really appeals to me, and I loved that Ware did that here.
Final Thought: Even though The Turn of the Key ended up being a bit of a letdown for me as a whole, that does in no way scare me away from reading Ruth Ware books. Overall, I really love her as an author, and she will continue to be an auto-buy for me. If you are on the fence about her though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you read this. A lot of people are going to love it, but unfortunately I happen to be an outlier with a like not love. I guess I just expected more from one of my favorite authors since I know what she is capable of.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advance review copy of this book, all opinions and thoughts are my own.
I’m a fan of Ruth Ware, and her newest book is another scary (in a good way) read. Great mystery in my opinion- I didn’t guess the ending at all. It was a bit slow in the beginning describing in detail the ‘smart’ house loaded with the latest technology that the nanny lived in in Scotland. But the descriptions had to be told to set the creepy feel of a kind of ‘Hal’ robot in charge; also with lots of spying cameras & observation by the parents of the children she watched over. All in all, a scary scene was portrayed with lots of plot twists
I enjoyed all the characters, each one integral to the plot, and the story kept me guessing until the end. For me, this was one of her best in complexity and ending. The frightening part is that you could imagine this actually happening to some poor nanny, with her out of her mind with all the possibilities of ghosts & murderers. Written as a letter to a lawyer explaining her situation, this book was unique in its delivery. The ending was a surprise, but I wished it had a bit more closure. I highly recommend this book, especially around Halloween!
Good storyline with believable characters. I guessed the ending but only toward the very end. Enjoyable!