The Turn of the Key
The Turn of the Key
By: Ruth Ware
“Don’t come here,” she whispered, “It’s not safe.”
This was my first Ruth Ware novel.
I would say the suspense was definitely there. There were parts that were predictable and a few that weren’t. Without giving too much away, there was part of the ending that I appreciated and part that I didn’t like.
Is this review vague enough for you so far?!
I will probably try another Ruth Ware book, but if it has as many f-words as this one did, I don’t know if I’ll stick with it.
As to this particular story:
Rowan has accepted a nannying position in an isolated house in Scotland. The house has a haunted history, and though it retains only part of its original Victorian ‘parts,’ the renovated sections are just as creepy. The smart house technology connects everything from the light switches, shower settings, music, temperature, curtains, intercom features, etc. on electronic panels and tablets. Oh and there is a camera in almost every room.
The family has cycled through numerous nannies at a remarkable speed. Someone or something is driving them away. Or that’s what Rowan feels within days of her post.
Mysteriously locked doors. Blaring music in the middle of the night. Her room is always freezing. Missing keys. Dinging doorbells with no one there. A poison garden. Creaking footsteps every night.
And the mysterious locked door in her bedroom. One of the few doors with an actual keyhole.
The paranoia is real.
“To lie here, night after night, listening, waiting, staring into the darkness at that locked door, that open keyhole gaping into blackness.”
Is the technology just going haywire, are the kids playing tricks, or is there something more sinister at play in this schizophrenic house? And what is behind that locked door?!
“That sounds as if I’m building something… piece by piece. And the truth is, it was the other way around. Piece by piece, I was being torn apart.”
The child was not wrong when she said it was unsafe there!
The whole book is written as a letter from Rowan to a lawyer. Something happened to one of the children and she is in prison for it. She maintains her innocence and seeks his help to get her out of the hopeless predicament she is in.
She must tell him everything that led up to that fateful night, she insists, in order for everything to make sense. All the little things compounding on each other that created the storm leaving a child dead and a young woman in jail.
“It was the lies that got me here in the first place. I have to believe that it’s the truth that will get me out.”
This was actually my least favorite part of this book. I wish it would have just been a story or just snippets of letters. It was entirely too detailed and long to be considered a letter and was not written how you would actually write a letter to explain everything to someone.
Ware was trying to be clever, but I don’t think it worked. The letter aspect ties in nicely to the ending but the writing style kept annoying me because it just did not mesh with how anyone would write a narrative letter.
I wonder if it would have been better if Rowan was just talking to us as an audience?
Since I’ve never read any of her books before, I can’t compare it to anything. It seems like a lot of reviewers were disappointed in it.
I feel like I was pretty engaged with the story.
I wasn’t entirely sure where she was going to go with it:
Was it going to be a supernatural thriller?
Was it going to be about her inner psychological struggle?
Was it just going to be a normal whodunit type of tale?
Was it going to be a more domestic suspense novel where she is pitted against one of the family members?
Is it building up to a big reveal about the teenage daughter that was coming home soon?
Was it going to play into the history of the house and those who died there before?
Was it going to be an unreliable narrator trope?
Is one of the kids possessed?
There were all of these threads given to us at the beginning and it could have taken any number of directions.
Am I happy with the picture Ware wove with these threads?
I think so?
I like when I can’t figure everything out. I like that, for the most part, we get to know ‘what happened’ by the end.
But I did feel like there were certain parts that could have been played up more instead of the ones she chose that would have been more interesting to me. I’m not much into supernatural elements in thrillers.
I prefer putting more concrete clues together than having to decide- is it ghosts? or real people?
But that’s just a personal preference.
If you like creepy psychological thrillers, and can get past the f-words, I’d say to give this book a try! It will be a fast, twisty read.
And stay tuned, I’ll eventually read another Ruth Ware book and I can evaluate better what I think about her books…
Bonus News: It looks like this book has been optioned for film so hopefully that comes to fruition. I do think it would make a good movie!
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