Review by New York Times Review
In Ware's latest - a nod to "The Him of the Screw" - a nanny arrives at an isolated country house in the Scottish Highlands, and before long, one of her charges is dead. "The Turn of the Key" unfolds as a letter to a prospective lawyer from that nanny, Rowan Caine, who's in jail awaiting trial for the murder. "Dear Mr. Wrexham," she pleads, "Please help me. I didn't kill anyone." In Rowan's telling, she had barely arrived at the job when ominous things began to happen: First she stumbled upon a locked garden filled with poisonous plants; then she discovered an attic strewn with broken china dolls and thick black feathers, its walls graffitied with threats. Once, cleaning up after dinner, she found the words "we hate you" floating in a bowl of alphabet pasta. Most disturbing of all, though, the house's smart technology started malfunctioning shortly after she started, turning off lights, locking doors and worse, much worse (let's just say that if you've got an Echo, you're going to unplug it as soon as you finish the book). "There was a strange feeling of split identity... as though the house was trying hard to be one thing" while the owners "pulled it relentlessly in the other direction ... trying to make it into something against its own will," Rowan thinks, "something it was never meant to be, modern and stylish and slick." The evil nanny is, by this point, a tired thriller trope, and Ware doesn't bring much originality to Rowan, who is - surprise! - hiding a secret and isn't what she seems. But what Ware does beautifully is infuse "The Turn of the Key" with a creepy Gothic sensibility. For all of the novel's contemporary touches - particularly the house's malevolent smart technology - she has delivered an old-fashioned horror story, peopled by children with "eyes full of malice," a dour housekeeper straight out of "Rebecca" and an inscrutable handyman.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 4, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw was successfully reworked as early as 1911 in Burnett's The Secret Garden and has morphed many times over since then into film, music, and many remarkable novels, including this one. Ware cleverly puts a high-tech spin on the tale's gothic foundations of spellbinding menace set in a remote cavernous mansion with mysterious locked doors and a spooky garden. In Ware's version, though, the garden is not just spooky but also poison. Rowan Caine stumbles across an online listing for a live-in nanny position with a seemingly charming family at Heatherbrae House in the magnificent Scottish Highlands. The staggering salary on offer should have warned Rowan that something might be amiss, but she couldn't resist. The house is rumored to be haunted and nightmarishly controlled by software ironically called the Happy App, whose malfunctions have nerve-shattering results. For Rowan, The sense of intrusion was indescribable, thanks to surveillance cameras and unseen speakers, not to mention the spectral sounds coming from the attic above her room. Her decline into resentment, fatigue, and terror is chronicled in the form of letters she writes while in prison awaiting trial for the murder of one of the children. Ware's James-like embroidery of the strange and sinister produces a Turn of the Screw with cellphones and Teslas that will enthrall today's readers. Much like its predecessor, the novel is occasionally mystifying, but it will not disappoint.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Agatha Award finalist Edwin Hill is the author of Little Comfort.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Ware (The Death of Mrs. Westaway) parlays themes from Henry James's classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, into gripping suspense for the digital age. Ware's narrative also originates from after-the-fact correspondence and documents uncanny revelations from precocious children, an isolated mansion betokening abandonment amid luxury, and inklings of former dark goings-on. However, Ware imagines a more aspirational, imperfect nanny and cleverly exploits the mansion, Heatherbrae House, as an uneasy presence whose history, inexplicable noises, and intrusive security cameras engender fear and distrust. Visual disharmony inflicted by the home's recent, aggressive renovation even parallels identity issues of newly hired nanny Rowan, who has barely unpacked when her posh employers depart for a conference, leaving four daughters in her care and vital secrets (e.g., that previous nanny and the poisoning incident) unshared. Narrator Imogen Church, splendidly conveying Rowan's youth, heightening dread, and utter credibility, also delights as the disturbingly blithe voice of "Happy," software programmed to run Heatherbrae but which instead terrorizes the household with harrowing miscues like blasts of music in the wee hours--a "smart house" apparently gone rogue. VERDICT The only 21st-century question scarier than "Who can you trust?" is "Who else has the passcode?" Wholeheartedly recommended.--Linda Sappenfield, Round Rock P.L., TX
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ware (The Death of Mrs. Westaway, 2018, etc.) channels The Turn of the Screw in her latest creepy mystery when a nanny takes a post at a haunted country house.Traveling to Heatherbrae House to interview for a nanny position, Rowan Caine finds a gorgeously redone Victorian mansion nestled in the remote Scottish moors. Sandra Elincourt is stylish and smart, and the girls seem sweet enough, though 8-year-old Maddie rings some alarm bells in Rowan's mind. So what if the last four nannies left under mysterious circumstances? Rowan knows she's where she belongseven when Maddie tries to warn her away, claiming that "the ghosts wouldn't like it" if she stays. On her first day, however, Bill Elincourt makes a pass at her, and then both parents leave on a business trip, planning to be gone for at least a week. Left alone with the three little girls, Rowan can't shake the feeling that there are other forces at work in the house. When strange noises begin to wake them all in the night, it seems like the house may indeed be haunted. What happened to those other nannies? Why is Maddie intent on getting Rowan fired? Why is there a garden of poison plants? And who wrote "We hate you" all over the attic walls? Ware excels at taking classic mystery tropes and reinventing them; her novels always feel appealingly anachronistic because while the technology is 21st century, there is something traditionally gothic about the settings, full of exaggerated luxury and seething dark corners. In this case, she reimagines the Victorian ghost story, with Henry James the most obvious influence not just on the plot, but also on the narrative frame, as the story actually takes the form of a letter written by Rowan to her solicitor as she sits imprisoned for murder. Regrettably, the novel's ending leaves a few too many loose ends while also avoiding the delicious ambiguity of its Victorian predecessors.Truly terrifying! Ware perfects her ability to craft atmosphere and sustain tension with each novel. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
