Review of Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales

by Heather Fawcett
read by Ell Potter and Michael Dodds

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours 44 minutes.
Review written April 2, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh, I love the Emily Wilde books more with each volume! You’re going to want to read these in order, especially to watch Emily’s relationship with Wendell develop, but it was okay not to remember every detail of the previous books. I love these books so much, I decided to purchase my own copy and preordered it, but listening has been such a delightful experience, I still put the audiobook on hold.

The charm of the book is found especially in the character of Emily Wilde, the foremost dryadologist in the world – at least in this alternate world where faeries are real and studying them is a serious academic discipline. Her encyclopedic knowledge of faery lore means she has what it takes to now survive becoming a queen of faerie – or so we hope. For his stepmother is dead, and Wendell is ready to take his throne in the Faerie Kingdom of Where the Trees Have Eyes.

Except – it turns out that Wendell’s stepmother isn’t actually dead yet, and she’s found a way to poison the realm so that it is dying as she dies. Now it’s up to Emily to find the tale that applies so she can defeat the old queen’s plans. Though she does get plenty of help from characters we’ve met in the earlier books.

Something I love about these books is what a serious academic Emily is – even compelled to cite sources and include footnotes. The reader Ell Potter does an excellent Footnote Voice, so I wasn’t surprised to see that’s what’s found in the text. Wendell, on the other hand, tries to get her to lighten up and enjoy his beautiful kingdom. And it’s all completely delightful.

Even though Wendell and Emily are now king and queen of a faerie realm, they’re still traveling together, and Emily is still doing research, so I hope there will be more books to come. I’m sure Emily Wilde’s adventures – and publications – are not over.

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Sonderbooks25: Looking Back at Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman

Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

Doubleday, 1992. 263 pages.
New Review written March 31, 2025, from my own copy.
Original review written January 19, 2002.

Oh dear. I am now embarrassed that Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman, has long been one of my all-time favorite books. It’s not that it didn’t hold up; it’s that my eyes have been opened to cultural stereotypes. And I’m a little bummed! Shout out, though, to Pam Margolis and the Cultural Competency Training that everyone involved with the Cybils Awards takes.
They opened my eyes.

Here’s the background. I’m running a series of posts I’m calling Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of posting Sonderbooks. As part of the celebration, I’m choosing one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs to reread. In the case of my 2001 choice, The Sand-Reckoner, by Gillian Bradshaw, I wrote a new review and posted it in the newer format. (The first five years of Sonderbooks were posted in a different format and you won’t find them listed in the current indexes.)

I’m afraid I’m not going to do that for Caravan, because although I still love the book, and, wow, it stirs up all kinds of memories from who I was when I read it (I’d read it more than once before reviewing it in 2002.), I’m afraid with opened eyes, I’m not going to recommend it so heartily. So I will add this explanation to the top of the old review and leave it there for those who dig deeply into my website. And on this blog post.

The book is the story of Caressa Horvath, who’s sixteen years old when the story opens in 1911. No, let me revise that – the Caressa telling the story is old, at the end of her life, and revealing secrets especially for her granddaughter, but the tale she tells begins when she was sixteen.

Caressa grew up in a carnival, but her mother wanted her to be a lady, so she saved money and sent her to a school for young ladies in New England. But while she was a student, she picked the pocket of a rich gentleman who was well-traveled – and he caught her. He kept quiet about it, but took her under his wing and eventually married her, despite being twenty years older – to “protect” her. And he took her with him on an expedition to Africa, beginning in Tripoli.

After some time in Tripoli, where her husband made arrangements for their caravan and Caressa befriended her Muslim guide, who showed her around the city, they set off across the desert. They’ve paid off the Tuareg to cross. But before long, they’re confronted by a different group of Tuareg, and Caressa’s husband gets very indignant when they want payment – and the entire caravan ends up getting slaughtered – except for Caressa, who had been playing with her finger puppets to calm herself (one of which is named “Mr. Jappy”) – and they think she is doing magic, so they spare her life and take her with them.

So that’s where the cultural sensitivity becomes questionable. Caressa is much, much more culturally sensitive than her husband, seeing everyone she encounters as actual people. She goes on to live in the desert, among different desert peoples, facing different dangers, for three years. For most of that time, she has a friend and companion in a boy named Bakuli who learned basic English from Christian missionaries and calls himself a Jesus-boy. He was a slave of the Tuareg, but he is the one who warned Caressa that when one of the villagers is on their deathbed, that will be enough to convince them that her magic – which saved her from slaughter – is actually bad and she should be killed.

So Caressa and Bakuli escape together and have more adventures, with time living among different desert people. Later, they’re in a caravan again, and Caressa witnesses a man getting assassinated. She’s afraid the assassin will kill her, but instead when she’s sick from lack of water and the long road – he sells her into slavery. She convinces Bakuli to escape while she is still too sick to leave, and now she’s ready for a major part of the story.

All of that is far, far more riveting than it sounds in my brief summary. And the author makes individuals with names and personalities out of the people Caressa encounters and lives with. However, there are strong shades of the “Magical Negro” trope in the many spiritual encounters Caressa has along the way, finding there’s something behind the villagers’ beliefs. They are also portrayed as superstitious and sensitive to spirits – but Caressa senses the spirits, too, so maybe it’s not superstition? And the slaughtering, enslaving, and assassinating give the feeling that the “savages” stereotype isn’t too far under the surface.

Okay, but that’s a little vague and general. I don’t know what life was actually like at that time in Africa, and at least the author did enough research to know about the different people groups and languages and where they lived, and Caressa sees and names individual people.

But then came the part that made me blanch after “Me Too”:

Caressa had been enslaved, and they were taking her to a harem in Constantinople, when a stranger buys her. And the first thing he does is order her to take off her clothes (in Hausa), and he rapes her.

But Caressa’s mind is blown by the sex. “I was played on like an instrument, reaching sensations never dreamed of.”

Really? She’s just been sold as a slave, raped by the guy who bought her, she’s scared and alone, and you want me to believe that he’s so good at it that she enjoyed it?

When she says “Good heavens” after sex, he discovers that she speaks English and is shocked – her skin was dark by all the time in the sun. He is a Scotsman – who has the Sight, which is what led him to Caressa, though we don’t find that out right away.

She does confront him when he exclaims over her speaking English and asks who she is:

What does it matter to you who I am? You bought me for four gold pieces and now you’ve raped me and you’d have done it whether I was Tuareg, Hausa, Fulani or Arab, so why should it make any difference who I am, and I hope you speak enough English to understand that I think you a vulture – an ungulu – a monster and a bastard.

His answer comes in a hard even voice:

I speak and understand English and I paid four gold pieces for you for reasons I don’t care to mention just now, and I took you fast to put my brand on you because if you were a Tuargia you’d think ill of me if I didn’t, and be out of here by morning.

So, hold on, he’s saying that if she were Black it would have been okay???!

The next day, although she “could not help but dislike the manner of his ‘taking’ me,” she realizes that as a slave, she could have had it happen with a Targui or by the Turkish sultan. (Again, it’s okay, because he’s white???) And then she starts remembering those new sensations she’d experienced – and they have sex again, and from then on, he’s basically her one true love.

And now I am embarrassed how much I’ve loved this book.

Mind you, the twist in the ending is fantastic, and that’s what I’m left thinking about. I am a romantic at heart, so I did love their undying love once it got started – pulled together by the Sight! By Destiny! (Not simply the Magical Negro stereotype, but also the Magical Scotsman.) Caressa’s not in a traditional marriage, and it felt subversive to me as a young married evangelical to love this book anyway. But reading it this time, the manner of their meeting takes my concerns about cultural insensitivity and multiplies them.

And I still enjoyed rereading this book! But when I finished it, I had a bout of insomnia because I kept thinking about young newlywed Sondy who first read it and how that worked out (or rather, didn’t).

So – I still love the book, but that love is dampened in my skeptical old age, and I no longer feel I can wholeheartedly recommend it. But reading it was still a trip down memory lane and I’m excited about the rest of the revisiting I’m going to do for Sonderbooks25.

Review of The Sand-Reckoner, by Gillian Bradshaw

The Sand-Reckoner

by Gillian Bradshaw

Forge (Tom Doherty Associates), 2000. 351 pages.
This review written March 13, 2025, from my own copy.
Original review written August 2001.
Starred Review
2001 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Fiction

I’m revisiting this wonderful book – one of my all-time favorites – as part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks. I’m rereading at least one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. And while I will probably not write a new review for all of them, the first five years of reviews were posted in a different format that isn’t phone-friendly, so I want to bring this book to the main site. Does this qualify as an “Old Favorite“? The first time I read it, the book was new! But I’m thinking that enough time has gone by, and it will always be one of my lifetime favorite books, so I’m going to add it to the Old Favorites page, too.

The Sand-Reckoner was reviewed in my very first issue of Sonderbooks (back when it was an email newsletter posted in issues), and the first time I read it was while I was on vacation in Ireland. Despite not being in an idyllic location this time around, I still found the book utterly delightful.

It’s all about the character of Archimedes. He’s portrayed as a genius who gets so wrapped up in his work, he forgets about anything else – which totally fits the historical anecdotes about him. This book shows Archimedes as a young man, returning from the intellectual company of the Museum of Alexandria back to his home in Syracuse, because his father is very ill, and Syracuse is now at war with Rome.

Because of Archimedes’ geometrical genius, he’s better than anyone at building machines – including machines of war, and as he arrives, his first task is to convince the leaders of Syracuse that he can build bigger and better catapults for them. After that, the tyrant of Syracuse (He’s a good guy, but that’s what the leader was called.) must figure out how to entice Archimedes to stay, instead of going back to Alexandria, where more understood his philosophical discussions.

There’s a major subplot about Archimedes’ Roman slave and a romantic subplot as well, and the whole book immerses you in the world of ancient Syracuse with a lovable naive genius.

And, yes, this is one of my all-time favorite books. I’m a math person myself, though never as genius as Archimedes, nor so single-minded. But I do have a big soft spot for sweet nerdy engineers like him.

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Review of Big Jim and the White Boy, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

Big Jim and the White Boy

An American Classic Reimagined

by David F. Walker
and Marcus Kwame Anderson
Color by Isabell Struble

Ten Speed Graphic, 2024. 282 pages.
Review written February 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given each year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. I couldn’t resist the title of this graphic novel – a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

It’s been a very long time since I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I’m not sure how many incidents from this book came from that one (I don’t think a whole lot), but it begins by illustrating a passage from that book – which is then interrupted by a 101-year-old Jim himself in 1932 Nicodemus, Kansas, telling stories to Black children alongside an old Huckleberry Finn. Jim says about the words Samuel Clemens put in his mouth, “Who talks that kind of gibberish?” And then he tells stories of what really happened.

Another part of the frame is a professor at Howard University in 2022 talking about the historical people and events behind Mark Twain’s stories – and how he whitewashed it to make slavery in Missouri not seem so bad. She’s believes that Jim was based on her own great-great-great-grandfather.

So with these two frames giving commentary – Old Jim and Old Huck bantering with each other and the professor giving historical notes – we hear about the adventures Jim and Huck had. Jim was looking for his wife and children, sold down the river by Huck’s father – and he told his story everywhere he went, so that word would get to them that he was looking. Meanwhile, he rescued enslaved people and fought their enslavers.

Big Jim made a name for himself (and got his face on big, scary posters) helping with the Underground Railroad, in the border wars when there was a question if Kansas would be a slave state or a free state, and during the Civil War, fighting for the Union.

And through all the adventures, Jim and Huck save each other’s lives, though, honestly, Huck is more of a sidekick in this tale. This book reveals more about their relationship, and I love that they end up together, with friendly bickering and storytelling.

As a graphic novel, this is a much quicker read than the original, and as a bonus you don’t have to wade through all that dialect. An epic historical tale.

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Review of Onyx Storm, by Rebecca Yarros, read by Rebecca Soler

Onyx Storm

by Rebecca Yarros
read by Rebecca Soler, Teddy Hamilton, Justis Bolding, and Jasmin Walker

Recorded Books, 2025. 23 hours, 53 minutes.
Review written February 26, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

I’m going to sound like a bit of a curmudgeon in this review, so let me begin by saying that I don’t review books I don’t like. And I certainly don’t spend 24 hours listening to a book I don’t like. So I did enjoy this book, and I’m very engaged with this series and will be reading the next book. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the first two, though.

First off, this series doesn’t waste any time catching up the reader on what went before. It’s very much a continued story, not “companion novels.” It had been a year since I listened to the previous book, and I didn’t really remember the many characters, who was a dragon rider as opposed to who was a griffin flyer, for example. (Though, funny thing, the people I remembered least were the ones most in danger of dying – they felt like the red shirts of the story.)

So I’m only going to speak in general terms about what happens. It’s the continued story of Violet Sorengale – a cadet at Bezgaeth War College who is bonded to two powerful dragons. Oh, I should say that I loved the portrayal of Andarna as an adolescent dragon. Her whiny tone was delightful! A continued strong point of this series is the characters and the bonds they’re forming with each other.

First, there’s lots and lots of sex. I did laugh when Violet and Xaden broke furniture again. Though it’s kind of their trademark. But I also laughed about two-thirds into the book when they were obviously going to have sex and they closed and locked a door (using lesser magic) – and then the author actually ended the scene! I felt like that was a progression in Violet’s experience. She no longer had to gasp at every touch.

A good chunk of this book was a group of them exploring some distant islands, looking for allies and for more dragons of Andarna’s kind. That was an interesting development. But then each island served a different god and had different unusual customs and hoops that visitors had to go through – and that felt silly and unlikely after a while.

Speaking of contrived things, I recently finished another book using the trope of Everyone-Has-A-Magical-Power – and there are always ways that particular trope doesn’t work for me – you really do have to not think about it too hard. Because I’m sorry, but shadows do not have substance! The whole shadow-wielding idea – that you can make shadows hold someone up while having sex or choke someone in a battle – yeah, I have trouble believing that would work. And some of the other “signets” are problematic for me as well. But mostly, in the middle of the story, that’s not a big issue, and I’m caught up in the tale.

Now, the last big climactic battle took three hours of the audiobook. And that’s after a whole lot of fighting in the book already. So this is an audiobook where the narrator is describing lots of fighting and lots of sex – and it must have been exhausting for her! But by the time I was listening to the final battle, the narrator’s voice expressing excitement kind of flew past me. Exciting thing after exciting thing – and it stopped being exciting for me.

Now, I listen to audiobooks while I’m doing other things, so to really remember what’s going on, before the next book comes out, I should probably try rereading the entire thing in print. Trouble is, I doubt I’d want to give that much time to it – so I’ll probably be content with enjoying the story but maybe being a little confused – as I was with this one.

Speaking of confusion – the ending is kind of the opposite of a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger ending leaves you wondering what will come next. This ending left me wondering what just happened.

Without giving anything away, the big final battle took the last three hours of the book – and the final part of it was when we got to hear from three more narrators, for a nice change of pace and more perspectives on this enormous fight. At the end of the battle, Violet passed out. The story starts again twelve hours later in a different location, and Violet is told several very surprising things – but we don’t know why or how they happened. And then the book ends.

So by the time the next book comes out, I’m not sure I’ll remember what I was confused about. I’m also not at all sure where it’s going next – but I am sure that I’m going to want to go along for the ride.

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Review of How to Solve Your Own Murder, by Kristen Perrin, read by Alexandra Dowling and Jaye Jacobs

How to Solve Your Own Murder

by Kristen Perrin
read by Alexandra Dowling and Jaye Jacobs

Books on Tape, 2024. 10 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written February 13, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given every year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. How to Solve Your Own Murder is an excellent choice.

This is a cozy murder mystery, complete with an English village and manor as the setting. Our main sleuth is 20-something Annie Adams, who recently graduated from college and then lost her job, so she’s moved back into her mother’s house and dreams of writing mystery novels.

But one day a letter arrives from great-aunt Frances’s lawyer asking to meet with Annie because great-aunt Frances (whom Annie has never met) is changing her will. Well, when Annie shows up to the meeting, great-aunt Frances is late, but when they go to the manor to meet her there – they find her dead.

But it turns out that Frances has been expecting to be murdered since she was a teen in 1965 and got a detailed fortune that said she would likely be murdered. The local police were sick and tired of the way she thought every indigestion was poison and every last name a type of bird an omen. She found a way to have her theories taken seriously. Annie and the other possible heir, a man named Saxton, are told that whichever one of them solves Frances’ murder will inherit her entire fortune and become a millionaire. If nobody solves the case within a week, the whole estate will get parceled off and sold to developers.

Now, along with the present-day mystery and the high motivation that comes with it, there’s another mystery revealed in Frances’s old diary. In 1966, one year after getting her fateful fortune, her friend Emily disappeared, with her body never found. Annie has a feeling the two cases are linked. And meanwhile, someone’s leaving threatening notes on her pillow in her room at the manor.

So the book has two threads going, one from the past taken from Frances’s diary, and another from the present, that comes with multimillion-dollar stakes and a dash of danger. Someone killed Frances, so if Annie gets too near the truth, they may come for her, too.

It all adds up to a cozy mystery with a nice puzzle, fun characters, and plenty of suspense. I loved listening to this one.

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Review of One Perfect Couple, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

One Perfect Couple

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written January 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay! With this book I’ve read all of Ruth Ware’s existing work – and this one felt like something new and had me hanging on every word.

Yes, this one is a thriller like all the others, and it’s going to end with the female main character in great danger. There’s always some question about who she can trust and where the danger lies, though in this case, that came to be obvious before the dangerous confrontation – it was more a question of would she survive the confrontation. (Though I will put it in “Mystery” along with the others.)

The book sets up with Lila, a research virologist, fretting over data that doesn’t give the results she wanted. And then her actor boyfriend Nico gets a big opportunity and wants her to come with him on a new reality TV show called “One Perfect Couple.” Five couples are going to be taken to a tropical island and given tasks to achieve. People will get eliminated after each task, and the producers will be encouraging some remixing of the couples.

Lila isn’t thrilled about the whole thing. But Nico is very much hoping it will be his big break as an actor. Their plan is that Lila will get knocked out early, and if Nico’s encouraged to spend time with other women, he assures her it will purely reflect his acting abilities – only for the camera.

But during all this set-up, the book begins each chapter with a radio distress call of someone from the island in the future, not too far ahead. They’re stranded, their water is running out, and people are dead and injured – so we’re fully warned that things are going to go terribly wrong.

And they do go terribly wrong. The island hosts a resort in construction and not yet open to the public. Their first night – after one person is eliminated – an enormous storm takes out power and the desalination plant. The boat where the staff of the show were staying had left to take the eliminated contestant back to the mainland – and it doesn’t return.

The storm kills a couple people, and then the group has to figure out how to survive until a boat comes – but that turns out to be much longer than they hope. So they need to ration food and medicine – and let’s just say there are power struggles and more people start dying.

And my goodness it had me avidly listening! Perhaps it’s not the most pleasant story to spend my time with, but I did like the characters and there were even some interesting insights into toxic relationships. But mostly, it was a thrilling story that got me wondering what I would do in that situation – and tremendously glad I’ll never get in that situation.

[It’s probably just me, but does anyone else wonder why someone on a tropical island wouldn’t try to make their own small desalination scheme by trying to evaporate sea water and catch the condensation? I understand you probably wouldn’t get a lot, but every little bit would help, and it seems easier than scaling coconut trees. Why didn’t they even try? That was my only niggling question – but I also had it when reading a different book about drought in California, so it was a persistent thought.]

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Review of Buried Deep, by Naomi Novik

Buried Deep

And Other Stories

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, 2024. 428 pages.
Review written February 3, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I don’t read a lot of short story collections, because I have a hard time getting through them. It’s so easy to stop after finishing a story. But once I started this one, I knew I wanted to read every single story.

There are thirteen stories, of various lengths, with at least one from the worlds of Temeraire, the Scholomance, and Spinning Silver – that story was actually the original version of the book – but a different negotiation on the part of the miller’s daughter keeps it to story length.

My favorite was definitely the one in the world of Temeraire that retells Pride and Prejudice with Elizabeth Bennet the captain of a Longwing dragon. But this is not a proper occupation for a gentleman’s daughter. I love the way Naomi Novik works key scenes from Pride and Prejudice into that situation. And I love how Captain Bennet has learned to wield authority!

The title story is about the Minotaur and his sister Ariadne. The final story is in the world of an upcoming novel, currently titled Folly. I can’t wait!

Another favorite took place in the Scholomance after the events of the trilogy, so supposedly students are safer there – as long as their roommate doesn’t try to kill them.

Many of the stories are simply from some other fantasy world out of the mind of Naomi Novik – and she’s good at intriguing world-building. I loved the one about the woman who was a talented sculptor and who gets the commission to work with the magical clay – that tends to kill the sculptors who are permitted to work with it. (And there’s way more to it than that, which she skillfully communicates while telling you a fascinating story.)

This might be a good introduction to Naomi Novik’s magical writing, but it’s also a great way to keep her devoted fans patient while waiting for the next novel. Whichever you fall under, if you like fantasy at all, read this book!

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Review of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 8, by Beth Brower

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion

Volume 8

by Beth Brower

Rhysdon Press, 2024. 339 pages.
Review written January 22, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

Hooray! The next volume of Emma Lion’s journals is out! This is the first volume I had to wait for – having received the first three volumes as a birthday present from my sister after seven volumes had already been published. I did manage to resist reading it until I finished reading for the CYBILS and Mathical Awards, but it was the first book I picked up after that.

And it’s all one story – so go back and read Volume One. And if you have already read Volume One, you will already know if you want to read on, so I won’t say a whole lot about this volume.

This book telling the story of Emma M. Lion, a twenty-one-year-old woman, from May to June 1884. She lives in London, owning her own home after the death of her parents. But she needs to find a way to make more money, and her wealthy aunt is requiring that she be a foil for her beautiful cousin Arabella, as Arabella navigates The Season and finds a man to marry.

This volume is taken up with Emma’s adventures trying to appease her aunt – but more so with the happy month of June, when she gets to spend time in the countryside with the three men she has developed a deep friendship with.

And it’s a truly lovely group friendship! That’s one of the things I love about this book – a lovely and deep friendship with three single men, with each one being unique. In this volume, we learn some deeper secrets about two of them. And I honestly think some seeds are being planted that she may not end up marrying the one that we and now she expect her to end up with. But the friendships between the four of them are rich and each interaction unique, and it’s just a lovely thing to read.

And I’m being vague purposely because, as aforesaid, you need to start at the beginning. And then just watch if you’re not eagerly waiting for the next volume, too.

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Review of The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

The Turn of the Key

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Review written December 30, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 12 hours, 13 minutes.

The Turn of the Key is Ruth Ware at her most frightening. Never mind what I said in my last review of one of her books – even though this is the fourth one of her books I’ve read in the last half of 2024, I had no idea what was going to happen in this one. Well, except what the person telling the story told us – she was in prison for murder for the death of a child. The book is her writing to a lawyer the other ladies in prison have said is good for no-chance cases.

Before I talk about the book, let me say that this book is extremely well-written and had me on the edge of my seat all the way. The plot wasn’t predictable, and so many small things combined to keep the tension high. So why am I not giving it a star? Well, a child dies. And even watching all the pieces come together to explain mysterious events isn’t enough to make me feel good about the story. I was left with a sinking feeling at the end of the book, so I feel like my review has to include a fair warning. Not only does someone die whom you’ve come to care about, it’s a child.

And the author absolutely tells you that right from the start. So if I wasn’t able to handle that, I probably shouldn’t have read the book. And I did thoroughly enjoy reading the book and couldn’t stop thinking about it – but it didn’t give me the usual happy feeling at the end when a mystery is solved.

Anyway, that said, the story is told by Rowan Caine. She discovered an opportunity to be a nanny for two architects and their four children in a remote part of Scotland. Rowan is up front that she told some lies to get the position, and her reasons are some of the mysteries in the book. But it has an enormous salary, and the family seems nice, and the teenage daughter is off to boarding school when Rowan is first due to arrive.

The initial interview – a day with the family – went great, but when Rowan shows up for duty, she’s told the parents are heading to a conference the very next day. The previous nannies have left because they thought the house was haunted, but Rowan firmly believes that’s a load of bunk. All the same, when she starts hearing pacing in the night above her room – where there shouldn’t even be a room – and when the “smart” house malfunctions in the night, and when the children get her told off after they lead her into the poison garden on the grounds – well, she doesn’t know what’s going on or where to turn. The lady who comes in to clean doesn’t seem to like her, and the handyman/driver is helpful, but she doesn’t want him to think she’s a neurotic female who needs to be rescued.

The situation builds, with one thing after another. Just when Rowan thinks she’s getting a break, something more happens. And it all ends with the death of a child. And when Rowan tried to explain to the police what had been going on, she only makes them more suspicious.

It’s another thriller with expertly done, twisty suspense. Pick it up with a fair warning.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/turn_of_the_key.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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