Reading: THE TURN OF THE KEY - Ruth Ware

Twenty-something nanny Rowan Caine hadn't even been looking for a new job when she came across the ad seeking a live-in nanny for a well-to-do family in Scotland. Applying out of curiosity, Rowan finds herself no less than astounded to suddenly be standing, weeks later, in the entry hall of Heatherbrae House, way out in the desolate Scottish Highlands, for her in-person interview with mother Sandra Elincourt. The home itself - an odd juxtaposition of half Victorian architecture forcibly conjoined with modernized technology by Sandra's absentee husband Bill, turning the house into its own app-run "smart home" - is beautiful yet oddly unsettling at the same time, as are the rumors that the reason the last four nannies either fled or left their posts with no notice is because the house is haunted. Rowan is too sensible to believe in ghosts, the pay is ridiculously good, and she seems to mesh well with the children - eight-year-old Maddie, Ellie who's five, and infant Petra - right off, so is nothing less than thrilled when, a few weeks later, she lands the job and permanently moves into Heatherbrae House with the help of the hunky handyman staying above the defunct stables. But almost soon as she's installed upstairs, Sandra and Bill leave town on business and the children start to show very different sides to themselves than they displayed the night Rowan met them. Worse, each night Rowan is now kept awake by the distinct sounds of someone pacing upstairs, the floorboards creaking to a rhythm Rowan is soon will surely drive her mad. The problem? Rowan's room is on the top floor of Heatherbrae House, with no attic and just the tiled roof of the house above her; there is no room above her for anyone to be pacing in. Over the next several days the strange incidents will only increase in the house, Rowan seeking to connect with the children even as she leans more and more about Heatherbrae House's sinister history, and grows increasingly alarmed for her own safety, as well as that of the children. The Turn of the Key is Ruth Ware's fifth novel - though my introduction to her work - and opens with Rowan in prison for murder, one of the children (we don't know who) dead, the novel told in letters she's desperately writing to a high-profile attorney Rowan is hoping will take on her case. And while for me there were times when the story kind of bogged down in the middle third of the novel, with not a lot going on (though Rowan's growing paranoia does keep the suspense building, in a passive sort of way), the last third of the novel ... particularly the last few pages of the book, where the loose ends of the story are tied up in a manner that literally had made my jaw drop open and my chest hurt ... are some of the best, most perfectly/deceptively simple writing I've ever read; even guessing what was coming a couple pages prior, finishing the novel just left me sitting there stunned, as if one of the fuses in my head had blown and I had to wait for some back-up generator to kick on. A four-star book, just because of the slight lagging in the middle, easily bumped up a half-star by that unexpected, haunting, brain-slayer of an ending.  4.5/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.