Print Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Bookoture (February 21, 202)
From Goodreads.com: I love being a nanny. But now, the two little girls I nanny for are missing. Soon the police will be at my door—and I can’t let that happen again. I’ll tell them I’m innocent, but will anyone believe me?
Sweet little Emma and Nealie, both just four years old, live on the same block in the exclusive, gated Blackwood neighborhood—miles from my cramped studio apartment. I go between each family’s home to care for the girls. And I know all their secrets…
Their mothers were best friends until three months ago, when everything fell apart. There’s a door that’s always locked at Nealie’s house. And Emma’s house is filled with whispered arguments. I’m sure her father is having an affair.
I tried to overlook the slow splintering of these because I Ioved the girls. Braiding their hair and then walking them to kindergarten was my favorite part of the day. But now they’re gone. Snatched from their beds.
In Blackwood, little girls don’t just vanish. The police will suspect the nanny, the person who loved them, the person with a key to both houses. I’ll swear that I’m being framed. And I will do anything to stop them finding out who I really am, or why I was so desperate to work here.
Because these families are about to pay for their secrets. But who is really in danger?
Two missing little girls?
Their desperate parents?
Or me?
*******************
My Rating: 1 star out of 5
Let me be perfectly clear. I almost marked this one as a DNF at 47%. But I felt like if I had already invested that much time in it, I should force myself to finish. So I did. And it really didn't get any better.
To start with the characters are so one dimensional that I couldn't tell them apart, to the point that I would be wondering why this character had this specific thing (whether it be knowledge or an actual item) in his possession, only to realize it was a completely different character. I wish I was kidding, but I couldn't even tell when the story was being told from the point-of-view of one of the wives, the nanny, or even the detective in charge. There was nothing about them that made them stand out. Not the way they looked, not they way the spoke. Nothing.
However, they all did have one thing in common. They were extremely unlikable. Not to mention the fact Detective Kate threw her weight around entirely too often in a way that was laughable. She was constantly poking her fingers into people's chests, threatening to arrest them, or just otherwise being openly hostile towards them. In short, she was acting in a way that no detective ever would. Added to the fact she had a clear conflict of interest in the case, considering her connection to one of the fathers... it was laughable.
But that's not why I almost chose to stop reading. What killed this novel for me was the repetition.
Yes. Every single freaking character has a secret. One they would rather die than admit to. I understood that immediately. Sadly, it would seem as though the author did not as it is repeated over and over and over and.... (see what I did there). And while normally I am a fan of leaving a chapter here or there on a a cliff-hanger that entices the reader to continue on, this happened at the end of almost EVERY chapter. It was like none of them even really cared that two girls were missing and were more interested in saving their own skins, even when for some of them, the secrets they were hiding paled in comparison to their daughter being missing.
Fun fact, pretty much everything you read up until now (minus the opening sentence obviously) I wrote when I was planning to DNF this.
But because I did, now I can talk about all of the other things that just didn't add up. How did Ryan come to be the father of a certain child when it was established they never so much as kissed? He claims to have donated the sperm, but the problem was with the woman in question having miscarriages, so who was the mother? When Alison (or was it Carrie? See I can't tell those two apart) figured out who the girl in the photograph was, why was it never mentioned again? And I still can't figure out why Kate would take Julie (the nanny) out with her in the middle of a storm to look for the missing girls. I mean I understand (to an extent) she needed Julie to point out the entrance to the paths, but it seemed to Kate that she was all to willing to continue to trust someone when she get annoyed time and again over the fact that everyone is either lying to her, not telling her the full story, or both. Why did she think Julie would do the same, and moreover, how could she trust Julie not to harm her if she was behind things?
There were also some editing details that I feel should have been caught prior to publication. In Chapter 34 an event takes place that has Allison rushing over to Carrie's house despite their falling out. She pauses when Carrie's husband Daniel comes out on the porch while she is talking to the Detective. Only moments later, one of the other officers is leading Daniel out from the house in handcuffs? Or later on in Chapter 57. Allison has already figured out one of Ryan's secrets, but then the author acts like the information just dawned on her just a few pages later.
All of these things considered, if I do give this author another chance (as I do see she has several other novels that have all been highly praised), it won't be for awhile. I need a break to forget what a mess this was before I can go into another of their books with an open mind.
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