In The Turn of the Key, Rowan takes a nannying job that pays extraordinarily well. I didn’t realize it until I went to write the reviews, since I read these books a couple of weeks apart, but the next two both have a common theme of millennials being in such a shitty spot financially / professionally that they accept the kind of job that you know is too good to be true and will totally end up with your dead body at the end. (3 stars) The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Regardless, it’s a decent thriller with a good creepy set up out in the woods, and if you’re looking for something to pass the time while you’re getting your nails done, you could do a lot worse. So I found it pretty easy to figure out who the bad guy must be. The book is told in third person omniscient narration style, and of all of these characters, one person’s perspective and back story isn’t examined as closely as any of the others.

I think this was meant to provide some red herrings. A lot of these people have really terrible backstories that the author reveals a little bit at a time. The other characters in the book are made up of an unhappy couple on the verge of divorce, two women trying to rekindle their friendship (although one is obviously suffering from PTSD and the other one sort of abandons her to get laid), an attorney, a boyfriend / girlfriend couple, and the owner of the inn and his son. She wants to live, but she hopes that if she has to die, she isn’t the last one. “Is someone else dead? She wonders if soon there will be no one left at all.

Everyone suspects her fiance until an author working on her latest book is found dead as well.

First, the beautiful engaged woman falls down the stairs. Unfortunately, that’s right around when people start dying. They lose power and the roads are unpassable. The story was decent but pretty predictable.Īn Unwanted Guest takes place in a small family-run inn on a night when the weather is so bad that all the guests are trapped inside. This was probably two and a half stars, but I’m rounding up. (3 stars) An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

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