The Nanny Blog Tour: Review

The Nanny
Author: Gilly Macmillan
Genre: Adult Mystery/Thriller
Release Date: September 10, 2019
Publisher: William Morrow  
Format: Hardcover; 400 pages

Description:

"The Nanny kept me in white-knuckled suspense until the very last page. Gilly Macmillan’s breakout thriller is a dark and twisted version of Downton Abbey gone very, very wrong." — Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author  

The New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew conjures a dark and unpredictable tale of family secrets that explores the lengths people will go to hurt one another. 

When her beloved nanny, Hannah, left without a trace in the summer of 1988, seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt was devastated. Haunted by the loss, Jo grew up bitter and distant, and eventually left her parents and Lake Hall, their faded aristocratic home, behind. 

Thirty years later, Jo returns to the house and is forced to confront her troubled relationship with her mother. But when human remains are accidentally uncovered in a lake on the estate, Jo begins to question everything she thought she knew. 

Then an unexpected visitor knocks on the door and Jo’s world is destroyed again. Desperate to piece together the gaping holes in her memory, Jo must uncover who her nanny really was, why she left, and if she can trust her own mother... 

In this compulsively readable tale of secrets, lies, and deception, Gilly Macmillan explores the darkest impulses and desires of the human heart. Diabolically clever, The Nanny reminds us that sometimes the truth hurts so much you’d rather hear the lie.  

 Purchase Links: HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The Nanny is a dark and twisty mystery that will keep readers on their toes until the end. I'm a huge fan of the genre and I've read some of the author's other books, so I was pretty excited for this one. I definitely wasn't disappointed. I think it actually went above my hopes and expectations, which doesn't happen very often.

The story was incredibly well written with tons of twists and turns, lies, and secrets that had me reading as fast as I could to see what was going to happen next. Every time I had a theory of what had happened or who had done what, a huge twist would happen and put me right back at square one. Which I loved, because I read so many thrillers that almost nothing surprises me anymore. I don't do spoilers in my reviews, so I can't go into much detail without revealing anything. 

The other aspect of the story that I really loved was the writing style the author chose to use. There are a lot of main/major characters throughout the story and we get to hear from each of them. The writing style of a book can honestly make it or break it for me. I was hoping that this was going to be from the first person point of view, which is my favorite style. What I wasn't expecting was multiple narrators each telling the story from their perspective. Even though there are multiple major characters, each of them gets to tell a part of the story. What I love about this is that not only do we really get to know each of these characters on a deeply personal level, but we get a real multi-angle view of the entire story and everything going on - not just one person's perspective. This was an awesome way to write the book and I absolutely loved it. It does have the potential to become confusing, but the way the author wrote the story the reader doesn't have to worry about that. The story also contains flashbacks into the past that are an essential part of the plot but they're told in the third person POV. I normally don't care for this writing style but it helped keep the past snippets separate from what was happening in the present. Overall, I thought this was a taut thriller with lots of twists and turns that fans of the genre are definitely going to want to get their hands on.

Gilly Macmillan is the Edgar nominated and New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew, The Perfect Girl, Odd Child Out, I Know You Know, and The Nanny. She grew up in Swindon, Wiltshire and lived in Northern California in her late teens. She worked at The Burlington Magazine and the Hayward Gallery before starting a family. Since then she's worked as a part-time lecturer in photography, and now writes full-time. She resides in Bristol, England. 

Find out more about Gilly at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Tour Schedule:

Tuesday, September 10th: A Pint-Sized Life
Wednesday, September 11th: Jessicamap Reviews
Thursday, September 12th: Instagram: @sunflower_book_lover
Friday, September 13th: Wall-to-Wall Books
Monday, September 16th: Instagram: @readingmama_reviews
Tuesday, September 17th: Instagram: @bookishanki
Wednesday, September 18th: Audio Killed the Bookmark
Thursday, September 19th: Instagram: @readingbetweenthe__wines
Friday, September 20th: Instagram: @jennsbookvibes
Monday, September 23rd: Bookapotamus
Tuesday, September 24th: JulzReads
Thursday, September 26th: The Pages In-Between
Friday, September 27th: A Dream Within a Dream
Friday, September 27th: Kahakai Kitchen
Friday, September 27th: Stranded in Chaos
Monday, September 30th: Jennifer ~ Tar Heel Reader
Tuesday, October 1st: A Bookish Way of Life
Wednesday, October 2nd: Instagram: @wherethereadergrow