About:
‘You’re just the girl I’ve been looking for,’ Iris told me, her blue eyes sparkling, when she offered me the job as her live-in helper. Little did she know, I thought the exact same about her. And she was wrong to trust me…
As I clean Iris’s large, old house in Pacific Heights, my boyfriend Seth works outside, tending to the lawn and fixing the broken gate. I can’t help but notice Iris’s steely eyes watching our every move. Does she know why we’re really here?
Most days we live in perfect harmony, but today Iris is confused. She thinks we moved in uninvited. I pass her a tablet from the medicine cabinet, knowing she’ll soon calm down and remember how lucky she is to have found us.
Later that night, the police arrive to find Iris’s perfect house turned upside down, the telephone lying on the floor, its cord severed. They walk through each room, calling out, but the house remains totally silent.
You will think you know what happened that night, but when the police discover something unexpected hidden amongst the wreckage in Iris’s bedroom, you’ll find you don’t know a thing.
This heart-stopping psychological thriller is perfect for fans of Mark Edwards, Minka Kent and Lucinda Berry. As soon as you start reading The House Sitter, you’ll be hooked!
Review:
Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this author, an author I have never read before.
The words next to the title on the covered confused me a little. “She’s in your home but can you trust her”? I am still not sure who that was referring too as one of the characters in the home is male.
The prologue is so well written only a few lines setting the scene but pulling you in from the beginning. You could almost hear the dispatchers heart rate raising and feel the old ladies fear.
But things aren’t always as they first appear. Watching an elderly lady being taken for a ride by two crooks you feel like shouting at the pages, willing her to wake up, but that is impossible as she is confused and trusting, seemingly needing the help. The lies the caretakers spin to the point of not even getting their own stories straight and throwing each off kilter with a new revelation the other has made up.
Ellery Kane leads you down such a path that the reader becomes confused as to why the elderly lady Iris is allowing this to go on, does she really not know what her new caretakers Lydia and Seth are up to or is she really losing her marbles, it would appear so.
I was constantly looking for the twist and I even had first Iris then Lydia pinned as the one who was setting it all up, but any spark of doubt I had that it could be Seth setting the scene disappeared as quickly as it flashed into my mind. Ellery Kane’s writing certainly makes you realise how wrong you could be.
