Book Review: "The Nanny" by Gilly MacMillan
“The Nanny” by Gilly MacMillan
Synopsis: 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.—HarperCollins
Rating (out of 5): 4
Review: This book has been buzzed about quite a bit on bookstagram and on a few blogs, so I was game to give it a go for another addition to spooky season. I was not disappointed at all! I had expected this to be a quick read, which it was, but it is also of very good literary quality.
Jocelyn, recently widowed, returns to her mother’s estate with her young daughter. Her relationship with her mother is fraught, and has been since she was a small child. Jocelyn has fond memories of a nanny, Hannah, who raised her and then suddenly disappeared.
When Hannah mysteriously reappears in the lives of our characters, Jocelyn is delighted, and her mother, Virginia, is quite the opposite. The mystery builds as we learn more about what happened the night Hannah disappeared.
I found the two mother-daughter relationships in this book very relatable (though, Mommie, if you’re reading this, you’re nothing like Virginia.) I think it’s so common in families for secrecy to cause walls to grow in relationships, when open communication could solve quite a bit. I love that the mother, who on the outside is not at all sympathetic, was not painted as a villain. We understand that her life was complicated and while not all of the decisions she made were good, her love for her daughter is very real.
There were some minor blips for me as a reader—I didn’t care much for the scenes with the detective, and there were a couple pieces of the fateful night Hannah disappeared that are still a bit unclear for me. However, this book is brilliantly paced, and I felt quite connected to Hannah, her mother, and her daughter, as well as the central mystery. I highly recommend this as an October read!
Trigger Warnings: Violence, child abuse
TL;DR: I was expecting this to be pulpy and kind of a fun but not literary read, but my judgmental ass was wrong—it has been known to happen! This is a killer mystery with lots of power shifts, and it unfolds at a beautiful pace.
If you liked this; try:
“The Lost Night” by Andrea Bartz (my review here)
“The Witch Elm” by Tana French
“The Woman in the Window” by AJ Finn
“In a Dark, Dark Wood” by Ruth Ware
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