Review: The Nanny

The Nanny totally hooked me. I was so invested in Gilly MacMillan's latest book (I say latest but it was published back in September) when I was reading it and so unsure about what was actually going to happen. I've only read two of her books but I might have to check out her backlist and will definitely keep an eye out for whatever she writes next.

Here's the 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.

If you have a problem with problematic characters, this is not the book for you. No one in this book is without flaws (except maybe Ruby, Jo's daughter and that's because she's still young and innocent) and those flaws get them into all sorts of trouble. It was so interesting to see how the characters reacted to their circumstances because they way they went about things in ways that I can't imagine. I mean, I've never been in their situations so I can't say for sure but they reacted in very...troubling ways. It makes sense though because when someone is backed into a corner, they'll do anything to protect the ones they love.

On a related note, every character has something to hide in this book (even someone who you think wouldn't have secrets actually does but it's not really a secret because they just simply don't remember it because of trauma. Yep. It's layered). It's because of all these secrets (and, to be honest, a terrible human being) that a family was totally destroyed. The easy judgement to make is that everyone should have been honest with one another from the get go but the web of lies is so convoluted that it's hard to imagine things turning out any other way.

The way the story is told is almost too confusing. Virginia and Jocelyn each tell their own story from a first person perspective. There are times when it's in the present and times when it's in the past. The detective investigating the skull in the lake also gets his own chapters throughout. Finally, there are chapters from Hannah's perspective but from the past and in third person. A bit much, right? It gives all the details the reader needs though - and there are a lot of them - and MacMillan manages to keep it from getting too convoluted.

I also have to admit that I was totally picturing Downton Abbey-esque lives for the characters in both the present and past timelines even though that was all kinds of inaccurate. I blame it on the bingewatch of the show I had completed prior to the movie being released last year. Geographically, it made sense. Old, English house and countryside and so on. But timeline? Not at all. It was entertaining, if not confusing for my poor brain!

I've read a number of thrillers in the past couple of years, more than I ever used to, and The Nanny was one that really riveted me. Gilly MacMillan is a great author and I'm looking forward to reading her backlist. No word yet on when her next book will be released but I'll be on the lookout for that one too.

*An ARC of this novel was provided by the publisher, HarperCollins Canada, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*