The Nanny

April 1, 2019

In 1988, seven-year-old Hannah was shattered by the abrupt departure of her nanny and, when she comes of age, bitterly abandons her parents and their ancestral digs. Years later, as she is trying to mend her relationship with her mother, the discovery of human remains and a disturbing visit set the past spinning again. With a 125,000-copy first printing; from the best-selling author of What She Knew.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 8, 2019
One morning in 1987, seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt, the heroine of this devastating psychological thriller from bestseller Macmillan (I Know You Know), wakes up in Lake Hall, her family’s English mansion, to find her beloved nanny, Hannah Burgess, gone. Strangely, Jo’s aristocratic parents find nothing sinister about Hannah’s disappearance. Years later, Jo, who deeply resents her emotionally distant mother, moves to California, where she falls in love with Chris, with whom she has a daughter, Ruby. Jo never forgets Hannah, and when Chris dies suddenly, Jo returns to Lake Hall with Ruby. The girl enrolls in primary school while Jo reacclimatizes herself to the British culture. One day, the two of them are relaxing on the shore of the lake when they find a human skull. The police come to investigate. Does the skull belong to Hannah? Are the Holt parents implicated in her death? Macmillan expertly ratchets up the tension as long-held secrets come to light. Readers will have a tough time putting this one down. Agent: Helen Heller, Helen Heller Agency (Canada).

July 15, 2019
When a skull is discovered in the lake by a manor house, a 30-year-old mystery comes to light. When Jo's husband dies suddenly, she reluctantly brings her 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, home to Lake Hall. Despite the seeming affluence of her aristocratic family, Jo's memories of her childhood are mostly unhappy, especially after her beloved nanny, Hannah, left under mysterious circumstances. Despite her mother's frosty warnings, Jo takes Ruby out on the lake one day, and they unearth a human skull. The detective who comes to investigate has a chip on his shoulder about the upper class and would like nothing better than to prove the village rumors that the Holt family has casually disposed of inconvenient bodies throughout the years. Jo's mother knows exactly to whom the skull belongs--and she wants to keep the truth from Jo as long as possible. Jo herself suspects it might belong to Hannah, who never would have left her voluntarily--but then suddenly, out of the blue, a handsome older woman turns up on their doorstep, claiming to be Hannah. No one is quite sure what to believe, but Jo, desperately wanting to rekindle the closeness she once had with Hannah and chafing against the coldness of her mother, invites the woman into her home to help care for Ruby--a mistake, we know, of catastrophic proportions. Macmillan (I Know You Know, 2018, etc.) strives to create a gothic atmosphere, but the setting falls short of true creepiness. Her decision to switch narrators does add layers to the story, but the voices all seem to tell more than they show, and no character is sympathetic enough, or charismatic enough, to really draw the reader into the mystery. Art forgery! False identities! Adultery! Murder! But in the end, sadly, it's more melodrama than true thriller.

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Starred review from August 1, 2019
When your nanny is getting too close to your daughter (not to mention your husband), perhaps it's time to get rid of her, permanently. At the bottom of a lake will do nicely, won't it? And that's precisely what Virginia (ahem, Lady Virginia) does when nanny Hannah becomes a problem. Some 30 years later, after the death of Virginia's husband, her daughter, Jo, shows up back at the crumbling family estate with her own child in tow. And?surprise, surprise?not long after the pair arrive, so does Hannah. Or does she? Because they just fished the skeletal remains of a young woman out of the lake. Virginia isn't sure if she's going mad, or if someone's playing a cruel joke on her. Using a smooth mix of flashbacks and alternate points of view (readers get to hear from Jo, Virginia, and Hannah in equal turns, as well as from the detective trying to get to the bottom of the decades-old murder case), Macmillan fills this story with unreliable characters and red herrings. There are also delicious British suspense tropes on display: rural resentment of the local rich people, closets full of skeletons, shady business dealings, false memories, fake identities. Who could ask for more?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)