Rating: ★★★★
When Ruby May takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy Yorkshire family, she knows that life in Hardcastle House will be isolating, but she can’t expect the mysteries that unfold within the West Yorkshire home. This book is a really engaging story that will hook you from the first page.
This book checked a lot of boxes for me: a tense, atmospheric mystery following a nanny in a Victorian-era, Yorkshire castle? Yes, yes, and yes. Thankfully, it was a really engaging story that hooked me from the first page. The atmosphere of this book was what grabbed me, I loved the tension and mystery of the book, and the way that the setting of West Yorkshire, the mill, and Hardcastle House, with its quiet and distant residents and staff, all really added to this.
To be honest, the tense atmosphere of this book came in very handy in helping me to not realise that the plot of this book was quite slow at times. I absolutely raced through this book, but once I got to the end, I realised that not much happened for most of the book. Even when the book did reach its climax near the end of the book, it was then followed by a number of follow-up chapters winding up the story. While it is sometimes nice to have a story “tied up” properly at the end, this really made the book feel like it was being dragged out unnecessarily.
Overall, I can’t criticise this book too much because I did really enjoy the process of reading it, but this was definitely propelled by me expecting more to happen, and once I reached the end, I realised that I was slightly unsatisfied. However, all in all, this was a fun book that I would (and have) recommended.
Have you read this? What did you think?
Ink Drops Books 