Hard to put down

At the end of every chapter I wanted to know more. Lots of twists and turns, some I guessed others I didn’t!

3.5 stars. This book had a good amount of suspense. Oaklynn, the new nanny, seemed to not be everything she appeared to be. Little things seem suspicious and it keeps the reader turning pages to see if Oaklynn is really who she claims to be. The ending kept me guessing without scaring me - a good mix for a suspenseful novel!

UGH. This was good and kept me on the edge of my seat until the end!

The book had many twists and turns which I did not anticipate.

I wanted to like this book based off of the description, it sounded like a fast passed, good, read. Unfortunately, I found the writing mediocre, using excessive descriptors to try to help enhance the story. The story was predictable at best and I just did not enjoy this book.

The overall read was good, and it wasn't quite as dark as I feared it would be (I'm kind of glad for that!). I did not relate to or even like the main character, but this wasn't the worst way to fill my time.

The Woman in our House begins as a domestic drama and quickly escalates to an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Andrew Hart, the author, is a pen name for A.J. Hartley. Anna Klein, a young wife and mother of two young daughters, decides to return to her job as a literary agent. It is clear that Anna will need help with the children and proceeds to meticulously research recruitment agencies in the search for a reliable nanny. She chooses Oaklynn Durst, a mormon woman from Utah who has excellent recommendarions and she quickly moves into the family home and the children take an instant liking to their new nanny. Soon, Anna notices odd behaviour: her otherwise healthy children begin to require visits to the ER where Oaklynn basks in the sympathy she receives from the medical staff. The rest of the story will be divulged when .you read this cringe-worthy novel. Creepy only begins to describe what happens. Highly recommended. Thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.

So initially I thought this was a pretty good book. We follow Anna (a young mother who is attempting to go back to work and is looking for a live in nanny) and Oaklynn (the nanny in question). Then Hart decides to follow other POV's in this one (Anna's husband Josh, a neighbor of the couple, a police officer, and a FBI agent). Not all of the voices worked for this one. It also didn't help that the book went from being an okay thriller to just throwing in another plot that didn't really work and then the ending which made everything just work out great while denouncing Nazis. Yeah that happened. I am still just baffled.

"The Woman in Our House" follows Anna Klien. Anna has two children and realizes one day (during an eclipse) that she needs to go back to work. She was initially happy about staying home, but is starting to realize she needs more than to be home with her two daughters. Anna's husband Josh agrees and they then start a search for a live-in nanny. After a suggestion that Anna hire from a nanny firm in Utah, Anna apparently picks an older woman named Oaklynn.

Hard pause right here. Do people not interview potential candidates face to face? I have two friends who have live in au pairs and I know they went through a round of interviews with the agencies they used and also they met the young women prior to hiring who also met their kids. I thought the way Hart set up this part of the book was a bit unbelievable to me.

Anna has a lot of insecurities about her life and marriage and after Oaklynn moves in, things get worse. I did like the idea of Anna being a literary agent, but the whole thing with the reveal about the book she was reading didn't work and I rolled my eyes at it. It comes back into play at the end of the book and I wanted to ask Hart did he really believe any reader would be reading this book after what we find out about the author? Has he talked to readers before?

I also really needed to get a better sense of character development with Anna. It took until I think the 10-15 percent mark to even find out that she was Japanese American. Probably didn't help that she and Josh were not really described. The author chose to describe Oaklynn though so why he didn't talk about Anna more in terms of description, height, etc. was odd. Now that I think of it, it's eventually mentioned the kids look "Asian" by another character, but I don't recall specifically if they are described.

Also odd to me was the fact that Hart didn't provide more narration showing why Anna felt apart from things. Was it because she was a Japanese American living in the South? Were the neighbors truly welcoming? Hart plays with this a bit via a secondary character, but I wanted more there. I think it would have been interesting to have some comments about a stay at home mom deciding to go back to work when it seemed the neighborhood they lived in was predominantly stay at home moms.

I thought the initial plot point with Oaklynn was okay, but then it turned into a mess towards the end. I didn't like the character full stop and there were too many plot holes to even be remotely believable. I won't get into them here because I don't want to spoil for potential readers.

The other characters are not that very developed. Hart returns to the character of Josh a few times, but honestly I thought he was kind of an idiot and I loathe books where the married couple seem to all of a sudden not talk. Hart course corrects with this one eventually, but it got old reading about.

The writing was okay though some parts of the book felt so random. Hart interjects racism into this work not with one, but two characters, and at least with one of the character's, it felt unnecessary. And also a bit too cartoon villain as I was reading. The book was also repetitive at times, especially when you get to Anna constantly talking about being eclipsed by her children and Oaklynn. At that point I wondered why Hart and the cover artist didn't just chose a cover with the sun being blotted out.


The flow wasn't that great, but that is probably because the book jumps around via other characters narratives. if Hart had just focused on Anna and Oaklynn the book would have been much tighter and the final reveals would have been more shocking. Due to inviting in some of the POVs you already knew that one of the characters was not as they appeared to be and then we got enough clues about another one.

This book takes place in North Carolina and Hart describes basically beautiful neighborhoods, but people not really knowing what is going on under the surface with their neighbors. I wish that Hart had looked into the other neighborhood characters more besides Mary Beth.

The ending was not believable at all. I literally asked two friends in law enforcement and one friend who is an attorney who went, yeah, that's not going to happen.

First of all, spelling “Oaklynn” instead of “Oakland” is wild. Charlotte is diverse and not as lily white as this book would make it seem. And I’m pretty sure Black people actually live in Myers Park. As for the story, this is a fun thriller but also infuriating. Anna an Asian American woman has all white friends and no friends of color especially Asian ones. Even her husband is white. Her one friend Marybeth is a racist twat. And Anna is just making excuses for her shitty behavior. Anna’s dumb ass puts up with this fool flirting with her husband in her face. That’s how blind and dumb Anna‘s character is. This is disappointing but I’m not surprised. Stay tuned…. The only Black people in the damn book are ones in servitude to the white characters. A mess. Josh, Anna’s husband is annoying too and there’s no chemistry between them. Why are they even married?
Her asshole neighbor Marybeth isn’t her actual friend but a racist POS so that explains her behavior, but it validates that Anna is stupid and oblivious to red flags all around this could’ve been suspenseful with a smarter more bad ass character. It’s really annoying how dumb, oblivious and self, doubting, she is.
Also, it’s pretty fucked up that Oaklynn‘s size is mentioned all the time when she’s in a scene. Her size has nothing to do with the story, other than possibly a description in the beginning. Other than that, it’s fat phobic as fuck and totally unnecessary. As for Oakland, there’s no reality where a parent would not sense that Oakland is out of her fucking mind and kick that bitch out of the house, and the story would’ve ended there. You cannot suspend belief enough to go along with this shit. It makes no sense. This woman is obviously unhinged and weird as hell and no person in their right mind would let a stranger make them feel that uncomfortable and weird around their children in their own house. And that stupid ass husband of hers, acting a fool right under her nose and she’s just as oblivious AF . That’s the major problem with this story.
There is a scene when Anna is in the hospital with her daughter Veronica again, and an older black woman is also waiting to be seen. This black woman has no name and just described as Black. And once again, she’s in servitude to Anna‘s character, easing her mind and making her feel at ease. A lazy trope.

Not what I was expecting

I did like the book, I just did not love it, did not get sucked by it. It felt a bit slow sometimes, but I did like the unexpected turns it took.