The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware Review

Rowan accepts an extremely well-paid nanny position for the wealthy parents of four young girls at their Scottish country house. But that was in the past - Rowan’s currently in jail awaiting trial for the murder of one of the girls. She says it wasn’t her. But was it - or was it the ghosts of the old house?

I’d hoped The Turn of the Key would be a return to form for Ruth Ware, especially as I’m a fan of horror, but it’s just another junky novel, the only kind she seems able to produce now.

The title’s obviously referencing Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw as Ware’s superficially lifted the premise: governess looks after kids in isolated country manor house, kids die. I’m by no means a fan of James (his dense prose is extremely laborious to slog through and totally unrewarding to read) or his tedious “horror” novella but I’ll give him this: the ending to his tale is artful. He leaves it up to the reader to decide: did the governess kill the children or was it the ghosts?

Ware on the other hand doesn’t have the same level of talent and there’s no question over what happened at the end. Which could make it a more satisfying narrative in that regard - if the ending wasn’t so crummy.

Talk about rushed! Hundreds of pages hurriedly wrapped up in a couple of breathless pages and that’s it. And it’s an underwhelming reveal, like all the surprises in that final act. Not to mention pointless. Rowan’s reveal was surprising but led absolutely nowhere - in fact, you could take it out entirely and the story is completely unaffected, that’s how meaningless it is!

But obviously a bad ending doesn’t make a novel not worth reading - if the journey’s good, then that’s something, right? Except the vast majority of the novel isn’t much better either. Almost all of it is filled with the banal domestic travails of looking after a toddler, two young kids and a surly brat of a teenager.

Which only underlines the silliness of the framing device which is a letter from Rowan in prison to her solicitor. A letter hundreds of pages long full of meandering, irrelevant drivel of her day-to-day work?? The horror moments are sparse and cliched (wooo something’s clomping around the attic!) with not nearly enough happening to make the story tense or exciting.

None of the characters are especially interesting - Rowan is a dreary protagonist, the kids are nothing but irritating and Jack the handyman was predictably there as the obvious love interest.

The premise is compelling though and kept me reading to the end. Elements of the story are appealing - the poison garden, the ghosts, the possibilities of a modern smart house to a traditional haunted house story - but Ware doesn’t do much with them.

Unfortunately, The Turn of the Key is a largely boring, slow-moving and not scary mystery pseudo-horror with dull characters and an anticlimactic finale. I rec her first novel In a Dark, Dark Wood but I wouldn’t bother with anything else Ruth Ware’s written, especially this latest yawner.