The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Heatherbrae House holds secrets from the past and the present in Ruth Ware’s modern day retelling of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Keep reading to see how this one stacked up against the original.

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely.

 But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss - a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten - by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare - one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the home's cameras, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty - at least not of murder - but somebody is. Which means someone else is.

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio | Narrator: Imogen Church | Length: 12 hrs 13 min|  Genre: Suspense | Source: Purchased | Rating: 3.5 Cups

Rowan is searching for something and it wasn’t the nanny position she finds herself accepting but it was an offer she currently couldn’t refuse. While the job should be easy, things are not going as well as she would have hoped at Heatherbrae House—the kids are playing up, the ‘smart’ house system is malfunctioning and Rowan swears there’s someone—or something—walking around the attic above her room.  She had plans for her time at Heatherbrae House and it didn’t include being arrested for the murderer of one of her young charges but, here she is, sitting in her jail cell explaining the events (via a string of letters) to a lawyer she’s hoping will free her from this nightmare. Although the odds are stacked against her and her lies are the main articles the prosecution are using against her.

The Turn of the Key has been on my ‘to read’ list since it came out but I had a feeling this one would be better on audio rather than print form and I was right. I would have found the print form annoying where the audio added to the sense of urgency that Rowan was portraying.

The characters in this one weren’t the most likable of people. Rowan, from the start is a liar—she’s sitting through the interview lying through her teeth while having an internal discussion with herself about how far she can get with this lie or that embellishment—and an unreliable narrator. We know she doesn’t really want to be there but little by little she reveals the true reason she’s there. The children are just out of control and only get worse when their eldest sister arrives home from boarding school and Rowan has no patience or knowledge to handle them. The parents are workaholics that are never home and believe an app they created to spy on their children is the same as parenting. Then we have the housekeeper who seems to be giving Rowan a hard time and Jack, the handsome, live-in handyman, that may or may not be a little sinister.

Coming into this one, I was expecting it to stick close to the original (The Turn of the Screw) and rely on a lot of ambiguity and possible paranormal activity but this one is more out front with what’s going on. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact a lot of the disturbance and Rowan’s sense of paranoia comes from the malfunctioning ‘smart’ home app and the children’s brattish behavior. A lot of the mystery and suspense aspect was taken away because it’s obvious from the start what’s going on and who’s behind it. A few things are thrown in in an attempt to sidetrack your thoughts but they weren’t mapped out in a way that had me question whether or not they were involved.

While I enjoyed this one, I did have problems with the plot and the length. There’s a lot going on in this book but nothing happens. The first ten hours are rambling and repetition with just a tad bit of details thrown in the mix. I understand the need to draw suspense while making Rowan come off sounding as if she’s in a desperate urgent panic to have her story told but this was too much rambling and repetition. I don’t need to be told the same thing over and over again before revealing yet another minor detail. The last two hours of the book were action-packed and brilliant. The first ten hours could have been condensed to an hour or under.

This was my first time listening to Imogen Church and I really enjoyed her narration style. Her sense of urgency worked brilliantly for Rowan’s panicked telling.

This was also my first Ruth Ware book and I’m not sure what I think about her writing style. I know people either like her writing or they hate it but I’m undecided. I did feel this one was unnecessarily long but I don’t want to judge an author’s writing style for the first time based on their version of a retelling because I will always put it up against the original.

Overall, the original didn’t wow me and, sadly, I’m not wowed but this one. If this one had been a novella—focusing on the last two hours with a few bits from the first ten hours thrown in—I think that this would have been an amazing book because the ending blew me away but there was just too much of nothing happening. 

The Classic Vs. The Adaptation

As I’ve said in the review above, Turn of the Screw by Henry James has never wowed me. It’s an unreliable story told by an unreliable narrator and the outcome of the story relies heavily on the reader. I’ve always said Turn of the Screw is the Schrödinger's cat of literature. The box is never opened, the outcome of the story is never revealed.  

What worked with Turn of the Screw is the ambiguity that created this amazing suspense and the way it plays with the readers mind. Sadly, in The Turn of the Key that’s missing. There’s no ambiguity, no suspense, no mind games. It has nothing to do with the fact that it was a modern retelling but more so in the fact Ruth Ware pushed the fact the events were caused by an actual person causing the smart home app to malfunction.

Funny enough, both versions have the same issues and I rated both a 3.5. There’s a lot of repetition and a lot of things going on without anything happening in both. What hindered The Turn of the Key is the length, which is a little over 12 hours. Turn of the Screw is a little under 5 hours and it greatly improved the suspense.

I think both are still worthy of a read (although I would go the audiobook route) and I do recommend them. You’re not going to get a full on gothic suspense but you are going to get a decent suspense and The Turn of the Key has a bombshell ending.

You can check out my full review of Turn of the Screw HERE. 

If you’ve read Ruth Ware, what book should I pick up next?