by Anna Collomore
Hardcover, 313 pages
Expected publication: February 7th 2013 by Razorbill
ISBN 1595144706 (ISBN13: 9781595144706)


Blurb

Annie Phillips is thrilled to leave her past behind and begin a shiny new life on Belvedere Island, as a nanny for the picture-perfect Cohen family. In no time at all, she falls in love with the Cohens, especially with Libby, the beautiful young matriarch of the family. Life is better than she ever imagined. She even finds romance with the boy next door.

All too soon cracks appear in Annie’s seemingly perfect world. She’s blamed for mistakes she doesn’t remember making. Her bedroom door comes unhinged, and she feels like she’s always being watched. Libby, who once felt like a big sister, is suddenly cold and unforgiving. As she struggles to keep up with the demands of her new life, Annie’s fear gives way to frightening hallucinations. Is she tumbling into madness, or is something sinister at play?

The Good

  1. Libby.  Libby’s unbelievable mood swings and bipolar tendencies made for an interesting character. Every time she showed up, you had no idea who you were going to get: sweet, supportive, motherly Libby or mean, demanding, unrealistic Libby. She is by far the most complex, interesting character in the story hands down.

  2. The ending.  The ending to this book is perfectly ominous. You have no idea if Annie is safe or not, but the most interesting aspect of this story was the fact that Annie learns nothing. Most characters learn from past experiences and, by the end of their journey, are smarter and stronger for them. Annie most definitely is not. She is perfectly content to once again hand her entire life off to another person, allowing them to control every aspect of it.


The Bad

  1. The instalove.  I really liked Owen’s character, but there was a good bit of instalove going on when Annie first meets him, which I didn’t really care for.

  2. The predictability.  It’s fairly obvious early on in the book what is actually going on, and it’s unbelievably frustrating that the narrator is so naive that she doesn’t understand what is happening to her. I understand it is because of her background—she just wants someone to love and accept her, to keep her safe, and she feels like she has nowhere else to go, but still. Call the police or something? It was just a little too unbelievable the amount of stuff Annie put up with.

  3. The confusion.  The problem with books like this is that they need to be written in such a way that they are mind-boggling and puzzling, leaving the narrator in a state of confusion, without creating a plot line that gets too complex for its own good. There were about two chapters near the end of the book where the psychological manipulation was too much for me and I had a hard time following the plot. Other than that, the suspense and disorientation were crafted fairly well, other than the overall predictability of the story which I already addressed.


Overall Rating

While fairly predictable and slightly confusing at times, this book had a very strong ending. Libby was a wonderfully complex, unpredictable antagonist and I loved every time she made an appearance. The most fascinating part of this story, however, was Annie’s total inability to learn from her mistakes. As a character, she has little to no growth over the course of the story, despite the horrible things that happen to her. As a role model, she is terrible, but as a character she is very interesting in that she represents the fact that some people really never change.