The House Sitter
Ellery Kane
Synopsis: She’s in your home. But can you trust her?
Newly pregnant and down on her luck, Lydia thinks her fortunes have changed when a customer at the café where she works offers her a job and a room in her plush Pacific Heights home.
It’s been years since Iris’s husband Dean died in his sleep and Lydia soon becomes the daughter Iris never had – making her cups of tea, helping her with the bills, and taking charge of Iris’s daily medications now that her memory has begun to fail.
Then one night, someone makes an emergency call from the telephone in the pristine kitchen. The police arrive to find the house has been turned upside down and no sign of Iris or Lydia. Dark and cold, this isn’t the welcoming family home it once was, and why has the telephone line been severed?
As the police unravel what happened that night, they discover a clue in Iris’s past that makes them question whether the two women met by chance after all. But who has everything to lose? And who is really in danger?
My Rating: 4.75 stars – rounded up to 5
cover 4; characters 4; plot 5; pace 5; writing 5; enjoyment 5.
My Review: THE HOUSE SITTER is one of the best mystery novels I’ve read. That might sound like I’m over selling it but damn was it good.
Plot wise, I really enjoyed the pace at which hints were dropped. One of my favorite things about mysteries is piecing together the clues as I read through. This one definitely afforded me that ability. There’s a delicate balance to giving your reader clues and beating them over the head with them and for me, this was perfectly balanced. Though that mid-story plot twist? Yeah. I didn’t see that coming at all.
At around 75% I had a pretty good guess as to what had happened and why, but I was very happy about it. It was a perfect outcome in my opinion and I was glad to see it hit the page and the story go in the direction I wanted. That doesn’t always happen with this kind of book.
I will admit, I was a bit skeptical about the last chapter, as far as like, where things ended up realistically, but I still think it was a good decision for the story.
I love Iris. She is a sweet bean and I want to protect her with everything I have. Also the female cop, (I can’t think of her name at the moment) I really enjoyed learning about her character and I think she was put together fantastically well.
The house sitters themselves were god awful but learning their backstories and figuring them out was half of the fun of this book.
One thing to mention is this story is a dual time line and I love that. Sometimes I struggle with dual timelines (part of my neurodivergence is struggling to remember things in sequential order), but this one was done well. I was able to keep up with both time lines. I also liked how you’d learn something in one that would then play into the other. It just opened up the plot and moved things forward. It was just great. So if you like a dual timeline, check this one out.
I received an audioARC of THE HOUSE SITTER from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
To see more reviews & purchase links, check this book out on Goodreads.
To see more of my reviews, head over to the reviews page on my website.