Nightwatching - Tracy Sierra - Top Book Pick!

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

An ingenious and suffocating thriller that plunges you into the story with the first sentence and is bound to keep you up past your bedtime in the race to get to the last one.

There was someone in the house. We open with a woman standing immobilized by fear, in the shadows that exist between her, the intruder who has invaded her home, and her children. With a blizzard raging outside, she is frantic with the need to protect them from whatever might be about to rage inside. Will she succeed before she becomes overwhelmed by the awareness that she has failed them? She told them that monsters didn’t exist. She lied.

A razor sharp, tension filled cat and mouse game ensues, as she tries to reach her children and hide them where he cannot find them. But even as they find a hiding spot, she soon realizes she has no way to defend or protect any of them. She is simply not equal to the task of fighting off the evil he has brought to their door.

I loved that the author layered in all the telltale trademarks of gaslighting with every interaction our narrator has. The husband, the police, and the bad man. They all do it with an ease that is deeply unsettling. It created one of the best unreliable narrator dynamics I’ve come across. The only question left to the reader is whether she’s the unreliable one, or they are.

But I’m not telling.

Book Pairing(s): The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper, Dear Child by Romy Hausman, Girl A by Abigail Dean