This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

A gripping novel, with a rising sense of dread in the plot. A nice twist at the end. I plan to read more books by this author in the future.

be very careful who you open your door too. Edge of your seat thrill a minute writing that I couldn't put down! Twists and turns like a pretzel! I really had fun with this book!

I picked this book up hoping for a more suspenseful start and was quickly thwarted. I completely wasn’t expecting for the beginning to start as it did. I struggled a bit with the nanny aspect of it all. 

I was more scared because I feel like this is something that could easily be done. Never truly knowing who you are letting into your home with your family. Needless to say I wasn’t able to completely finish the book because it took a completely different direction than I could handle. 

Thank you to the publisher, author, and Netgalley for the gifted review copy. All opinions are my own.

This is a brilliant read.
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believeable.
Great suspense and action with wonderful world building.
Can't wait to read what the author brings out next.
Recommend reading.

I was provided an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher.  This is my own honest voluntary review.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review.  This book is the definition of a gripping pyschological thriller!! It is brilliantly written and will keep you wanting more and more.

I wish I'd started this book sooner...it had the perfect twists that caught me off guard. With my own daughter being an Au Pair, I've been hesitant to read this but now that I have - I wish I'd read it sooner! Blew me away!

This was a good read with just enough twist to keep you guessing even if you thought you knew what the end was going to be

The Woman in Our House begins with the juncture when our stay-at-home-mom and protagonist Anna Klein cognizes her desire to go back to work. Readers delve into the feelings of apprehension that comes with leaving your child to a complete stranger, whom you’re supposed to trust with your child’s wellbeing. Readers also get immersed in mom-guilt that comes with the territory of a working mother. I know for a fact that this speaks to a large proportion of readers and reviewers out there. Andrew Hart touches a really sore spot of mine.

Andrew Hart has done his homework about the workings of a mother’s mind. I can’t get over the similarity between mine and Anna’s thoughts, at least at the beginning of the book. The author must have visited a lot of forums where moms ask each other about every possible thing to worry about from the moment the stick shows those two lines. I don’t know how else he could’ve polished Anna into such a well-developed character.

Anna is a literary agent trying to get the rusty gears of her career going again after being out of the loop for three years. Upon hiring a nanny, she started working from home and received a promising manuscript from an author. Readers get to read this manuscript as Anna does, and you can’t help but notice that Anna’s life events are somewhat parallel to the manuscript as it is unfurling. I think this a brilliant technique employed by the author and, in my opinion, executed beautifully.

The hook that the author uses is that early on, it was revealed to readers that the nanny, Oaklynn, is actually an impostor named Nadine, the real Oaklynn’s housekeeper who she thinks of as her friend rather than an employee. I commend this move. Divulging this information right from the start rather than later creates a sense of mistrust in readers despite how amazing a nanny ‘Oaklynn’ is. This way, readers know they’ve got a thriller in their hands.

I absolutely adore Anna x Josh relationship. It was one of those where you can see they’re nothing alike yet perfect for each other, even when they’re bickering. Andrew Hart’s just giving the characters more to lose (and us, more enjoyment out of the book 😉).

I loved (and still loving even now that the book’s finished) the eclipse metaphor at the start, middle, and end of this book. The metaphor keeps on giving. In my opinion, it was clever and artful.

This truly is a fantastic read but – yes, unfortunately, there’s a big ‘but’ – this book is like a marathoner who sprinted too fast early in his run, only to burn out. I’m not talking about pace. As a matter of fact, things escalated near the end, with nothing substantial really happening in the beginning. My marathoner metaphor is about the thrill factor. It was positively riveting at the beginning but not so much in the end. I think it has to do with the effects that the plot twists have on me, personally. So many reviews out there talk about unexpected twists but for me, it played out exactly as I had expected given the advantage of reading many character’s POVs.

Nevertheless, The Woman in Our House is an outstanding title due to Andrew Hart’s writing with his speciality of luminous vocabulary, that is so eloquent in describing thoughts and feelings.

I really enjoyed this book. It was obvious from early on that Oaklynn was not all she seemed but uncovering the why was intriguing. It builds to a dramatic climax towards the end, full of tension and suspense. I'll definitely look out for more from the author in the future.

As with most books on NetGalley, this book is a great read. Captivating and intriguing. Thematically beautiful. Gorgeous writing.

This book looked great when I first saw it but now I am realizing it just wasn’t for me. I think that this will be great for many people but not for me at this time.

Received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

This started out strong, then they just mucked it up. There are too many subplots which makes me lose interest. A book shouldn’t be about the authors personal political views. There are too many holes in the story too, who hires a nanny without meeting her?

"The Woman in Our House" by Andrew Hart is a solid, entertaining thriller. It tells a story of a young married couple with two young children. After years of caring for her children Anna wants to go back to work, so she searches for a nanny. Her husband supports her in this decision. He cannot much help her himself as he is pursuing a successful career and earning money to support family. Anna selects a nanny, that seems to be perfect for their needs and they decide that she should live in the house with the family. At the beginning everything runs smoothly, but then Anna starts to be suspicious about the perfect nanny. There is some strangeness in her behaviour and Anna becomes convinced she plans to hurt the children. But is it really the nanny, that is a true threat to their family, or should Anna look elsewhere?  

There were many twists and turns in this book. The whole time I was interested in what would happen next and felt compelled to keep reading, which is always a good sign. I wasn’t happy with how a young mother was portrayed in a book. Anna felt guilty about “abandoning” children to go back to work and she let her guilt run wild. She was extremely neurotic. Honestly, it was hard to believe that a woman who took care of her young ones for such a long time, later when the nanny came was completely clueless and was panicking all the time. It also seemed unrealistic that Anna was taking care of the children for such a long time on her own, with no one she could call to support her. There are also persons in the book with hurtful, racist convictions and it was disturbing. I understand that such persons exist and the author decided to make them evil characters in the story, but at the same time, I didn’t enjoy reading about their hateful ramblings. 

To sum up, it was a well-written psychological thriller and although some parts bothered me, it was a good read. I would recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers.        

I received "The Woman in Our House" from the publisher via NetGalley. I would like to thank the author and the publisher for providing me with the advance reader copy of the book.

2 stars. 

TL;DR: 
Plot: Meh, would have been more interesting had it gone an alternate route
Characters: Not terrible but no major connection and uninspiring twists
Writing: Mediocre- dragged at times 

I was actually pretty excited for a short while by where I thought the story was going. I may be in the minority but I actually didn't care for the plot twist. It removed a great deal of the "creep factor". There was one scene where Anna climbs into the attic that was truly terrifying and I thought that the novel would have excelled more had it followed where that scene pointed. 

Pros:
-interesting subplot with Anna reading a manuscript
-some creepy potential (even though it ultimately slipped away)

Cons:
-disappointing ending
-too long and too slow
-just ok writing

This book just isn't for me. I DNF'ed at 33%. I was just sooo bored and there were so many subplots that really don't add anything to the suspense (if it had any) of the book. This book is sold as a thriller and suspenseful but at no point did I feel thrilled or full of suspense. It just isn't working for me.

Hmm, I am indifferent about this one. I can’t really say too much without spoiling it for others. I can say there were parts I enjoyed and then parts not so much. 

Thank you Netgalley for the Arc in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own and are completely unbiased.

~ www.roxtao.com ~

Every time when I finish a book and go to GoodReads to mark it as read, I throw a quick glance over the first reviews that show up. This time, when I did it, I was surprised in a negative way by how much people complained about this book, even if they did give it a decent rating. From what I briefly saw, most of the people complain about too many details and too many lines followed by the author, instead of concentrating only on one of the characters. I don’t think I ever had such a different impression about a book compared to the general opinion shared by most of the reviewers.

Personally, I enjoyed every step of the story, every detail shared and in no way I found the book being uselessly elongated. I mentioned before, I’m very far from being that type of the reader that turns into a detective in order to solve the mystery before the writer will reveal it. On the contrary, I enjoy staying clueless during the whole reading and letting myself get surprised by the turn of events in the end. Therefore, I remained in the darkness for the entire storyline and I loved the change of perspectives, the different points of view and the small pieces of the puzzle that the author places along the book.

I loved how distorted the image of the characters becomes from a chapter to another, how Andrew Hart manages to manipulate you into trusting whatever he wants you to believe. All characters , from the protagonists to the secondary ones are complex, all of them show you different sides of their personality, all of them seem to have something dark to hide and some hidden reasons for their suspicious actions. You never know when the roles will change, when one of the less important characters will take over the scene and become maybe the main ones that influence the course of the story.

One more big plus of the story is the fact that it reveals from the very beginning one of the details that you would have expected to discover much later. Despite this, there’s never a boring page, the novel keeps you hooked from the first to the last page.

If there’s one thing that disappointed me a bit, it was the last chapter, after the big mystery has already been revealed. I thought that everything seemed rushed in a way, like things ended somewhat too easily after such a tensioned atmosphere that was built just before it. I got the feeling that the author created everything necessary for a huge explosion, even took the first steps to start in, only to end it in just a few, timid sparks instead. But even if I wasn’t the biggest fan of the last few pages, overall, The Woman In Our House was definitely a great reading, which I enjoyed with every page I turned.

Anna and Josh Klein are one of those couples from New York, who’ve done exceedingly well with their careers.  So when Josh gets an opportunity to take an even higher position with his financial company out in Charlotte, and Anna has just found out she’s expecting their first child, the timing seems perfect to move to a more family-friendly area.  After Anna has their second daughter, however, she starts to yearn to go back to her career as a literary agent---working with adults and reading more than just nursery rhymes.  In steps “Nurture,” a company out in Utah that specializes in placing Mormon nannies in homes----the perfect answer to everything.  But is Anna’s nanny too perfect?  And when her children start needing to go to urgent care for various ailments, Anna needs to understand if this is simply “what children go through,” or if it’s something more sinister.  Although I felt some of this book was a bit of a stretch (especially toward the end), it didn’t stop me from flipping those pages, staying up way past my bedtime to read more.   Great suspense that keeps you guessing right to the end.

3.5 Stars
NOTE:  Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

*thank you to Netgalley, Lake Union Publishing and Andrew Hart for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*


4 stars.

Ohh wow that was such an engaging read! That ending was pretty intense and it has a bit of a twist as well that I did not see coming. If you are considering hiring a Nanny I would suggest watching the 90s TV series, 'The Nanny' than reading this book. 

Anna is a full time mum who is wanting to get back into work life after having a few years off to look after her two little daughters. But she realises that she's going to need some help with that since her husband, Josh, also already works full-time. So Anna and Josh decide to hire a nanny from Utah as it was recommended to Anna by a friend that that's the best place to get an amazing Nanny. Oaklynn arrives and it starts off with things going pretty well. She seems to fit in pretty perfectly. You know that saying, 'Too good to be true' well that applies here. As soon things start to happen to the girls, injuries and sickness that  causes them to end up in emergency ward, Anna becomes paranoid that the new Nanny might be doing more harm than good.

I can't say that I really liked Anna but I didn't not like her, which leaves me in a bit of a strange place with how I feel about her as a character. Josh, well he was ok. He seemed to be a caring family man but I also don't have much of an opinion on him either. We also get to meet a neighbour/friend of Anna and Josh called Mary Beth. And gosh is she a piece of work! It's so easy to see that that chick has definite strong anger issues. She does make for one entertaining read though and I would have liked more from her but she wasn't really part of the main focus of this book. Thought there is a side story going on and she and Josh are apart of that. 

I would have to say that this is one creepy, story because of the fact that it could be a real story. It really could happen and that is pretty frightening. The story isn't what would call suspenseful but that ending surely was. I would recommend this.