Lizzy Barber

If books with a strong sense of foreboding set in a sprawling mansion peopled with unreliable characters are your bag then Nanny Wanted has all of those things in spades.

Lily flees London for Cornwall and the home of the Rowe family after seeing an advert for a nanny. Her reasons for fleeing become apparent as the story progresses but Lily is looking for somewhere where she doesn't have to look over her shoulder all the time. Enter Kewney Manor and Laurie and Charles Rowe, with their children, Bess and Edward. However, what seems like a haven soon starts to make Lily feel ill at ease. Laurie seems fragile, Charles effortlessly charming, but is anyone what they seem?

Nanny Wanted is a claustrophobic and intense story of a young woman becoming embroiled in things that she knows nothing about. It's character-driven and taut with intrigue. A house like Kewney Manor has plenty of dark corners and shady attics, and the house holds its own secrets, although not quite as many as its inhabitants.

Nanny Wanted is a gothic thriller with all the hallmarks of Daphne du Maurier (Lily, working her way through the author's works in the library, would no doubt agree) and Lizzy Barber excels at conveying a sense of unease throughout.… (plus d'informations)

Told from now and 21 years prior, which you learn someone has died early on. Rachel obsessed over Diana and thought their friendship was real and pure. This friendship is quite toxic and has left Rachel for 21 years a bit off her rocker, while Diana celebrates life as there is no tomorrow.

I found this suspenseful, however, it was a slow burn and there weren’t enough twists that kept me interested tbh. The end was a little odd and it was definitely a twist, but I have no idea what to believe.

Thanks to htpbooks and Hachetteaudio for the gifted copy in exchange for my honest opinion.… (plus d'informations)

Quite the page turner until you get to 96% and realise that with only 4% to go, unless there's going to be a spectacular twist, it's not going to end quite as you expect/hope.

Barber is a till-now-unread-by-me author, and I think I found her style and writing competence a lot more compelling than the actual story. The main protagonist, Rachel, is weak and a bit pathetic, the two other important characters are utterly ghastly: both rich and self-entitled, one a toxic bitch, the other just a user of people. It was hard to even like the victim of it all.

The sultry heat of the Tuscan countryside provides a beautiful backdrop, but it wasn't enough for me to get to The End with satisfaction. There are a lot of loose ends.

Will I read more of Barber? Very definitely, but just one little niggle: a quote from the Acknowledgements: "This book would be nowhere without my marvellous agent." Not quite right. Your book, dear author, would be nowhere without readers. But the reader doesn't get a mention. Not one.… (plus d'informations)

Lizzy Barber's suspense novel Out of Her Depth opens with a sentence that will entice you to keep reading-
"Before you judge me, remember this: a girl died, and it wasn't my fault."
Rachel is teaching French and Italian at a private girls' school when a BBC News alert flashes across her phone that a man's criminal appeal is proceeding that evening. What does this have to do with the first sentence of the story?

The story moves back in time to when Rachel was an ambitious high school student. Her Italian teacher reaches out to an old friend, a countessa who has a villa in Tuscany that she has turned into a pensione. Although she would be working as a maid, Rachel would be escaping to beautiful Florence for the summer.

The work was not easy, but when Rachel meets another maid named Diana, Rachel becomes "intoxicated with her, almost from the very moment, an intensity of feeling that perhaps blinded me to her other faults." Unlike Rachel, Diana comes from the same wealthy class as most of the villa's guests.

Rachel also falls for Sebastian, a neighbor of the Contessa's. Sebastian is charming and handsome and he seems to like Rachel as well. Diana encourages Rachel, telling Rachel that she would help her win Sebastian's affections.

But Diana is not the friend that Rachel believes her to be. As the summer moves along, Rachel finds herself doing Diana's work as well as her own, and being seduced by the lifestyle of her new friends, a lifetyle she cannot afford.

The story moves back and forth in time, and we read on waiting to discover who was the girl who died and if it wasn't Rachel's fault, whose fault was it? Rachel seems to be unraveling in the present time, looking for answers, and perhaps absolution, for what happened in Tuscany.

I enjoyed being immersed in Florence and Tuscan countryside. You could feel the sunshine on your face, and taste the cool gelato on your tongue. The story had a Gatsby-esque touch, with our narrator trying to explain the actions of these rich people. Lizzy Barber has the reader in the palm of her hand, right up to the shocking ending. If you are a fan of thrillers like The Girl on the Train, Out of Her Depth is one for you.

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on their Summer 2022 Mystery & Thriller Blog Tour.… (plus d'informations)