The Third Nanny by Michele Pariza Wacek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Janey is a young woman with a bright future, she is studying psychology and lives with her best friend in a shared apartment, all is going well in her life until one day when she receives a letter in the post, well, it used to be a letter, now it is just some fragments in a plastic bag from the post office with a note attached to it, it has been sent from a town called Redemption in Wisconsin. As she talks to her friend about it, she realises that she doesn’t know anyone in Redemption, however, she did spend summers there as a kid and she has no idea who it is from until she sees the signature at the bottom of a piece of the letter, it says “Kelly”.

This throws Janey into a state of panic as memories surface of a time eight years before when her sister went missing and abandoned her, as her friend gets her some water, Janey debates about what to tell her, eventually she settles on the truth and opens up about what happened and why is has affected her so much. As she talks, she realises that she wants nothing more than to find out why her sister left and why she has only reached out now, but she is also dealing with too many emotions to deal with it, so she avoids opening the letter for a couple of days. After she has had a couple of glasses of wine, together they put the letter together and read what has been saved and realising the urgency in the words, they decide on a plan and even though Janey wants nothing more than to set off to Redemption straight away, she also knows that they need to do some research before she does. It is at this point that they check out the address and the people who live there, this is where Janey finds a picture she swears is her sister, who is named as being their nanny and this convinces her that she needs to find her and that she is wasting time, so she sets off the next day to start putting the plan into action.

Janey starts by learning the routine of the household and determines how she can befriend the lady of the house so that she can find out more about her sister’s situation, over the following days she does just that and ends up managing to step into her sisters shoes as the third nanny. As she takes on the responsibilities associated with her new job while trying to juggle it with finding clues regarding her sisters whereabouts, she realises that things are not as they seem. Will Janey be able to figure out where her sister is, or will the household secrets take precedence and lead her investigations astray? This is a twisted and tangled web of secrets and lies which multiply leaving more questions than answers as this psychological thriller races along at breakneck speed while you hang on until the end.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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