Nanny Needed

I’m not opposed to the occasional ride on a literary crazy train.  That said, this one requires a LOT of just going along for the ride and not asking questions, and for most of the ride, I didn’t want to get off. 

Sarah Larsen is a 26-year-old up to her eyeballs in debt after shouldering the medical bills of her now deceased Aunt Clara, who raised her after the death of her parents when she was five.  She’s waitressing alongside her supportive live-in fiance, Jonathan, as they struggle to make ends meet and save up for their eventual wedding.  When she sees a man post a flyer in their apartment foyer seeking a nanny for a family living in a swanky area of NYC, she sees her opportunity to get out of the financial mess she’s in.  

As can be predicted, this is only the beginning of a MUCH bigger mess she’ll find herself in. For the record, this is the part where the crazy train pulls up to the station …

I don’t want to go into the plot any further, because there’s no good way to do so without spoilers.  All I can say is that, as my friend and fellow reviewer, Michelle, pointed out, you’ll probably see the initial reveal coming a mile away, and I’m not sure the author, Georgina Cross, was really trying to mask it.  I think it was more of an intentional ‘easing into the unease’ of what’s to come, because things get just plain weird from that point out.  

I enjoyed the bizarre direction the story took and I seriously didn’t want to put the book down.  Chapter after chapter, I kept going, waiting eagerly for the big reveals that were sure to come, enjoying my ride on the train and savoring each scene I was looking at.  

That is ... until the train, which was SO tantalizingly close to our final blissful destination, made an unexpected stop at the Sillyville Station, where apparently Farmer Jenkins and all the other Scooby-Doo villains, whose confessional trope so many of us despise, got on board and encouraged one of this book’s characters to try out their own eye-rolling confessional.

NOOOOOOOO. Why? Why? Whyyyyyy?  I hate them.  I’ll always hate them. Ugh. So disappointing.  

The final reveal was pretty cool, if you’re willing to suspend (or just utterly destroy) disbelief, and I like where things end up with Sarah, so all was not lost at the end.  All in all, I liked the book and would recommend it, but next time I’m getting a non-stop ticket to my destination!

So, my rating for 90% of the book is a 4, my rating for the last 10% is a 2.5, so for now I’ll settle on 3.5 and see how I feel in a couple days.

★★★ ½  (rounded down to 3)

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Bantam, NetGalley and author Georgina Cross for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.  It’s due to be published October 5, 2021.