As a book takes me on a journey I find myself wondering where I am going, what’s going to happen next, if I can figure it out too early I sometimes lose interest. With The Au Pair I was kept guessing, kept peeking around the corners waiting for the next clue, and kept turning page after page until I ran out of pages. One picture can change the entire dynamic of a family. It can open doors that are much better kept shut; it can bring up questions that should never be asked. But once that door is open it can never be shut again. Seraphina starts questioning everything that she once knew to be true and starts unweaving the story of her life. With each string, she pulls she finds another story that doesn’t quite fit. The dual timelines and the twists and turns kept me reading, kept me up at night reading, and makes this a 5-star book. It is everything it was promised to be and more. There were amazing characters, wonderful settings, twisted stories, family dynamics to figure out, and so much more.

After her beloved father has died, Seraphine Mayes digs into her family’s history. When she finds a photograph of her mother, her older brother Edwin and one baby, she is astonished: it must have been taken on the day of her birth, but which one is the baby? Seraphine or her twin brother Danny? And why does the mother look so happy, only hours before she committed suicide? The photo must have been taken by the au pair who was then looking for Edwin, a certain Laura. When the young woman starts her search for the former babysitter, memories of rumours surrounding her family home Summerbourne also come back to her mind: why did everybody in the small village always say that twins do not survive in that house? When Seraphine tracks down Laura and tries to contact her, she inadvertently sets in motion a series of events. Emma Rous’ mystery starts as a simply family story and then develops into a suspenseful crime novel. The story is told alternatingly between Seraphine’s search for Laura and the latter’s experiences as an au pair 25 years before. Two young women full of distress who cannot foresee what they run into. The plot is carefully crafted and to sort out the complex connections takes some time thanks to unexpected twists and turns. “The Au Pair” clearly lives on the two protagonists. I liked both of them dearly, Seraphine’s stubbornness is quite convincing, she does not give up even when being threatened, actually this only spurs her curiosity and fervour to uncover the events surrounding her birth. On the other hand, Laura had to flee from her evil stepfather and tries to regain control over her life. Both women are created multifacetedly, especially their relationships are complicated which makes them authentic and believable. Apart from the characters, I especially liked the atmosphere of the novel and the spooky tales that circle around the two family homes which give you the impression of old gothic homes which have some secrets buried that are never meant to come to the light.

The Au Pair is told through the alternating perspectives of Laura (the Mayes family’s Au Pair) in the run up to Seraphine and her twin brother’s birth in 1991, and a now grown up Seraphine in the present day timeline. I sometimes get really frrustated with alternating perspectives and timelines, because one tends to be enjoyable when the other is insufferable. But that didn’t happen here - I felt Rous captured a healthy balance between both protagonists, where Seraphine was connecting the dots of the mystery, whilst Laura was casting them in the past. However, I will say like many other bookworms have pointed out, the believability is a little tricky... but it didn’t change how much I enjoyed this. The use of alternating perspectives and time periods really give quite a striking feel in the story’s climax. Seraphine is the kind of character, as a a reader, I immediately root for. I enjoyed the challenges she was up against: an uncooperative grandmother, as well as siblings, and dead ends because of deceased relatives. These obstacles made me want her to succeed in uncovering any long lost truths. And I also liked the use of folklore and changelings to provide an eerie undercurrent to the mystery. What made The Au Pair enjoyable was the family dynamics of the Mayes family. There was family drama about issues of who the golden child was, inheritance issues, marital and sibling squabbling... some of this was really relatable to life, which made Seraphine and her siblings all the more likeable. And everything else drama wise, ensures I’d keep turning the pages to find out what really happened (all the while I got my popcorn at the ready!) The Au Pair is a story about a family’s dirty laundry being uncovered, that quickly becomes a page turner, to get to the bottom of everything. I would recommend it, especially as a book to read in one go. Although, I would warn if you’re the type of bookworm that can’t hack plots where everything and everyone is conveniently timed, The Au Pair might irk you. However, if you can take such plots with a grain of salt in a fun way, then The Au Pair is well worth picking up. I’ll keep an eye out for what the author writes next :) P.s. if you liked this book then you should look at Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs Westaway, and vice versa.

They say lies make for a tangled web but I don’t think I was prepared for the knotted mess that this story played out to be. This tale was carefully plotted out with a cluster of circumstances that were crazy good reading. Told in past and present and through two main POVs of Laura and Seraphine, the story was narrated. In the past, the story focused on Ruth and Dominic, a married couple, their friend Alex, their au pair, their son, Ruth’s mother….I could go on. The tale in the present focused on Ruth and Dominic’s children, trying to find the truth behind events 25 years ago. It was everything intruiging and the author cleverly drip-fed information on a need to know basis. From early on in the story, I was guessing, this and that. In the long run, I made some good guesses, some that I went on to disregard actually turned out to be founded in some truth. The story built and built with dramatic but believable turns, culminating in the past and present clashing in a revealing way. THE AU PAIR was a well-written suspense, leading the reader on in semi-darkness but making it almost impossible to put the book down. I felt satisfied in the culmination and I would definitely read Emma Rous again. Highly recommended.

Goodreads description : A grand estate, terrible secrets, and a young woman who bears witness to it all. If V. C. Andrews and Kate Morton had a literary love child, Emma Rous’ The Au Pair would be it... what a description to live up to! I was fortunate enough to receive a free digital edition of this book in exchange for an honest review, which was super as it was picked by my book club members as our current book to read! Summerbourne is a grand house set on the brooding Norfolk coast. The story takes place over two split timeline narratives, one in the past focusing on the family occupying the home and the viewpoint of the nanny Laura, and the second present day featuring the children of Summerbourne as grown up adults, unearthing mysteries of their family legacy from the viewpoint of Sephy the oldest daughter, who discovers an old photograph following the death of her father that leads to questions about just who is in the photo and why there are no pictures of the twins together. It's an interesting book and as a debut novel was one that was able to really set a vivid narrative which drew you in to the story. The characters of the family are well defined, each with their own quirks, but I do think you lost a sense of who Edwin became and who Danny ever was in the latter part of the story. I enjoyed the 'earlier' aspects of the novel more, it felt more crafted and thought through. I do wish however that there was more information on what happened at the end to the grandmother Vera and the outcome of her situation, at times it felt convenient to use her as a plot device, yet in the early stages of the novel she was the character that most intrigued me, a Glen Close character if this book ever got optioned for screen! All in all, a well crafted debut novel, perhaps a bit long winded and lacked the killer punch, but a good read.