Lexi has reached bottom. After a suicide attempt and stay in the hospital, her boyfriend of eight years tosses her out with no money and no where to stay. Lexi uses his train pass to have somewhere to go and fate intervenes. She overhears two women talking about a job opportunity in Norway taking care of two children. The woman with the job application isn’t sure she wants to go, but Lexi is. She copies the job application and submits it right there on the train.
She gets the job and in some respects it’s wonderful. She falls in love with the two little girls, Gaia and Coco, but something seems off about the house. Tom, the father and a well known architect, is building his version of an ecologically friendly house to honor his dead wife, Aurelia. However, Lexi begins to wonder whether Aurelia committed suicide, or whether she was murdered.
Although the story starts with too much coincidence for my taste, it improves when Lexi gets to Norway. The characters in the house are suitably odd from Maren, the housekeeper devoted to Aurelia, to Clive, Tom’s business partner, and his strange spiritual wife, Derry. The children are wonderful. Their interactions with Lexi are a welcome contrast to the apparently supernatural happenings.
The atmosphere of the book is suitably dark with fairy tales, Nordic legends, and the diary of the dead woman. The story is told from multiple viewpoints and time periods, but it’s easy to follow and the various perspectives add depth to the story. If you enjoy spooky thrillers, this is a good one.
I received this book from Net Gallery for this review.
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