I picked this up because it is the Literally Dead Book Club pick for the month of April.
"Nightwatching" follows a mother one blizzarding evening as she is home alone with her two young children. She is awoken to a noise and quickly realizes that they are not alone in the house. Now, she is determined to get herself and her children to safety.
I ran the gambit of emotions during this book. I was scared of the intruder and what might happen to the children, I was angry that the main character was seemingly dismissed by everyone, and I was inspired by her love for her children, no matter what.
The book dragged a little bit for me in the beginning because the author chose to go into a lot of detail about what was happening with the intruder. I think for a lot of people this was probably an appealing aspect because it increases the anxiety of whether or not they will make it out of the house unscathed. However, for me, I just wanted to move on. I wanted to see the fallout of whether they made it out or not. I was very pleased to see the story progress forward.
This book really solidified for me how little I like cops as a general rule. They always seem so quick to dismiss women, and that was definitely the case for the mother in this book. I also HATED her father-in-law. There are a lot of themes of misogyny in this book that fueled the fire.
The mother is not a trained cop or detective, but she did her own investigating in a way that I think anyone would have given the circumstance. It was very believable how she investigated what truly happened, and whether or not the situation was solved.
I will definitely be picking up more from Tracy Sierra, and I highly recommend this book, just read it with the light on.