I did not like this book. Part of it is that I suspect domestic thrillers aren't my genre, possibly because the premise seems very conservative? This is the second year in a row Canada Reads book about middle-class white people has been pitched as "relatable," and the second year in a row where I'm not convinced any human person has ever acted like either of the point of view characters.

Basically, a young woman gets kicked out of her house and becomes a live-in nanny, but something is wrong. In one timeline, the nanny tries to work out what's going on, and the other the wife in the household has a massive trauma reaction to whatever shit went down with the nanny. Which we don't find out about until the last chapter, of course. I admit I'm not currently in the mood for emotionally and financially vulnerable nannies, given recent court cases, so that didn't help. But even without being accidentally topical, it's just a weird weird story, where I didn't feel like I was pinging with the emotional reactions the book wanted from me. The twist at the end was very silly.

Also, are the straights okay? Do we know? Has anyone checked in on them recently? Specifically, the wife is fascinated by the twenty-something nanny, to the point of taking pictures of her while she's sleeping, and while she's nude, and constantly thinking about how pretty she is. But there's never any question of sexual tension between them? Instead it's like "the mother I never had" from the nanny, who also thinks a lot about how the wife looks. I'd have enjoyed this at least 60% more if it was some sort of dark sapphic situation, but alas.