Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**4.5-stars**
Nightwatching is what nightmares are made of.
It was very good; disturbing in such a realistic way. It was told with such incredible intensity and was completely gripping. This author knows how to pull the Reader in.
It all begins on a cold Winter night, when a blizzard is raging outside the old farmhouse that a mother lives in with her two young children.
After retucking her son into bed, the Mom hears a noise she shouldn’t be hearing; heavy footsteps on the stairs. Quietly peeking down the long, dark hallway she spies the silhouette of a large man at the top of the stairs.
Pure fear rushes through her. She must protect her children.
As silently as possible, she gathers both children, along with a few comfort items and shepherds them to the oldest part of the house, where the hidden room is waiting to shield them from the intruder.
Climbing into the darkness of the tiny place, the mother must keep the children quiet and hope to wait out the evil lurking just outside the door.
I can’t tell you how truly horrifying this set-up is to think about. It’s actually one of my biggest fears and the way the author captured that sense of fear is amazing.
Those tense moments tucked in that secret room, trying to keep the children quiet, trying to keep herself from panicking, I honestly think my heart was racing just as fast as this Mom’s was.
While tucked in the hidden room, there are moments of quiet reflection, so we do get a glimpse through this Mom’s life and a background of her family.
Those moments, while slower and of less intensity than the present timeline, did add a nice reprieve from the scary bits, which I didn’t mind.
This went in an interesting direction that I wasn’t expecting and the author did make me question a lot of what I thought I knew. The gaslighting was off the charts.
For me personally, I felt the ending, or the way things wrapped up was a bit abrupt though. I could have enjoyed more time with these characters at the end.
There was so much build-up, to have the ending occur so suddenly, I guess it made the pace feel a little off. That’s 100% personal taste though. It’s definitely not that the author did anything wrong, and the conclusion did actually still give me chills.
I would recommend this to anyone looking for a tensely frightening Thriller. This type of scenario I feel is a fear for a lot of people, both in what occurred at the house, and the way the MC was treated in the aftermath.
Thank you to the publisher, Pamela Dorman Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I’m sorry it took me so long to get to this one. I am really looking forward to more from Tracy Sierra!