Nightwatching | Review

Rating - ⭐⭐

"Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs.

She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.

In the suffocating darkness, the mother struggles to remain calm, to plan. Should she search for a weapon or attempt escape? But then she catches another glimpse of him. That face. That voice. And at once she knows her situation is even more dire than she’d feared, because she knows exactly who he is—and what he wants."

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Nightwatching is a standalone mystery thriller novel by Tracy Sierra.

When I read this book, I had only recently added it to my TBR. Theoretically, this sounded rather good as I rather enjoy home invasion plots such as The Strangers and Hush. Practically, though, the story ended up missing the mark, or rather all marks, for me.

It all came down to the writing for me. This book was giving me 'go girl, give us nothing.' For one, you end up diving straight into the deep end with no context. In fact, there was so little context and build-up that the synopsis gave me more information than the beginning of the story did.

Secondly, the story is written mostly introspectively, so you spend a lot of time in the mother's head. While that kind of perspective could be interesting given the right character, trying to follow along with a panicked character made the words flow less than elegantly - word vomit if you will. It made for a very disorienting journey that was hard to keep up with despite barely anything going on, which brings me to my next point.

Barely anything happened in this. While it is a bit tricky to pack a lot of plot into a home invasion, the right amount of action and suspense goes a long way. This didn't have any of that. Without spoiling anything, the mother does move around of bit, but there is a distinct lack of tension and chasing, which I think are essential for a plot like this. Again, the author instead decided to focus on the mother's thoughts, which I don't think was the right choice.

If you are looking for a good home invasion book with high tension that keeps you on the edge of your seat, maybe you should skip this one.