The Au Pair by Emma Rous

About the book:

(from the publisher) If V. C. Andrews and Kate Morton had a literary love child, Emma Rous’ The Au Pair would be it.

Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny, were born in the middle of summer at their family’s estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle.

Now an adult, Seraphine mourns the recent death of her father. While going through his belongings, she uncovers a family photograph that raises dangerous questions. It was taken on the day the twins were born, and in the photo, their mother, surrounded by her husband and her young son, is smiling serenely and holding just one baby.

Who is the child, and what really happened that day?

Genre: Fiction/Women’s Fiction/Mystery/Suspense

If this were a movie, I’d rate it: PG-13

About the author:

Emma Rous is a Cambridge University graduate who spent eighteen years working as a veterinary surgeon. She is now writing full-time, and lives with her husband and three school-age sons.

My take:

Well, shoot. This is one of those novels that for me was a mismatch between expectations and execution. At the outset, it had so much going for it: an eerie setting, intriguing family mystery, dark secrets, and not just one but two leading female characters. Indeed, it started off well, drawing me immediately into the story as it layered new questions with tantalizing hints of what was to come.

But about halfway through, it lost steam for one main reason: credibility — or rather, lack thereof. I couldn’t get inside the characters’ feelings, and therefore the behaviors inspired by those feelings begged belief. I also had a hard time attaching malicious intent to the rumored “sprites” that had many of the characters so on edge. This could be partly due to a language or cultural miss, because to my mind, sprites have, if anything, a cheerful connotation and not an evil one. But as this was a pretty fundamental piece to the story, the premise seemed wobbly. But the bigger problem for me was yet to come as the big reveal included an element I simply did not believe. It could have worked if threads of it had been woven into the story’s fabric leading up to that point. But if the clues were there, I missed them.

One other little thing — and this is purely subjective: I wish the story had been set in the wintertime instead of the summer. I think the cover itself set me up for a different expectation there, but even apart from that, I feel the story might have had greater chill factor had it been given a wintry setting. However, on the positive side, despite its mature themes, it is a relatively clean read and includes a sweet line of romance, which is always a plus in my book.

Thanks to Berkley Books for providing me this book free of charge. All opinions are mine.

Buy it here. 

After words:

What are you looking forward to reading in the new year?