The Ruining by Anna Collomore

The Ruining by Anna Collomore
"Annie Phillips is thrilled to leave her past behind and begin a shiny new life on Belvedere Island, as a nanny for the picture-perfect Cohen family. In no time at all, she falls in love with the Cohens, especially with Libby, the beautiful young matriarch of the family. Life is better than she ever imagined. She even finds romance with the boy next door.

All too soon cracks appear in Annie's seemingly perfect world. She's blamed for mistakes she doesn't remember making. Her bedroom door comes unhinged, and she feels like she's always being watched. Libby, who once felt like a big sister, is suddenly cold and unforgiving. As she struggles to keep up with the demands of her new life, Annie's fear gives way to frightening hallucinations. Is she tumbling into madness, or is something sinister at play?"- summary from Amazon

I really liked this book. I have seen some mixed reviews of it (one of which led me to an awesome blog- David Reviews!), but I enjoyed it. I had problems stopping and just wanted to keep reading until I got to the end. I would read so many pages in one sitting.

Throughout the book, I was trying to figure out if Annie was being an unreliable narrator, or if Libby was really being manipulative and/or just plain crazy, thus making Annie doubt herself. It was a nice twisty tale, keeping me on my toes. I did have a suspicion about the reveal way before it happened, but there were still some parts of it I wasn't sure about until they actually came to light. It was a crazy ending and while it did seem to end a bit abruptly and too neatly tied up, I liked it.

The romance was a bit one-dimensional; the guy would kinda come and go throughout the novel, and we never really saw much of him. He just seemed too perfect, especially his promise in the end. But it's such a small aspect of the book that I don't mind it that much.

Anyway, this book is definitely worth a look. It's not an amazing book, but it really provided some great entertainment for a few days.

FTC: Received e-galley from Netgalley. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.