The Perfect Nanny
By Leila Slimani, Sam Taylor (Translated by)
Penguin Books, 9780143132172, 2018, 240pp.

The Short of It:

This is a one-sitting read.

The Rest of It:

Myriam is offered a job at a law office, doing what she loves and misses, but what about her two young children? After having her son, she pretty much removed the topic of work from the conversation but the everyday routine of kids, house, errands, with little mental stimulation if any, begins to tear at her sanity. While talking to her husband about the opportunity, the possibility of a nanny comes up. Could that work?

No. It couldn’t possibly work. Who would be able to spend all that time with the children, raise them well, AND take care of all the other stuff too? Louise, that’s who. Louise is perfect. She’s tidy, a natural organizer, efficient, reliable to a fault, and she does what many do not. She plays with the children. She gets them. Understands their wants and moods and more importantly, she understands their parents too. She is the envy of all the other families at the park because she is too good to be true.

Let that sink in. Too good to be true.

As perfect as Louise is, everyone has a breaking point and Louise’s is very subtle at first. Her backstory gives you just enough to know that Louise wasn’t always perfect and things were not always storybook worthy. This little bit of info is enough to have you flipping the pages because from the very first line, you learn that things go terribly wrong.

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I did not expect to be sucked into the story so quickly but that opening line! I was supposed to be reading this with a friend but once I started, I just kept going. All that said, the ending was a bit of a shock. I seriously need to talk to someone who has read it.

If you need a book to escape into, this is it. Another blogger just pointed out to me that this is based on a 2012 case. REAL events. Wow.

Source: Borrowed
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