Review: The Caretakers

Title: The Caretakers

Author: Eliza Maxwell

Publisher: 14th April 2020 by Lake Union Publishing

Pages: 318 pages

How I Read It: ARC book

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Suspense

My Rating: 3.5 cups

Synopsis:

In the isolated estate she’s found the perfect getaway. But there’s no escaping the past in this chilling novel from the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl.

Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended.

She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa’s mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That’s when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge.

A crumbling monument to a gruesome history, the mansion has been abandoned by all but two elderly sisters retained as caretakers. They are also guardians of all its mysteries. As the house starts revealing its dark secrets, Tessa must face her fears and right the wrongs of her past to save herself and her relationship with Margot. But nothing and no one at Fallbrook are what they seem.

My Thoughts

The Caretakers is a dual time narrative moving back and forth from present day to the early 1900s, centreing around a mansion named, ‘Fallbrook’. There is much to appreciate here ... an old run down house surrounded by mystery and intrigue with a startlingly history. Add into that mix sisters and forgiveness, secrets and revenge with an inheritance and this novel has much going for it. 

‘Fallbrook. Whatever name it goes by, the house, what’s left of it, and its elderly caretakers, have made an impression on Tessa. She drives back to the bed-and-breakfast on autopilot, replaying the sights and sounds, the feel of the place, in her mind.’

At first the two timelines do not appear connected - Tessa in the present and her self doubt over a false imprisonment story, to that of two sisters, the ‘caretakers’ of Fallbrook - now in a much dilapidated state. How the two timelines (reflective flashbacks to when the two sisters were young) come together is quite clever and definitely dramatic. It takes a little while to get there, but when the two stories begin to make sense, it is engaging reading. It becomes suspenseful writing with a gripping story that has a few unexpected plot twists. 

‘She can’t accept a world where right and wrong don’t matter. A good person wouldn’t have taken out his rage on an innocent woman, no matter how much injustice the world served up.’

The issue I had with the story is that there were a few too many characters and subplots that took away from the overall essence of the tale. Fewer elements, described in greater detail may have been beneficial.  The writing was good with twists and turns and a somewhat dramatic climax - maybe a little overdone in places with lucky coincidences; and major characters well executed - excepting a few stereotypical additions.

Overall, despite there being a lot going on that can get a little bogged down and confusing at times, this is a suspenseful read that kept me going to the very end. 

‘... somewhere along the way, amid the injustice and the broken promises and the devastating losses, a good man had turned bad. If that was true, then good and bad—right and wrong—they lost all meaning.’

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.