If you are after a terrifying, edge of your seat thriller that will keep you up at night, look no further than NIGHTWATCHING (Penguin 2024), the debut psychological crime novel by Tracy Sierra. Gripping, atmospheric, challenging and mesmerising, this book is full of suspense, intrigue, terror, tenderness and determination.
The first half of the book occurs over only a few hours – the tension is unbearably hypnotic. We fully believe the narrator, until we don’t. Until we begin to doubt her account. But then the police, neighbours, her husband, even her own small children provide such wildly disparate and vehemently contradictory inconsistencies that we swing back to believing the narrator until by the end, we are so discombobulated we don’t know who or what to believe.
The premise is simple. Home alone with her two very young children, during a blizzard, a mother (the narrator) hears an unfamiliar noise. Her children are tucked into bed. Her house is old and creaky; it often makes weird sounds. But this is different. There is someone else in the house. She is sure of it. Footsteps, coming up the stairs.
She has three choices: run, fight or hide. None seem ideal, especially with the kids to consider, the freezing temperatures outside, her lack of confidence (gradually and seamlessly incorporated through her backstory) and the nightmares she herself has about just such an incident. What does she choose?
You will have to read the book to find out. But I guarantee NIGHTWATCHING will send shivers up your spine and cause you to look around corners. Set in similar weather conditions to Ashley Kalagian Blunt’s COLD TRUTH, this story is brutal, unforgiving and tortuous. However, it is also a demonstration of a mother’s love for her children, her determination to protect them, and her capacity to endure – and to inflict – fear that she would not have thought possible.