Thrilling Begins with the First Six Words and Doesn’t Stop Until the End

It starts with the first sentence “There was someone in the house.” A mom is alone during night’s darkest moments with her two young sleeping children when she hears someone on the steps. Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra, her debut novel, is a thriller, and in this book thrilling starts with the first six words, and continues unrelentingly, deliciously until the end. I did not want to set this book aside for any reason, and read it within a two day period. I hardly highlighted , as I didn’t want to slow the pace.

Murders, attempted and completed happen everyday, most often the victim knows the killer. Have you ever met a murderer? How would you know if you had? We cross paths with many on any given day, and sometimes get a bad vibe from an interaction, or an inner voice cries a warning. Would you heed your concerns, or ignore them as did others around you? If your young children claimed a man was watching them, from their bedside and a nearby maple tree, unable to confirm their stories, it would be easy to dismiss them as childish imaginations working overtime. If you misplace an object in your home, but locate it later, would you think a stranger had moved it, or you simply forgot where you’d left it in the active crush of parenting two toddlers? 

Once you find yourself in the throes of danger, trapped and hiding without your cellphone, how do you summon help? What do you do if the very people charged with investigating think you’re lying, practically mocking your concerns for the future, your children’s safety, they say there’s no evidence. Every police interview makes you wonder if you’re going crazy. You’ve had a lot of recent stress, do you trust what you know in the face of unconcerned authorities, when memory is muddled by trauma and wounding? Can you make a plan to defend the ones you love most? If you do, will you have the guts to carry it out in the face of terror? This book has it all.