Medium – Book
About the Book – Lexi Ellis is at the end of her tether. Struggling with depression and anxiety, one day she decides to take her own life but is found just in time by her friend. When she leaves hospital, she is dumped by her boyfriend, chucked out of his house and she steals his railcard. As she travels from one end of the country to the other on the train, she hears a girl talking about a nannying job that she may apply for in Norway. Wanting to get out of her life, Lexi steals the girl’s details, and applies for the job. She arrives in Norway to find a grieving widower, Tom Faraday and two traumatised children. Their mother has apparently committed suicide, but there are dark stories of Norwegian monsters and whispers of a curse on the family.
My Rating – 5/5
My Thoughts – The Nesting is not a book I would have picked up myself as a read. From the blurb, it’s a bit too much of a thriller/horror for my slightly wimpy self. But it came as part of a crime fiction book box I had been gifted by a friend, so I thought I would have a go at it! And I am absolutely chuffed that I did, because I loved it. The book is set in the present and past – the present part is told in first-person by Lexi, the past in the third person centred around the wife of Tom and mother of the two girls, Aurelia. The narration style is completely relatable – there’s pop culture references and plenty of references to things in UK life (like Waitrose, Tesco and primary school). Lexi’s part of the book in particular reads well, and she was a character I completely believed in, and really liked by the end of the book.
The storyline is interesting – it starts off quite natural and normal (a little Jane Eyre-ish with the middle class daddy and his children) and then becomes more of a ghost story, with sightings of the Sad Lady who haunts the house. The Norwegian housekeeper tells Lexi of the folk creatures/monsters who come after those damaging the land – which is exactly what Tom and his company are doing as they try and build a beautiful new house on the site of Aurelia’s death. It’s creepy, exciting and thrilling, and is a book that I would definitely read again. The integration of the Norwegian folk tales feels right. Sometimes at the end of these sorts of books there is a perfectly rational explanation to the goings-on, which can feel a bit of a let down but (SPOILER) this doesn’t happen in this book…
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