‘Nanny Dearest’ by Flora Collins

Published by Quercus,
15 September 2022.
ISBN: 978-1-52941-783-8 (PB)

Sue Keller is grieving. Knocked flat by it, in fact. Her father died suddenly a few months ago, and they were devoted to each other, especially after her mother died of cancer when she was a small child. Then, purely by chance, she meets Anneliese, who was her nanny all those years ago when both parents were very much alive. But Anneliese disappeared from Sue’s life, and she never knew why.

Sue is desperate to connect with someone now her father is gone, and she and Anneliese become almost inseparable. Sue quits her job, starts to spend most of her time in the apartment Anneliese shares with her sister’s family, and even takes charge of the sister’s children during school holidays. It’s a situation any devotee of psychological thrillers will recognize as one which is sure to end in tears when the buried secrets start to surface.  

It’s a debut novel, but you’d never know it. The structure is handled deftly, interleaving Sue’s view in the here and now with Anneliese’s twenty years ago, well-paced and with a final showdown bristling with tension. The characters are sharp and distinct. In Anneliese’s chapters, Sue’s father is bemused, a little inept; her mother is spiky, a career woman, but affectionate. Twenty years on, Sue herself is vulnerable, suggestible when she is felled by grief, but shows a tougher core as she recovers. Anneliese is all sweetness and light in both time frames, and adores Sue from the start, but there’s more to her than meets the eye. The author is just as astute with minor characters: Beth the cynical but loyal friend, Gavin the supportive ex, even the cab driver who drives Sue to the final scenes.  

She’s equally at home with locations: the beautiful lakeside home where Sue spends her early years; her tiny, messy studio apartment in New York, and the neat, spacious one where Anneliese and her family live.

Naturally it does all end in tears – that’s hardly a spoiler in a novel of this kind. But how they arrive at that point is achieved with a skill and delicacy that augurs well for this talented first-time author. Read it; you’ll see what I mean.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Flora Collins was born and raised in New York City and has never left, except for a four-year stint at Vassar College. When she's not writing, she can be found watching reality shows that were cancelled after one season or attempting to eat soft-serve ice cream in bed (sometimes simultaneously). Nanny Dearest is her first novel and draws upon personal experiences from her own family history.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.