The Scare Salon

Overall, I quite liked this novel; it’s a harrowing, gripping read, and has all the requisite twists and turns, most of which I admit I saw coming. I did have some issues with the main character being almost unbelievably naïve and also a complete doormat; unfortunately, a lot of domestic thrillers have female protagonists like this, and even though I realize it’s somewhat true to life given the dynamics of abusive relationships, it does still make for a frustrating read, as the whole time you’re just screaming for the hapless woman to grow a spine already and stop letting everyone run roughshod over her boundaries at every opportunity.

Anyway, said protagonist in Don’t Let Her Stay is named Joanne. She’s in her early thirties, and used to work as an estate agent (or real estate agent as we’d say in the US; the book is set in the UK). It was in that line of work, in fact, that she met the much older man who would eventually become her husband. Richard is a wealthy financier, and a while ago, he was looking at houses with his then-fiancée, the beautiful Isabella. There was a whole thing where Richard and Joanne accidentally got locked into the basement of the property Joanne was showing, and long story short, Isabella ended up leaving Richard, Richard called Joanne up for a date, and after a whirlwind romance, the pair got hitched. They also recently had a baby named Evie, who I think is about eight months old at the beginning of the story.

Richard has purchased a massive house for his family that’s out in the country, and Joanne has quit work to become a stay-at-home mom, convincing herself that she now has the life she always wanted. A girl named Roxanne comes to the house every so often to clean, and there’s the standard-issue hot gardener named Simon who takes care of the grounds, but other than that, Joanne is pretty much on her own, especially since Richard is in the middle of establishing a new business venture and is supposedly always working.

So Joanne is a little bit bored, as you might imagine, and she’s also fairly insecure about herself since she feels she doesn’t look her best after birthing an infant and caring for her all day every day. She gets the idea to call up her colleagues at her old company and offer to work from home for them a couple of days a week just to have something to do, and they readily agree to this plan. When she tells Richard that she’s going to be working from home part time, he doesn’t seem offended exactly, but you can tell he doesn’t really like it.

Yeah, so about Richard. Even though he makes a big show of telling Joanne that he only wants her to be happy, he is very clearly a gaslighting shitwhistle with a tendency to flip the fuck out when things don’t go his way. He’s not physically abusive, but he often belittles Joanne, low-key makes fun of her, or downplays her concerns, and every now and then when she tells him something he doesn’t want to hear, he flies into a rage that he later apologizes for. Every single person reading this book will be painfully aware that Richard sucks, but Joanne just doesn’t seem to see it, making excuses for him at every turn and minimizing his actions. Again, this is accurate to how a lot of victims of domestic abuse behave, but when you’re reading about it and Joanne is just blithely talking about how awesome her husband is when he is very obviously not, it just kinda makes you want to shake her. I think I brought up a similar point when I was discussing another recent domestic thriller, The Warning by A.J. Wills, whose protagonist was similarly frustrating and clueless when it came to her terrible husband.

Anyway, Richard has a twenty-year-old daughter named Chloe from a previous marriage to a woman named Diane. Diane died tragically when Chloe was only eleven; Chloe was there and saw the whole thing, and the girl had some problems during her teenage years because of it. Richard has been wanting Chloe back in his life, but she doesn’t seem interested; she actually cut communication with her father completely after Richard married Joanne two years ago. Chloe was even invited to their wedding, but didn’t show up. Joanne seems just as disappointed in the estrangement as Richard does; she wants to meet Chloe and have her be part of all their lives.

Well, soon enough, she gets her wish. Richard informs Joanne that Chloe finally contacted him at long last and wants to come for a visit. Joanne is overjoyed; not only is she happy for her husband, but she’s also looking forward to being the best stepmom she can be.

But as the title of the book probably hinted, Chloe isn’t exactly the ray of familial sunshine that Joanne was expecting. She’s a beautiful, intelligent girl, but she has an oddly childish, fawning, simpering way of speaking and interacting with her father, so much so that he just thinks she’s the most perfect angel ever conceived and can do no wrong at any time, ever. But when Daddy isn’t around, Chloe is a sullen, mean, sarcastic twat who seems to hate Joanne with the heat of a thousand suns, constantly making bitchy comments about Joanne’s age, her weight, and any number of other things. Joanne tries to talk to Richard about what a cunt his daughter is, but Richard is absolutely not having it, and Chloe—who honestly seems like a straight-up psychopath—is cunning enough to deny any negative thing Joanne says about her and twists everything around so she’s the victim and Joanne is the one being mean to her. It’s insidious and absolutely infuriating to read, because this chick is like the literal Devil.

So because Joanne is going to be working from home sometimes, she decides to hire a part-time nanny to look after Evie while she’s working. She calls an agency and hires a wonderful young woman named Paula, and gets really excited because Paula seems like someone she could become friends with and thus have someone around the house to talk to other than sour-ass Chloe. But Chloe and Richard throw a big monkey wrench in that plan; even though initially Chloe was only going to be staying for a few days, she admits to her father that she dropped out of university and wouldn’t mind staying at the house for longer, perhaps indefinitely. Richard hits upon the capital idea of having Chloe be Evie’s nanny, a prospect that Joanne is not thrilled about, not only because she had liked Paula so much and wanted her around, but also because Chloe is such a manipulative, weird, and possibly mentally unstable asshole that Joanne doesn’t trust her to look after a baby. But of course Richard ends up getting his way, and Joanne has to call the agency and tell Paula she can’t come.

From this point forward, Joanne starts to become more and more anxious that something is seriously wrong with Chloe and that she might actually try to do something to hurt Evie. The problem is that Richard absolutely refuses to believe her, and takes Chloe’s side every single time. Chloe will tell Joanne to her face, “You and Evie should leave; my father will always choose me over you,” or tell her that Richard is having an affair, or whatever, and when Joanne tells Richard all of this, he thinks Joanne is the crazy one, especially since Joanne’s mother did indeed suffer with post-partum depression and started getting delusional and paranoid. These kinds of stories are always so nerve-wracking to read, because we as the reader know that Chloe is a demon from hell, but the way she’s able to twist everything around so that she’s always the aggrieved party and Joanne is the aggressor just makes me want to scream. Note too that there is also the very real possibility that Joanne is simply being overprotective or not perceiving things correctly, which adds a lot more suspense.

Because this is a thriller, with all of the plot twists that entails, there are several scenarios thrown around and the book plays with the reader’s perceptions about what’s going on as well, so in the end we think we’re getting as paranoid and unsure of ourselves as Joanne is. It all ends with a sort of bonkers confrontation between all parties involved, and then there’s a coda that sort of leaves things dangling a bit, so I don’t know if there’s going to be a sequel at some point.

As I said, this was a pretty enjoyable thriller; it kept me interested the whole time, and even though I guessed some of the twists, it didn’t really dampen my experience all that much. Joanne was a frustrating character to approach the story through, however, because she seemed not all that bright and kept denying her own instincts; the fact that she does this is addressed in the story, but I still wanted to smack her on multiple occasions. The character of Chloe is also excruciating, but she’s supposed to be. Damn, I wanted to reach through the page and throttle that bitch, and then use her corpse to beat Richard to death (because he was also a fuckstick, as previously mentioned).

I noticed that the reviews of this book were all over the place; many people loved it, but there was a not insignificant portion of readers who REALLY hated it or couldn’t even finish it, mostly because they couldn’t stand Joanne’s passiveness and willingness to be walked all over in her own house by this horrible twenty-year-old woman. While I get the sentiment, I also know people who would allow this to happen in real life, and I thought Joanne’s insecurity and her fears that she had inherited her mother’s mental problems were well enough established that I didn’t find her reactions unbelievable. Frustrating, yes, as I said, but still realistic for that personality type.

If you like thrillers, this is a solid one that will likely scratch that itch; it’s nothing you haven’t read before and the main protagonist might make you want to bang your head against a wall, but it was a fun read that I’d recommend to fans of domestic thriller stories.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.