I didn't finish this one. I tried to read it a few times. It just didn't work for me. It was slow and uneventful. Nothing happened at all in the first 30%. By that point, I just had to give up.

This book was not my favorite but was able to finally finish, even though it took me quite a while. I’ve seen many reviews comparing this book to SOCIAL CREATURE and agree to an extent, because I was very excited for both and although I finally finished this one, I could never finish Social Creature. This did have some intense parts, but was written in a way that I found confusing and hard to completely enjoy. I think that if you are the type that likes the books with writing that’s more artistic, you will greatly enjoy this book, but if you are more like me and want some thrills, chills, and lots of shocks I am not sure it’ll be your favorite. A decent read, but not one I could truly escape in.
Will tell the members of Chapter Chatter Pub about it!

Devotion by Madeline Stevens might just be my favorite and most surprising read this year!! Such an addictive and irresistibly thrilling read. It was everything I was hoping it would be, and somehow, so much more. Wholeheartedly recommend! 5 Stars.

Devotion is sort of a cross between The Talented Mr. Ripley (which I haven't read) and Social Creature (which I have read). The basic set-up is this: Ella, a broke white woman living in Brooklyn, is hired to nanny for James and Lonnie, a wealthy Upper East Side couple. Ella, who's clearly very unstable, becomes obsessed with Lonnie, who to be honest seems like a perfectly nice, if privileged and somewhat unhappy, young woman.

I love a good obsession story, but I thought that this lacked depth. Ella very quickly begins doing very bizarre things because of her obsession, but we don't really get to learn very much about her or why she's doing these things. Has she done this before? She seems like an obsessive person, since she also latches on to the story of a neighborhood cult/serial killing (a thread that ultimately goes absolutely nowhere), but at the same time her interactions with everyone around her seem perfectly ordinary. I just really hate this trend in some literary fiction where characters are explicitly written to be weird and bizarre and unhappy for seemingly no reason. If you're going to write what is basically a character study, I'm gonna need a lot more character development.

The book moves very slowly, with a rather meandering plot that doesn't quite seem to know where it's going or what it hopes to achieve. The climax wasn't properly addressed or given the time it deserved to sink in, for the reader or for the characters. The side characters seemed to sort of float along on the sidelines. There were so many plot threads that seemed significant but just completely fizzled out. Ultimately this felt utterly pointless; there's no thrill or satisfaction to be had here.

What I did like about the novel is the writing; it's lush and descriptive, with lots of sensuous sensory details. At the same time, it flows nicely, which makes for a quick read.

Devotion is this summer’s Social Creature, a propulsive ‘poor girl meets rich girl’ story set in Manhattan, chronicling the mutually destructive relationship between two young women, Elle and Lonnie. Elle is hired as a nanny for Lonnie’s infant son, and soon her resentment toward her employer turns into an unhealthy obsession.

Despite the inevitable Social Creature comparison, Devotion isn’t quite as suspenseful or climactic, and its protagonists left less of an impression on me. Even so, I had a hard time putting this down; for a slow-moving story it never really loses momentum, and it has that ‘need to know what happens next’ quality that mercifully doesn’t feel like a cop-out when nothing ever really happens.

Madeline Stevens achieves this with pitch-perfect characterization of the novel’s narrator, Elle, whose ‘do I want to be her or do I want to sleep with her’ dynamic with Lonnie is the morbidly compelling thread that holds this plotness novel together and keeps you turning pages. Ultimately: a quick, addictive read that doesn’t offer much in the way of thrills or chills, but still has an eerie and unsettling quality that makes it impossible to look away, and which offers a deceptively nuanced commentary on living on the periphery of extreme wealth.

Because I enjoy creepy thrillers and suburban noirs, Devotion initially drew me in and kept me reading. The sensory details are wonderfully vivid in this book. Ella’s growing obsession with Lonnie and her lifestyle reminded me of Single White Female or You. However, the story didn’t really go anywhere. It read like Ella’s diary, which format-wise would be fine, but there was no character arc, no transformation for Ella or Lonnie. The book just ends. It’s disappointing because I think this had the potential to be a suspenseful thriller as advertised. But with no story, there’s no tension or payoff at the end.

Thank you Ecco/HarperCollins and NetGalley for the ARC.

Strange and weird - this book focuses on Elle, a 26 year old hired to be the Nanny of a wealthy Park Avenue family in NYC. As the book unfolds you see her obsession with Lonnie (the wife/mother) and Lonnie's life begin to unravel. Does she want her? Does she want to be her?

Filled with tension, this book reads more like a character study than anything else, and ends up going nowhere. I couldn't really find myself connecting or caring much about Elle, so overall it just fell kind of flat for me.

*I received an ARC of Devotion from Harper Collins Publishers/Ecco in exchange for an honest review.

Very strange, unsettling story. Ella is hired by Lonnie and James to care for their infant, William. Ella is envious of their wealthy, privileged life and befriends the couple. Boundaries are blurred. Ella and Lonnie switch identities when convenient for both. Ella becomes obsessed with Lonnie and her lifestyle. Much intrigue and involvement with each other and a close friend of the couple continues. There is quite a bit of drama and some of it not quite believable.

This book was creepy.... and I love it! Ella is hired to to work for Lonny. She is the nanny who becomes obsessed with Lonny and her family and lifestyle. After all they are the same age, so where did Ella's life go wrong??? Yes. This is a creepy tale of obsession that will keep you reading long into the night .... it will make you think before hiring a nanny too ... lol
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me this copy.

Ella is hired by Lonnie and James as a nanny to their child, William. She is quickly sucked up into the vacuum of their existence and her fascination with Lonnie soon becomes an obsession.

The book reminded me of an old Ingmar Bergman film, where one character is swallowed by another. I didn’t love this book, in fact, I found it creepy.

I suspect it is my take on the relationship though the book is well written, but simply not one that I could get involved with.

The job offer is like a miracle. Ella has been reduced to taking home men she doesn’t know in hopes of getting a free meal. With her bank account hovering near zero, she happily accepts an offer to act as nanny for Lonnie and James’s baby. Ella delights in inhabiting the same circles as her wealthy employers and even though she and Lonny are both just 26, Ella believes that there must be some key to Lonnie’s better status. Ella obsessively studies Lonny, as her feelings for the woman vacillate between jealousy and attraction. Soon she will begin to wonder, where does Lonny stop and Ella begin? This is a creepy novel of obsession, jealousy and lust – in other words, you won’t be able to put it down