Nightwatching was one of the scariest thrillers I have read for quite some time.

This was just incredibly chilling writing. Right from the start, I could not look away from this book. It was a fight or flight extreme situation that only seemed to get darker as the pages went on. The atmosphere was thick and choking. Sierra has crafted lightning in a bottle here. It is dangerous and deadly and slithers under your skin, leaving a mark and a deeply uncomfortable pit within your stomach. Every page oozes suspense. The plot starts with a bang and does not stop from there. For me, this is a book that rooted itself into my brain and has not left since. It is an exceptional debut and I will be devouring whatever Sierra writes next. She has a gift for thrillers that are terrifying and twisted and torment the reader but in a way that provokes questions.

This is a book you need to go into knowing absolutely nothing beyond the synopsis. It took my breath away several times reading, for both the horrifying scenes unfolding and the razor-sharp twists that often followed. It is so well plotted and impeccably paced. Things just go to unexpected and brilliant places. At its heart, you have the mother and her children and they are characters you root for instantly. I loved how Sierra does not include names - they are nameless, faceless victims. They could be anyone, anywhere and you can easily pick up aspects from the headlines. It is just such a clever narrative device that makes you relish the story so much more. Unpicking what is happening to them and why is sickening, surprising and such a thrilling ride to get there. Please, if you like a damn good thriller, just pick this book up.

Nightwatching was atmospheric, petrifying and pulsing with a danger that cuts close to the heart. It is incredibly written and one of the most chilling books I have ever read.

Alone in the house is a mother with two young children when a sound is heard - footsteps coming towards them.
What should she do? Will it be the right decision?
But who will believe her or save her.
This is a creepy read which will take you right to the last page for answers.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for giving me the opportunity to read this book before it gets published in February 2024.

I am a no-nonsense kind of person and don't get scared by being alone, in darkness or scary movies, so when I read the cover reviews for this book (terrifying, a thriller to keep you awake, heart-thumping, mesmerising, gripping) I thought this may change, that I would read something that did it. Unfortunately, it didn't.

The story starts with the intruder already in the house and the woman quickly hiding with her kids in a hidey-hole. No time to grab useful stuff (torch, mobile phone, watch, food, etc), just hide, hush and wait. I thought that was a promising premise and wondered how it will develop. Will she outwit the intruder? Will they survive? Or get caught?

You get to know what's happening, the layout of the house, the creaks and noises; tension starts to build up, feelings of entrapment, fear, impotence and suddenly... you get the dreaded TV commercials, i.e. long flashback to her past to recall scenarios where she was treated like a lower kind of person, disregarded by others or not taken seriously. These flashbacks keep on breaking up the present story and make you forget she's in hiding, so you lose any thrilling gathered up to then.

The reviews say "scalpel-sharp, pulse-pounding" but it is not. Time trickles down because of these flashback interruptions (how long exactly she is in the secret space?), the intruder walks ever so slowly and takes hours (?) to search the house, she even dozes off with all the waiting. It gets repetitive in places (how many times can you stretch a robe, or hug your kids closer to you, when you just did it a few minutes before?).

Having the woman tell the whole story makes it a bit monotonous and doesn't allow for other people's opinions. She's not in a healthy state of mind so her view on things and herself is distorted at times. It seems that this is also how all the characters see her as well: unreliable, untrusted, guilty. Not sure if it's a coincidence or on purpose but all these other people who undervalue her (ex-boyfriend, husband, father-in-law, 2 police officers, intruder, even the alarm guys) happen to be male.

When nobody has a proper name in the story, why give the intruder a silly name like Corner? OK, it was the daughter's name for him but she said The Corner Man, which may sound a wee scary. However, the mother took it and shortened it, and each time she mentioned it images of a footballer throwing a corner kick came to mind.

All in all, it was a good book - notwithstanding the annoying bits, and I think less analytical readers may enjoy it more than I did and feel closer and empathetic to the characters.

At no point do you know the names of the mother and 3 children who are desperately hiding from the intruder in their house, but that somehow makes it all the more real - and terrifying. I wasn’t a huge fan of the flashback scenes but they did provide some welcome relief from the palpable tension and fear coming from the pages.

Slight spoiler: I’m so glad that the main character was vindicated but wish it didn’t have to come to that. Let’s believe women.

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. Then she hears a noise - old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it's the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs...
In that split second, she has three choices.
Should she hide? Should she run? Or should she fight?

I thought that this had the makings of an excellent book but after a really bright start, it began to wallow in the middle. I liked the backstory moments but, at times instead of adding to it, they detracted from it. I found myself skipping pages to speed up the action which is never a good thing. Sadly, it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

There’s no beating around the bush. From the first sentence you’re pitched into the heart of the action. It’s the middle of the night, a blizzard is raging and there are no nearby neighbours. A woman is home alone with her two small children and she hears an intruder in the house. Basically my nightmare scenario right there.

She is able to get the children to a safe hiding place while the intruder prowls around looking for them. But she has no way of summoning help and it’s clear that he isn’t going to stop looking for them.

Adding to the tension is that you start to doubt that the woman’s point of view is entirely accurate. Is this actually happening? And if it is actually happening, is her interpretation of what’s behind it reliable?

This was very much a one sitting read. It grabs your attention immediately and I was desperate to know how it was going to be resolved. If you want something gripping, this delivers. It has a genuine nightmarish quality to it. It’s scary, but not TOO scary (I don’t do horror).

One of my pet peeves is when thrillers leave loose threads hanging so I appreciated that while there are a lot of threads to the plot, they all get tied back in or explained.

What let the book down for me was the dialogue, which is laughably wooden in places, to the point where I sometimes felt like I was reading a poorly translated book. Also the decision not to name the characters was unhelpful – at one point there was reference to “the woman” and I had no idea which character it was.

But even with those bugbears, this is a thriller that genuinely thrills.

I received an ARC for review via Net Galley.

Wow. What a debut novel from Tracy Sienna.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. And look forward to reading future books from this author.
Nightwatching had me gripped right from the start.
A mother, alone in the house with an intruder, and she must do everything she can to keep her kids safe.
It’s fast paced, tense, sad and frustrating. I couldn’t put it down.
It’s brilliantly written with the story alternating between the present day and flashbacks. The characters are great and well developed.
Overall, an unputdownable atmospheric suspenseful book. Well worth the read.
Definitely recommend this one to fans of psychological thrillers.
With thanks to #NetGallery, #PenguinUKBooks and @VikingBooksUK for an eARC of #Nightwatching in exchange for a honest review. All opinions are my own.
Book publishes 8 February 2024.

It took some time to thoroughly hook me in but once it did, I found this a thrilling and suspenseful story. It's dark and gritty. The author decides to hit you with the full impact of the scenes and the thoughts of the protagonist, who I can't recall being named in the book. In fact, I don't recall any character in this book being named. They are labelled. It felt strange during scenes of dialogue etc., but felt fine when I was immersed in the story.

And I can understand the choice of removing names form the story. The point of this story is the acts that occur, not the names. Acts that can occur to anybody. Without names it's easy to imagine it happening to you or somebody you know. It makes the story much more chilling.

In any case, I enjoyed the writing style of the book. It was a great choice to limit information the reader was given, so a perfect decision to have this in third person limited POV. If the POV were omniscient, the impact of doubt injected into the story would have failed. So much of this story hinges on that doubt, and on characters trying to know the unseen.

The use of familiar tropes in this story didn't bother me, since they were used so well. An isolated house in a snowstorm. A victim who is treated as being unreliable, and who's own actions lead people to that conclusion. The way the author used these two common tropes is amazing. It's a similar feeling to when I read The Woman in the Window. This story is completely different in plot and tone, but both authors have a keen sense of turning tropes into something that fits perfectly into the story.

Two small criticisms are the chapters of past narrative sometimes interrupted the tension in the story, and the two children were a little too well behaved in those tense moments in the first part of the story. While these two things did have an impact for me, it wasn't enough to drag me out of the story. But it did make me lower this to 4.5 instead of 5.

To finish - I want to read every book this author writes!

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for providing a free copy of this book to review. All comments are my own.

Video review to be shared soon.

Wow! I have just finished reading this book a few minutes ago, and my mind is reeling.

Nightwatching, unbelievably the debut by Tracy Sierra, starts right in the action. Quite possibly every mother’s nightmare.
A man, a stranger, is in your remote house, the recent snowfall heightening your isolation. You feel helpless, desolate, alone. How do you protect your children, and yourself?

As this woman is fighting for her family. Her mind drifts back to salient points of her life. Emotional times which have formed who she is, events that have shaped her behaviour and reactions.
This man, invades her house, her thoughts. This individual is predatory, inappropriate. My stomach was churning listening to his words, hearing his intention.

This review is a no spoiler review, as always. There is so much I want say in this review, I wish I could explain more of how this book resonated with me, but I can’t. The characterisation is rich and deep, the characters are vivid and alive. I was so drawn in, parts of the book made me angry, I felt such injustice, I wanted to reach in to the book.

This book is so good, it oozes tension, drips with unease. It infiltrated my mind, got under my skin, it put my senses in overdrive, listening to every sound of my own house.
I adored the central character. I loved her spirit, her instincts, her resilience; her self belief, despite everything life and others had thrown at her.

If you weren’t sure, I love this book. I wish I could give it more than 5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tracy Sierra, you have written an absolute belter.

A really exciting psychological thriller. A mother is home in a storm with her young children... and suddenly they are in fear of their lives as an intruder is in the house. They shelter in an old hideaway by the chimney as she tries to keep the little ones quiet. She can hear him wandering around, looking for them. And his voice sounds ominously familiar.

Its a really scary read, and the reader is frustrated as the woman is discounted as hysterical or making things up. The evidence is even stacked against her. The first third of the book as they are hiding from the man is extremely exciting, the second third more frustrating as she can't really make herself understood as her memory is playing tricks and then the final chapters bring us back to the edge of our seats.

However, there is more than one sort of monster ... her father in law is a real piece of work!

An exciting and thrilling read, thoroughly enjoyable. Just check you've locked all the doors before you start! Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ive just spent about five terrifying days in a creepy old house in New England. The Children in the house sleepwalk and have nightmares, the Mother constantly telling them that monsters don't exist...until she hears the midnight creak on the stairs, and sees the 'monster' for herself, and, bound by all of her own trauma, has to make the decision to save her Children at any cost. Fight or flight, or freeze and comply?.... Read it (and be scared out of your pants!)

A bit of a slow burner.
A mother is forced into protecting her small children during a blizzard when they have an intruder, she manages to escape to the next house for help leaving her children behind but when the police arrive there is no sign of an intruder and no footprints in the snow outside so no one believes her at all, how can she make them take notice of her?
A bit too slow for me but it does keep you in suspense.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me. The basic plot of a threatening intruder in your house when alone with your 2 children was good, but it just didn't work as the author kept drip feeding background information breaking the tension. The first 20% was good as was the last 20% even though there was no real twist at the end.
I'm sure a lot of readers will enjoy this book.

Slow and a little dragged out to start. Almost frustrating, I can see why some people didn’t get past this point.
At about 40% we get some movement, so stick with it.
I really didn’t know which way this was going to go. I was actually panicking thinking the neighbours might not open the door for her. Then, I thought the police were going to bin this off as a mental health episode and not even check the house for the kids.
Some good twists which kept me on edge to get to the end. I’d give it 3.75 out of 5, rounded up to 4.

The book started off okay but I was worried that the home invasion was going to take up the whole story, rather like the film "Panic Room".. Fortunately for me, it didn't and I enjoyed the second half of the book much more as the full back story was revealed. However, I was a bit disappointed with the ending which I didn't find very satisfactory at all and I thought it was a bit random and lacking in believability. 3 1/2 stars.from me.

The pacing was excellent and there was a real sense of atmosphere but I did feel a bit let down by the end and felt like the book needed an additional dimension.

I was really excited when I read synopsis. It sounded super thrilling, and I had high hopes for this book.

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. We got thrown straight into the story of the home invasion. The first few pages were great, but then it started to get really repetitive. The random flashbacks were irritating and killed the suspense for me. They were completely irrelevant for me. I also felt really disconnected from the characters. I mean, they dont even have names. Why would you name the intruder 'The Corner'? I tried, but I DFN'd the book at about 25%.

The writing style of the author wasn't for me, but I am sure other readers might love the book.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review. I was immediately hooked by this book and found it impossible to put down. A brilliant and intense novel that literally had me on the edge of my seat. I was so immersed in the book I actually felt like I was hiding with them and found myself holding my breath as I read! A fantastic psychological thriller that I will recommend to everyone I know! 5 massive stars from me.

'Reality can be more disorienting than dreams'

This is honestly the best thriller I've read in a long time. 'Nightwatching' is a debut, razor-sharp thriller about a mother pushed to the breaking point when her and her children's lives are under threat by a house intruder, in the middle of a snowy winter's night.

The story is full of twists and was unexpected right up until the end - I had no idea how the story would play out, and I was pleasantly surprised. The book actually has no named characters in it - which I think makes it easy to insert yourself into the narrative, which I imagine would make it hit even harder if you have children of your own.

I was completely engrossed throughout - the fear evoked was visceral with palpable tension; with themes of maternal love, fear and guilt, and misogyny were expertly written. I found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading, and keen to get back to it to find out what would happen. Incredibly gripping - I'd recommend this to any fan of psychological thrillers.

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital review copy. 'Nightwatching' is released in the UK on the 8th February 2024.

THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!

I started reading it just before bed, thinking to myself oh i would only read a few chapters and then i ended up not sleeping and reading the whole of Nightwatching at once.I just couldn't COULD NOT put it down.

From the very first page you are gripped and need to know what will happen next.Its just delicious.It reads like a movie if that makes sense? Its just so vivid,its almost like you are there in the house,in the dark,hiding and trying to survive till the morning …