I found the characters hard to like and relate to. They inspired annoyance and frustration. I could not finish the book, it was not for me, maybe it was too far outside my comfort zone.

This novel centres on the experiences of a group of American girls who have ambition to live in Europe and widen their horizons. Like many teenagers before them they apply to become au pairs in Paris, the City of Lights. Alena, Lou and Holly come from very different backgrounds but work in the same suburb on the outskirts of Paris. Thier language teacher Geraldine casts a careful eye over her charges every week at the regular French language lessons, a chance for them to meet and chat about their experiences. Then tragedy finds one of the group and the girls have to find their way.

Thank you Netgalley for a free copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This is a really good novel, written by Amanda Bestor-Siegal. I admit I did find it quite difficult to get into and the writing seems to be somewhat disconnected at some points (for me personally), but once I got into the novel, it did make for a really good read.

Very different to what I normally read. We meet six very different women who all contribute beautifully to this read. An American Au Pair, Alena is charged with the death of the person she is meant to be nannying and we hear from the women "where the truth lies" and how who they are and what their past have held is how they are the woman that they are today. The women's stories weave a very intricate and distinct tale and they all should be heard by all.

I really do not want to give too much detail from the novel as it is extremely well-written and a must read. Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and Amanda Bestor-Siegal for allowing me a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me.
The writing is descriptive which is a plus point but I found the story contained too many characters and this made it confusing.
The writing didn’t flow easily and it made reading it more of a task than an enjoyable experience.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little , Brown Book Group UK.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me. The beginning was compelling but after A while I couldn’t stay interested. Also didn’t really like The characters.

The Caretakers starts with the sudden death of a child and the arrest of their au pair. It is a great beginning as we are quickly drawn into a smart suburb of Paris and the au pairs that work for various families there. However, the structure of the book - lengthy chapters from various characters perspectives - slows the book down and hinders the narrative. It almost feels like a book of interconnected short stories, I think it would actually work better as that. The death of the child gets lost in the other characters narratives and that thread is only picked up again later in the book, The child is mentioned so little during the other characters stories that it’s hard to care about him or have much reaction to his death. The structure also leaves bits of other stories hanging, Geraldine, the French teacher for the au pairs, has a chapter to herself but is little more than a cipher to move the plot along or explain things. Her back story is quite irrelevant yet is given some time without any sort of development.

It is a well written novel but I ultimately I found it a slow read without a satisfactory or involving ending..

Thank you #netgalley and #littlebrownuk for allowing me to review this ARC

Unfortunately I didn't enjoy The Caretakers at all, despite the very intriguing synopsis.
I found the long chapters a slog and the accounts of each of the women are so long and detailed that by the time I'd finished the latest one, I'd completely forgotten the story of the other characters. It just didn't grip me in the way I expected.
I didn't really connect with any of the characters and guessed what had happened fairly early on with the main characters. The host of other characters are very much side characters that don't fully connect to the plot very well.
I appreciate the author explains are the start what inspired her to write The Caretakers and while it is well written, I just didn't find it enjoyable.
At ~350 pages, it's a fairly long book but it felt so much longer and not a great deal actually happened. It is about 95% backstory that in the tiniest way connects to the actual devastating accident the book begins with.
This could've been a lot shorter in my opinion and it wouldn't have taken anything away from the plot.
I really thought I was going to enjoy The Caretakers but it just wasn't for me.
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Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and Amanda Bestor-Siegal for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you #NetGalley for my e-arc copy of #caretakers by #amandabestorsiegal

I really did try so hard to enjoy this novel.
It started off so well.

I was instantly captivated. An agency for American au pairs working in France with wealthy families, what could go wrong ??

I felt drawn in from the very first page, when it opens painting the image of a woman in turmoil an ambulance in the drive.
What happened ? I wanted to know I needed to find out.

However I did not find out.

I felt I was unable to continue with this novel as after the initial WOW, I soon lost interest.

I was finding the book to go off on a tangent. Going of in the direction of the back stories of the American au pairs.

Which would be fine, only these chapters were long and the majority of the text just appeared to me as unnecessary.

Where I personally found this book started at such a fast pace, I found that it quickly lost its momentum, it was disjointed with so much unnecessary text, that really could have been condensed.

I found all this superfluous text so infuriating I ended up reading another novel just to break up the monotony of it, it was just becoming such a chore to read.

I know I’m not enjoying a book, when over a week into reading it I’m not even halfway through.

It’s rare for me to not finish a book but I really didn’t feel as though I could spend anymore time with this one.

I'm superficial, I know, I chose this book because it has such a pretty cover and I love a good thriller.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a good thriller. It was very character driven and I've found that a thriller really needs to be more plot driven. It needs the energy of things constantly happening. This is a slow burn and for me it was too slow, with too many characters and too many POV's.
The book is very well written (hence the 3 stars), and if you're a fan of literary fiction then you may take to this novel more than I did, I do have friends who I'm sure will love it, it just wasn't for me.

I was drawn to this book by its cover, what a beauty!

The Caretakers opens with a crowd gathered outside a home in an affluent suburb of Paris. A child has died in mysterious circumstances and the book follows multiple characters and points of view, to find out the circumstances of his death.
The Caretakers of the title are American au pairs of wealthy French families and the book follows , in great detail, the experience of several women, au pairs, one of the mothers, a daughter in the family and a language teacher.

All of these characters are well written and drawn out. At times, it almost felt like I was reading interlinked short stories rather than a novel. Several of these woman were worthy of a novel alone and I think this is maybe why I couldn't fully engage with this story, It didn't always gel despite the quality of the writing. The pacing was a little uneven and I think the book was just a tad too long. I almost forget about the dead child, so much was the detail put forth about the women's lives.

I did enjoy the realistic portrayal of Paris and the examination of the role Au Pairs play. There was lots I enjoyed actually but by the time it got to the conclusion , it felt like it has been weeks since I had started this book ( it was days).

I would read more from this author. I am not sure if I would recommend this one. The premise was a good one, it was well written and I cant quite put my finger on why it fell short for me, but it did.

The story starts with the dramatic scene of a distraught mother, sobbing on her front lawn, while the body of her young son is wheeled out of their house and the au pair is arrested.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book fails to deliver on the initial promise of an exciting 'who dunnit'. The book is told through the perspective of 6 women; 3 au pairs in a strange country, a French teacher, the boy's mother and his sister. The chapters are long and laborious, and although I could see how their stories intertwined, they didn't always feel like they added value. I only really felt like the story got going towards the end, and the 'twist' was disappointingly predictable.

It felt like there were a lot of unresolved small stories within, which was disappointing when the book also felt too long. The actual death of the child feels almost incidental.

The characters felt two dimensional, unlikeable, and stereotypical - the bratty French child, the cold French mother who employed an au pair as she couldn't be bothered with her children, the brash American, the distant Czech au pair.

The blurb mentions the terrorist attacks in Paris and I felt like this was going to play a bigger part in the story and add something to the plotline, but in actual fact they were mentioned several times with no real relevance and the story would have been the same had it never been mentioned.

I had been really looking forward to this, but was left feeling disappointed. Had I not been reading it to provide a review for Netgalley, there were several points where I may not have finished it.

I think this one just wasn’t for me, as I never really became that interested in the story being told. The story follows several different characters in a small but wealthy suburb of Paris, called Maisons-Larue. Three of these characters, Lou, Alena and Holly, are caretakers in the sense that they are all American au pairs looking after the children of French families - we also follow Géraldine, their French language teacher, Charlotte Chauvet, Alena’s ‘host mother’, aka employer, and Nathalie, the teenage daughter of Charlotte. There is a mystery surrounding the Chauvet family after a tragedy happens early on in the novel. Most of the characters are emotionally damaged in some way and some of them were endearing as they had sympathetic backstories, such as Géraldine and Lou, Holly and Alena; however it was difficult to feel much sympathy with Charlotte or Nathalie, despite their reasons for being the way they were. The au pairs were for the most part trying to escape something as the reason for becoming au pairs, but for the most part this wasn’t successful and the arc of the story allowed some of them to realise this and to try to set out on a new path.

My thanks to #NetGalley and Little, Brown for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book reviews on www.snazzybooks.com

Set in the world of young American au pairs working for rich French families in Paris, The Caretakers grew on me as I read it. To start with I found it hard to get into - in fact it took almost 40% of the book before I found myself eager to read on. The book has quite a slow start, despite the quite dramatic revelation that a young child in one of the au pair's care has died. We rotate between various characters - both French family members and some of the American au pairs, six women in total. We learn about their lives, backgrounds and frustrations.

The more I read about the characters, the more I became intrigued. I didn't warm to many of the characters - especially not the mothers. The au pairs I mostly found rather irritating, but I did care about what happened to some of them (surprisingly)!

I wouldn't call this a mystery but I did like the element of 'whose fault was the young child's death' and the way it was eventually brought to a conclusion. The various characters are all connected, some more than they realise, and I enjoyed reading the different threads come together.

It's an interesting character study and one I quite enjoyed, but it didn't blow me away.

This book is set in a fictional area of Maison Larue 15 mins outside of Paris and is told through the voices of a number of characters. A child dies, the au pair is arrested. The book started well and very promising and I had high hopes for this one, but overall it was a 3 star book. I felt it was the voice of too many characters, some more interesting that others, and my mind started to wander with the less interesting perspectives. I felt the book was a tad too long and would have been a more enjoyable read if shortened - there's a level of unnecessary detail that was included that really didn't have any impact on the story itself. Nevertheless it was a good 3 star read. Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

I enjoyed the setting for this book, the beauty of France, the intertwining stories and lots of the characters. Found the concept of the au pair school interesting and cultural and family life exploration was very good.

That said, I felt like many of the stories were unfinished or left hanging, the “mystery” was completely lost, and for most of it I forgot that a child had died, let alone that we were waiting to see whodunnit. Lots of mini themes were picked up and abandoned and it just seemed a bit unfinished.

Good idea, characters and setting, but didn’t quite come together for me, unfortunately

The Caretakers begins with the death of a small child - his mother collapsed in her front garden and an au pair being led away in handcuffs - and it is from this ‘cold open’ that we are compelled to read on to discover the events that led to this tragic scene. As the police investigate, we are introduced to a handful of young women, American au pairs living in Paris, France, looking after the children of wealthy families, shortly after the terrorist attacks of 2015, as well as Géraldine, their French tutor.

The novel is hard to pigeonhole, genre wise. Although there is a whodunnit aspect, it doesn’t really feel that this is the main focus of the book, as it gives so much time and weight to the characters – the au pairs, the families they work for, and Géraldine. However, the reader needs all of this information to come to understand how the young boy, Julien Chauvet, ends up dead.

Initially, the au pairs are generally quite tiresome, the wealthy families predictably ghastly, but there’s something about both of these things that kept me reading. Plus, the whodunnit aspect, of course. Ultimately, I think it’s because we discover that some of the characters have backgrounds that are very different to where they currently find themselves – backgrounds including poverty and racism – and on reflection I found this quite affecting. It teaches a valuable lesson in not judging someone too quickly by their outward appearances physically, emotionally or materially.

Following the dramatic opening, it took me some time to get ‘into’ this book but it absolutely drew me in and the conclusion was worth the initial effort.

Thank you to Little, Brown and to NetGalley for the advance copy on which this review is based.

This exploration of the experiences of au pairs in Paris after the 2015 terrorist attacks was incredibly appealing.

However I found myself underwhelmed and a little bored. The plot is secondary to the character study in this novel, but there just wasn't enough to engage me, or to demonstrate why this story needed to be written.

A thrilling tale told through six different women, all leading up to the arrest of an American au pair for the death of her host child. I loved the way that the narrative was told through six women, all very different, some likeable some loathsome, and set in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.

Having read The Paris Apartment not too long ago and unfortunately being disappointed by it, I was slightly wary going into this which is by all account a similar type of book. However, this was far better and really had me wanting to read on.

I didn't see the ending coming in terms of what had actually happened to Julien. It did come across as a side-part to the rest of the story, rather than the main focus, and if I had one criticism of the book it would be that I think more could have been done to focus on the circumstances of Julien's death.

Overall, a great thriller that I'd recommend adding to your 2022 TBR!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.

Felt really let down by this book. The plot just seemed and endless list and description of various characters actions and movements that really had very little to do with the main event in the story. It began well and was set up to be intriguing however the book appeared to aimlessly go round in circles until the very end where you find out what happened and then I was left wondering why I’d bothered reading it. A very frustrating read

The Caretakers is a well-written novel explaining the reasons behind why many females decide to become au pairs and try to find work in France. It gives in-depth description of the characters and the secrets they keep. I found the story rather dreary at times I’m afraid. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen but alas, I had to wait till the end of the book to get some satisfaction. If you enjoy reading about people’s personalities and what makes them tick, then this is the book for you.