3.5 stars

This one was interesting, for the most part, although my interest fell off a bit partway through. I had parts of the twist figured out, although some of the details were still intriguing. I felt like a couple of things weren’t wrapped up as smoothly as I would’ve liked, but that might be because, as previously mentioned, my attention wandered a bit midway into the story. It was pretty good, and I would probably check out other books by the writer.

The book has a dual timeline, which keeps us guessing. It opens with a 911 call wherein an elderly lady is seeking assistance as she is on her own, and there a possible burglar in the house. Gunshots are head, the line goes silent and the dispatcher stays on the line listening.

Iris Duncan lives in a big beautiful house, in the affluent suburb of Pacific Heights. She has been on her own since her husband's passing a few years back and at 70 years of age she has been unable to keep up with the maintenance the house and beautiful garden requires. Iris has also been quite lonely since her husband's passing, and doesn't really have anybody to talk to.

Iris meets Lidia, a waitress at a local cafe, who Iris takes pity on. Lidia is clumsy and keeps getting in trouble with her boss, for spilling drinks and not keeping up with the orders. Iris sees an opportunity and offers Lidia and her husband Seth a job as housekeepers. Iris sees this as a win/win as Iris receives help around the house and companionship.

Lidia takes great care of Iris, cooking for her, assisting her with daily medications, and setting up little reminders around the house for every day tasks that Iris' is forgetting.

Suddenly Iris goes missing, police a called to the scene, the phone line is cut, there is pools of blood at the scene and broken glass. Seth and Lidia are considered suspects. Where is Iris, is she still alive, and what has happened to her.

This is a great thriller, the suspense is epic.

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for this audio book. This book was available to purchase from 14 June, 2022

4 Stars: I enjoyed it and would recommend it to people who like the genre. I will definitely want to read more books by this author.

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Entertaining and juicy! At first I wasn't sure if I liked the narrator's over-the-top sinister style, but it grew on me. Moves at a fast pace with good suspense and snappy writing. Enjoyable!

Thank you so much NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for allowing me to listen to this ARC.

I really enjoyed the character development and the plot was interesting!

The banter between the police officers was fun, and I hope Maureen will be featured in other books.

I am trying to figure out why this book was called The House Sitter.
1. If anything it should be The House SitterS as it involved a couple, not just a single person
2. THEY were not House Sitters. Per Merriam Webster: The meaning of HOUSE SITTER is a person who occupies a dwelling to provide security and maintenance while the tenant is away.
-Um the tenant was not away (except for once she was murdered, did the couple kind of half way live in the home)
A more appropriate Title would have been "The CaretakerS" again note the plural.

Okay, moving on from the title . This book at best was a 2.5. I found it very predictable and all of the men in this book might as well have dressed up in clown costumes and gotten a job at the circus. Kane portrays the male characters all to have a combined IQ of a doorknob. Not that the lady characters were much brighter stars themselves.
The plot was good enough by itself to hold my attention, but the characters were so frustratingly stupid it was distracting. I understand every book usually has that one stupid character, but in this book they were ALL idiots. (I feel like I Have turned into Ted using the word idiot over and over, but omigosh, there is no other word)
I found the way Maureen the rookie cop handled herself very unprofessional , yet at the same time she was working with a male cop who could not string 2 logical thoughts together, so maybe she was desperate. I don't know.
Seth-Everytime he opened his mouth I just rolled my eyes. The gambling was seriously just....what? You mean to tell me this looser who doesn't have a piece of bubble gum to his name suddenly comes into some $ and immediately blows it all on 1 bet?? No, I think he would have a little more sense than that.....
Lydia-I am not sure if Kane was trying to make us feel sympathetic for her (granted the abuse she suffered as a child from Vinny was wrong and disturbing) but I have a hard time feeling sympathetic towards someone who had done all that she had, AND to support Seth's dumb decisions over and over again....if women are so smart and independent and strong, why didn't she break away from Seth the idiot??
Vinny=The name alone sends tingles down my spine, how uncreative when looking for a "dumb bad guy" name. What a baboon. Gross.
Iris is a sneaky little thing I will say that. But her character was to obvious. I won't say about what, in case you are unable to read extreme flashing signals and red flags in her character from page 1.
I saw some other reviewers talking about all the twist and turns in this book.....did I miss something? Because I think I took the "cut through" the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line and thats what this book was.
I saw everything coming. No surprise.
Not great writing. Bad characters. Terrible Title. Audiobook had a weird muffled/robotic tone.
Skip this one unless we have another pandemic and need some toilet paper........

I was not paid for this review or my thoughts and opinions. Thank you Net Galley for allowing me the opportunity to read this advanced copy and listen to the audiobook.

Talk about a story where you don't know who to trust! "The House Sitter" is about an elderly woman named Iris, who needs help managing her large home as she is losing her memory. It is her lucky day, when she meets a young couple, Lydia and Seth, at a cafe. Iris quickly hires the couple to be her caretakers. Lydia grows very fond of Iris, and sees her as a second mother, while Seth may be taking advantage of the elderly woman.

After a few months of the three living together, Iris makes a frantic 911 call. The operator hears a gunshot go off after a struggle. When the cops get to Iris' home no one is there. What happened to Iris? Did this couple murder her? One thing is for sure, there is more to this story than meets the eye!

This is a fast-paced mystery, where there is never a dull moment. Each chapter leaves you wanting more, and I truly could not put it down. I wish the ending had just a little more closure between two of the characters. (I'm being vague on purpose here.) Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this one! Thank you, Bookouture Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an audio ARC of The House Sitter by Ellery A. Kane in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book due to the positive reviews I saw all over my Instagram feed. I began listening to it on my nightly walks around town and while I worked in my sewing room.

Though I wasn't a huge fan of the narrator, one positive I can say is that their enunciation was clear, and so I was able to work on increasing my audio listening speed (I moved from 1.25x to 2x).

The storyline and characters were interesting, even though I guessed what the outcome was going to be before I'd listened even halfway through the story.

I don't have anything negative to say about this book. It was perfectly fine and hit all the aspects of the genre. It was not 100% to my taste. But that is okay, not every book is going to appeal to every reader.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture Audio for the opportunity to access an advance review audio copy of this book.

🎧Audiobook Review!🎧

First off thank you to @netgalley and @bookouture for my advanced audiobook of “The House Sitter” by @ellerykaneauthor that actually was just released on the 14th! 👌🏼 I’m giving this one 4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!

This was an enjoyable thriller to listen to and the ending portion really contained a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Lydia is down on her luck recently and is ecstatic when a customer at the cafe she works at offers her a job and a room in her fancy Pacific Heights home. Lydia soon becomes the daughter Iris never had and is really helping her manage everything since her memory has started to fail. One night an emergency call was made to the police and when they arrive the house is turned upside down with no sign of Iris or Lydia. As the police try and unravel what really happened that night, they question if these two women actually met by chance and different secrets get revealed along the way. This is a good one to check out 👌🏼

This is the first book I have Ellery Kane and I can say it wont be the last ..

The story starts out with a 911 call which the police turn up to the main character house called iris ,the find blood , gun shells ,as well as many other clues that something is very wrong here .we then going back in time a bit to what lead us here ,so the widowed Iris finds herself living alone after her husband dies and struggles to look after the home , she then meets Lydia who works in a small dinner ,Iris can see she totally hates working there and is treated poorly, so she offers her a job to come help her with the her home along with her boyfriend Seth which becomes the handy man , and well as you can guess things start to heat up pretty quickly .


This thriller will have on your toes the whole time , the whole plot is fantastic and kept me intrigued, it is pretty fast paced and plenty of nail biting moments , you do get a very big Easter egg in the middle of the book to what is going on , which did have me gasping and jaw-dropping I couldn't turn the pages fast enough ,I did start to figure bits out to what was going on I'm like a mini sherlock homes .


the whole story for me was very well written and the characters was brilliant it definitely didn't disappoint had me on the edge of seat.


I think this is a gripping thriller that everyone needs to read it will blow your mind

The House Sitter is the story about 70 year old Iris, who after losing her husband and breaking her arm is unable to take care of her house. She meets a young waitress named Lydia and offers her and her husband, Seth, jobs helping her tend to her house which is just too big for her to manage all by herself. She even offers for them to live with her. ... What could go wrong?

I loved everything about this book and finished it in one day. Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for my advanced audiobook. Now available.

Ellery Kane's book, The House Sitter is greatly narrated by Kristin James, who has an astonishingly wide variety of voices and an extraordinary talent to convey the crime tensions in the plot. I loved the audio version of the book.

The beginning of The House Sitter is chilling enough for a crime story. The chase sets about from that fateful night, a 911 call, suspicious two gun shots, blood soaked bedding, post- it notes all over the house. Iris is missing brings the crime to the notice of the Cops and Detectives. With twists and turns in every chapter,

The story's setting has taken place around, Iris Duncan's, a lonely seventy year old widow's house who had no children. She lives in a massive Victorian mansion near to presidio, in the middle of the city at upper pacific heights. The fancy house becomes the location of the crime. Iris was most of the time forgetful, scared of someone breaking into her house and she took medications everyday. Iris complains that she is all alone in a big, sad and disorganized house, eventually hires Lydia and Seth as House sitters to help her from House Owner Association's Inspections.

I enjoyed the character Maureen, the concert pianist turned mass shooter survivor turned rookie cop, her enthusiasm with boldness to find the killer and Iris's missing body.

Will the murderer of Iris be brought to justice? Seth and Lydie desperately wants to prove their innocence in the whole act of crime committed. The ending is good and all through the book suspense aroused my curiosity to know the killer.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the book and audio version in exchange for an honest review.

The House Sitter was FANTASTIC!!! Great characters and a great twist at the end….two thumbs up!!!! I am a new fan of this author.

Big thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. So, in this story Iris is a 70 year old widow who lives alone in a big house. She’s getting forgetful and nervous being alone. Enter Lydia and Seth who come in to live with her and take care of things. Then Iris goes missing, presumed dead. I didn’t love this book, and I didn’t hate it. It was fairly predictable, there were some plot holes and things that happened that were not believable, and the characters were not likable. I’ve never come across a police department as inept as this one was! Overall, I’d say meh.

I listened to the audiobook of Ellery Kane's The House Sitter. Serial scammers Lydia and Seth are running a con on elderly Iris to take her for all she's worth. When Iris goes missing, presumed dead, Lydia and Seth are persons of interest. The story bounces between before Iris goes missing, and after. In the before, the reader sees the ways Lydia and Seth are working to steal from Iris. In the after, we follow the police investigation into Iris's disappearance and into Lydia's and Seth's potential roles.

I found this book hard to listen to. The relationship between Lydia, Seth, and Iris was stomach-turning. Lydia and Seth are horrible people, and the reader is supposed to hate them, so in that regard, the author did a great job of making me dislike them. The police work is shoddy, and the officers and detectives are not only often incompetent but also condescending and disrespectful, especially toward women. The ending left me feeling a little disappointed.

What I did like about this book were some of the peripheral and supporting characters. The clever and funny homeless man, the nosy neighbor who runs the HOA, and rookie police officer Maureen, who played a more crucial role than the others, were all good additions to the story. I'd like to see another book featuring Maureen in an investigative role. I would try out another book by this author, too, even though this particular story wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Bookouture Audio, and Ms. Kane for the opportunity to review this audiobook.

This is actually quite difficult to review without giving anything away. There’s a lot going on, with twists upon twists but so much of it would have the potential to spoil the story for you. I was actually writing notes as I was reading with my thoughts and suspicions, and I can’t share them with you, which is really frustrating!

The book opens with a 911 call, the caller is reporting an intruder, there’s screaming, a gun shot, silence. The rest of the book is told in dual timeline, before and after. Before starts with Iris meeting Seth and Lydia, inviting them to come and work for her. After, Iris is missing, assumed dead and Seth and Lydia are living in her house. In the before we follow Iris’s developing relationship with both Seth and Lydia before her disappearance. In the after we learn more about what has happened to Iris, Lydia and Seth before they met each other. We also get to follow the police investigation as Maureen takes on her first case under the watchful (and disapproving) eye of Walt.

There’s a definite male/female split in this book, I loved all of the female characters and all of the male characters were *choose your preferred derogatory term*.

I really wished that I was reading this with a buddy. I had so many thoughts and suspicions as I was reading. I would highly recommend reading this with someone else, take nothing at face value and pay close attention to the language used, it’s very clever.

I listened to the audio of this, at the start I got very frustrated by some of the voices used by the actress but by the end I had completely changed my mind on it. They were perfect.

Didn’t find any of the characters in this one overly likeable and, as such, wasn’t really committed to their stories. Gave it three stars because there was a twist I didn’t see coming.

Firstly i would like to say that i was so grateful to receive an ARC copy for this book and i received it in the form of an audiobook which intimidated me at first but has now given me the confidence to try other audiobooks. Secondly i was so intrigued from start to end, i especially love the chaos at the beginning, it felt like being thrown into the deep-end head first and i was all for it. i'd say it was one of the reasons i was so invested in this book. Thirdly, the story line held my interest throughout and it was fast-paced with a few curve balls here and there. Lastly, the writing style was so beautiful and each sentence felt so carefully constructed.

I really liked getting my teeth into this story.
The plot runs in lots of different directions, there is always something to pique the readers interest and keep you guessing where this is going.
I really didn't expect it go take the turn that it did. Not only following the story of Iris, but the siblings and the police officer with her own emotional ties and history. It really kept me engaged and interested.
I liked how lots of information is held back in the beginning, leaving you really questioning and the plot only really unravelling once you get to know the characters.
I did not expect the twist, it was a shock but worked really well.
The only downside for me was the narration sometimes could be a little distracting, other than that it was excellent to listen to throughout the day.

I listened to the audiobook of The House Sitter on Netgalley. This was my first audiobook that I’ve ever listened to, and I must say that I think I before reading a book. I’m much more of a reader when it comes to books than a listener.
I think this crime/psychological thriller was ok. It had its twists and turns and I did not expect the ending which it had in the end. The main characters all had many secrets and were hiding many things from each other. They were complex characters and this added something interesting to the novel.
Overall, it was an ok experience but I think I will stick to the books from now on. Listening to an action packed and suspenseful novel is better when I’m reading the words not listening to them.

I was definitely expecting more from this one. While it’s a thriller and it’s mostly different (as far as thrillers can be different), it just wasn’t great.

The clearly abusive relationship we follow throughout the entire book was just too much. It was a huge part of the plot and I am not here for it. This book could have been done without placing so much emphasis on it.

Honestly I don’t think I can even give this a fair rating because all I remember about this book is the abusive relationship.

⭐️⭐️