This was pretty good. I liked the main character a lot and enjoyed the dark undercurrent throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed this despite the ending which was a bit lacking.

What I liked about the book;
Strong alpha female (for once)
Fast read
Fairy original premise I was excited about
Most of the ending

What I didn’t like
There was an attempt at a John Marrs one-liner chapter that fell kind of flat for me.
The twist was more of a bend. Pretty predictable.

All in all, I liked that it moved along at a quick pace! I’m not mad at it!

I enjoyed this book; it's pretty light reading and went pretty quickly. Probably a lot of people could read it in a day or two. The chapters are short; in fact one of them consists of just one word! There's quite a bit of repetition and everything sounded more ominous than it turned out to be but it was entertaining. I would've liked to see the story go in a different direction at the end but don't ask me to come up with a better ending.

A couple of words new to me: "jellified", as in 'my legs are jellified' and "blag" which means to persuade someone in a clever or slightly dishonest way to allow you to do something or to give you something.

Thanks to J.E. Rowney and BooksGoSocial via Netgalley for the chance to read an ARC of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.
Publication Date: June 30, 2023

IVE JUST FINISHED! Jayne Rowney #jerowney
Wow bloody wow!
Fabulous, gripping, fast paced, heart racing, brilliant writing!
Loved this - I did work out the story but it did not make a difference because I didn't know if I was right until the end!
Fantastic! #proofreading #thehousesitter x
This had me hooked from the first page. Engrossing, intelligent writing from Jayne as always.
Gripping and realistic story. Characters did the job of being normal with a hint of crazy, I like the way Hestor was a strange one. The book had little twists and turns and at times I wanted to shout out to the character!
Great book Jayne
Highly recommended

Very interesting concept! Parts felt repetitive and sometimes a little too ominous. Felt like it was hinting to all of these mysterious things that might happen and needed to give the reader more to work with throughout the story. “I have to do what I came here for” or phrases likewise were repeated over and over— I felt like okay, I get it now let’s move on.

Thank you NetGalley for my copy!

Theburb of the book sets the scene well. You know the main plot. The 1st half of the book tells you why and give you some character history. This is cleverly interweaven with themain action in the house. I like this as i worked out the reality of the house Sitter early on. Jude character arc was well crafted but once the reveal of what she was looking for I had my heart set on a .better ending. I never felt she was in danger and i was really disappointed with the ending. Michelles character did seem like it was given the bare minimum yo justify the story
I would have liked to have seen more on her backstory to understand her motivation. The twist left me feeling flat as did the ending.
I would recommend this as a good page turner quick read

I received an arc copy from NetGalley, this is my fair and honest review.

This was a strangely positive book for a psychological thriller. There was the feeling of being watched and controlled but I only managed to guess one of the plot twists at the end. The ending kinda confused me as it was so out of the box but I enjoyed it and I was surprised that there was actually a positive spin on everything.

While the plot was intriguing and had potential, the execution wasn't great.
This is a story about a house-sitter taking on a short 3-day job with a social media superstar. The main character, Jude, is tasked by an unknown caller to find particular paperwork in the superstars home “or else”. What should have been novella-length at best, given the content, is an over exaggerated, redundant story without much at its base. The over-use of several words, phrases and ideas was exhausting and made it increasingly hard to stick with. The ending was predictable from the beginning, and left a lot to be desired. Taking out all the fluff and repetition leaves about 60 pages of actual story plot.
Content over word count matters much more to readers.
Lots of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors were noted which I will submit to the authors for reviews.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this story early!

JE Rowley has made searching for documents captivating and compelling. Who would have thought?

Jude is a house sitter and gets an opportunity to stay in influencer, Michelle Crane’s home. Unbeknownst to her employer, Jude is looking for something that will save her life from burning to the grown.

The story is slow and does not contain much cat and mouse suspense or a really intense plot. However, something about the writing does pull you in. I don’t know how the author made searching for documents seem interesting but I wanted to continue reading to find out what Jude was searching for and why it was important. At the same time, someone named Libby Halstead is telling her story. I wasn’t sure why but figured it would work out in the end and went with it. As predicted, everything was revealed in the end and came to a successful conclusion.


I received an ARC from BooksGoSocial through NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book. I am voluntarily submitting this review and am under no obligation to do so.

The House Sitter is the latest offering from JE Rowney, a relatively new (at least to me) author in the thriller genre. So far things have been a little hit or miss and this one started off with an interesting premise of starting a new life but I started to lose interest.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review.

Loved it! Really clever dual plot line which leads to Avery satisfying conclusion. This is clever, well written and I read it in a single sitting because I had to see how it ended.

Book: The House Sitter
Author: J.E. Rowney
Publisher: BooksGoSocial
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Pub Date: June 30, 2022
My Rating: 3.5 rounded up ~ although not 4 solid stars it was more than 3 !
Pages: 164

This is my second J.E. Rowney novel but I wasn’t sure about picking this one. I have read several stories recently about the weird world of “influencers” and some were good others only ‘Okay’.
The blurb starts us off with
Michelle Crane is one of the most recognizable women on social media and if everything goes to plan,
I’m about to ruin her life!

Michelle Crane’s company is “Paper Crane’. Yes in this age of technology there are many who love paper calendars, notebooks, colored pens etc. (actually I am one of those people!)
Although it appears that most of the customers love Michelle! She shares her daily routine of like and dislikes and fans love it!

Jude Quinn is a House sitter and likes it – although basically an easy job of living in someone’s house while they are away. She take caring for their personal belongings seriously.
When she gets a call telling (not asking) her to do something while she is house sitting; she believes she doesn’t have any choice but to do it.

Story alternates between Jude and Libby Halstead. At first not sure of Libby’s connection to Michelle but has me curious!
Although story is really short it is not fast paced and draws us in ~ s l o w l y.
The twist definitely fooled me!
It was an entertaining read !

Want to thank NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for June 30, 2023.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to get through a book but this one was just ok. Jude takes a job as a house sitter for a famous person and it did keep me interested for the first 3/4 of the book but to me, I didn’t find it very thrilling. Maybe it’s just me. I give it 3 stars. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release which I believe in just a few days.

loved reading this book! relatively short, easy read yet the plot is just thick enough to create suspense. I finished it in a day, I liked how it was written with the insights on the house and the character's past slowly being revealed. I was disappointed though by the plot twists being pretty easy to see coming and the ending that kinda felt put together to tie everything up quickly. I think this author has a lot of potential and didn't fully exploit it in this book, so I might stick around for any other ones :)

Gripping, powerful, well-constructed domestic psychological thriller. A clever plot that keeps you captivated - read in one sitting as so difficult to put down. The twists in the story keep you guessing right to the wonderful finale. Highly recommended read and worthy of five stars.

I wouldn’t call this a thriller, but it was a fun, easy read. Only took me a couple of hours. A woman is being blackmailed by an unknown caller, and if she doesn’t complete the “mission”, her own secrets will be let out. I figured out the twists, and while it was a cute read, it was overall underwhelming.

Thanks to NetGalley for my advanced copy.

I read this in one afternoon which is good and bad. It was a very easy read, and I was curious to see how it would end, but it was almost too easy if a read in which almost nothing happened. I was able to solve one of the twists very early on and the second twist was more annoying than anything else. This is a good beach/pool/airplane read but there’s not a whole lot of satisfaction at the end.

Thank you BooksGoSocial and Net Galley for an early copy of The House Sitter. Weird, very weird! Took me awhile to figure out but eventually I did and even then it was weird. I was confused most of the book and struggled to get through it. Sorry.

The House Sitter by J.E. Rowney took a while for me to get into. So much of the story is spent on the main character Jude looking for something in this big house in which she is house sitting. It is tedious in the level of detail. All the while, Jude has something to hide. I found the twist to be underwhelming and somewhat far-fetched. There is no real tension here, a lot of contrived build-up though.

This was an enjoyable mystery read although if your looking for a thriller this is definitely not one.
It took me a little while to work out who was who and there were a couple of good twists.
On the whole i would say it was a good read, something a bit different and i flew through it.
My only criticism was that parts of it became a little repetitive.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy. .