Book Review: "Night Watching" by Tracy Sierra

At the moment, I'm actually trying to discover my next read and by the time this review comes out, hopefully I would have solved the problem. I was also recently involved with a friend of mine who stated that they would like to watch all of the MCU movies again. I politely declined stating that I had already seen them all, many more then once and if we were going to start at Iron Man 1 and work through week by week, we would both be a year older at least by the time we caught up to the current MCU again. Anyways, Night Watching was a fantastic book from start to finish...

We start with an unnamed narrator and her children living in an isolated home in New England when they experience an intruder. It's great because from the very first line, the intruder is in the house. We then get a build up of a backstory whilst this is all happening. The writer does a great job of moving us from the past to the present and then back and forth in order for us to piece together exactly what's going on. I would say if you don't like slow burners then this isn't for you - but I for one love them, and so I will continue.

I read somewhere that this unnamed narrator is an 'archetype of modern womanhood' and I couldn't agree more because even though not all men are horrid creatures, every woman has a story of a horrid creature which is also a man. The narrator has this same predicament in which she is often gaslit by people around her telling her that she is overreacting at things or overthinking things. Honestly, if you are telling people how they should feel about a situation that has impacted them emotionally in some way, you are a shitty human being. The writer and reader are both on the same page though and that's the most important thing.

In the midst of all of this, we have the narrator as a mother who is fiercly protective of her children, shielding them from all the trauma and violence out there. But you can definitely tell that they are feeling all the fear that she is feeling. This definitely has an impact on her. She's resilient, yes but she is also someone who (obviously) doesn't want her children having her traumatic experiences.

As the night grows darker and the shadows in the old colonial house grow long, the floorboards creak and the hidden doors open, we get to see into the narrator's past a bit more. She's a woman who has endured abandonment and abuse but also a woman who has been pretty strong under great stress as well. This definitely lets us know how her past of being traumatised by the men in her life has transferred on to her present. But it also makes us think about whether she is therefore correct about her intruder. There's a lot of suspense around this, but honestly I loved reading it. The writer's control of atmosphere and pace is fantastic.

The narrator has previously been told she’s “too dramatic” or “imagining things,” a theme that resonates strongly in a culture where women are often doubted or blamed. This is definitely a book for women because I think every woman has been called "too dramatic" by a man when expressing an opinion about basically anything. It's definitely wonderful to see that these sides of the female experience are being worked into books that are universal experiences. Literature is definitely something that brings a lot of women together and these books are partly the reason why.

All in all, I think the writer did a fantastic job at representing the horrors of being a woman as an extended metaphor in the realm of home invasion in this book. There's so much to take in that I really did have to stop myself at points, from reading too much and too deeply. The suspense is high, the burn is slow and the descriptions are incredible. I definitely will be looking out for more works by this writer in the future. It was a wonderful book.