The Boy at the Keyhole. Stephen Giles. 2018. In spite of the glowing reviews, I was disappointed in this suspense novel. I guess I do not appreciate or understand the “subtly” of this novel. Reviewers liked it much better than the readers who reviewed it on Amazon. Samuel, a nine year old boy lives with his housekeeper in a big house. His father is dead and his mother has gone to America to raise money to save the family business. Samuel is obsessed with her absence. He misses her terribly and constantly asks the housekeeper when she will return. His friend suggests that the housekeeper has murdered his mother and hidden her body. Samuel is determined to find out the truth and we begin to wonder too. ( )

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing me an Electronic ARC of this book for my honest review.

I found The Boy at the Keyhole to be a suspenseful book. It was well written but no particular unexpected twists in the story. I felt sorry for Samuel's situation but he was a bit of a bratty character. Ruth was a harsh seemingly uncaring housekeeper who seemed a bit abusive to Samuel. Overall dysfunctional characters but I suppose that is the point of the story. ( )

The Short of It:

This story is a little bit twisty, which I like.

The Rest of It:

What’s a young boy to do when his mother leaves in the middle of the night for America, and the only person he has to look after him is his housekeeper Ruth? Ruth doesn’t seem all that fond of him and when things begin to go missing, Samuel begins to question the true whereabouts of his mother. All he has to go by, are the postcards she sends from America.

But are they really from her?

Ruth and Samuel live in this big, old Victorian house. It’s full of secrets and strange happenings, locked doors and mysterious appearances. Is it haunted, or is Samuel just a very imaginative boy? When his mother doesn’t return after months of being away, his imagination gets the best of him. What has Ruth done with his mother?

The Boy at the Keyhole was a fun read. I really wasn’t sure what to think as I turned the pages and the ending was pretty surprising to me but it had all the elements I enjoy (a creaky house, a mean-spirited caretaker, a young boy with an active imagination). It kept me guessing right up to the end.

I’m not sure if this is being marketed as YA but it did feel like YA at times but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. If you’ve read it, send me a private message so we can discuss the ending.

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The audio narration well done, and the psychology when in the head of the nine-year-old boy was realistically written. However, the conclusion seem flat to me, so if not for that I'd have given it higher marks. ( )

Imagine you’re a young boy whose father has died. Your mother is away looking for some money to keep the family business going. Imagine things disappearing from the house. Imagine you’re lonely and the only news of your mother comes in the form of short postcards from the across the ocean in America. Imagine there’s never a return address or a place you could call to speak to her. Imagine the months going by. and one by one, the other people in your life are going away, the maid laid off, the gardener’s time reduced. Your uncle is absent and the only constant in your life is Ruth Tupper, a rigid housekeeper who sometimes is so scary mad you think she might kill you.

What kind of things might you also imagine when your mother does not return for months? It might be easier to imagine Ruth killed her than to imagine she just doesn’t love you. The Boy at the Keyhole imagines all of that and it’s terrifying.

The Boy at the Keyhole succeeds almost too well in capturing the thoughts of a child’s mind. Samuel circles around his suspicions a lot, his thinking is roundabout and circular at times like a child. This can make some of the books seem a little slow, but then I think we need that to pace ourselves for the nights Samuel lays in bed, trying so hard to pretend to sleep as Ruth ominously comes in to check on him. His fear is so real and so fraught with real jeopardy that it needs to meander a bit to remind us he is a child. Samuel is a complex child, a loving son who is desperately missing his mother, perhaps all the more intensely since even in memory she was more absent than present. Ruth Tupper is equally complicated, she feels a deep obligation to the family and Samuel, but then she is so rough with him, so hard and cruel at times.

This is one of the few thrillers that surprised me at the end. Really surprised me. I probably should rate it higher but I am mad at the ending. It might have been a lesser book, more trite and predictable, with just about any other ending, but dang it. This is not what I wanted.

I received a copy of The Boy at the Keyhole from the publisher through NetGalley

The Boy at the Keyhole at Hanover Square Press from Harlequin Books
Stephen Giles at Wikipedia

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