Review: The Sound by Sarah Alderson

Title: The Sound
Author: Sarah Alderson
Publication:  May 13th 2014 by Simon Pulse
Reviewed by: Taryn
Rating: 3 stars
Reason for Reviewing: Ebook provided in exchange for an honest review.

When aspiring music journalist Ren Kingston takes a job nannying for a wealthy family on the exclusive island of Nantucket, playground for Boston's elite, she's hoping for a low-key summer reading books and blogging about bands. Boys are firmly off the agenda.

What she doesn't count on is falling in with a bunch of party-loving private school kids who are hiding some dark secrets, falling (possibly) in love with the local bad boy, and falling out with a dangerous serial killer...

The gripping new stand-alone novel from the author of Hunting Lila.

Ren Kingston, an almost-18-year-old aspiring music journalist, takes a summer job nannying for a wealthy family on Nantucket Island. Ren is from Bromley, a South London suburb, and life with the Tripp family couldn’t be any more different than she’s used to. The Tripps may have hired a nanny, but they still plan to send baby Braiden to daycare and 4-year-old Brodie to camp, so Ren’s nanny services are only really needed in the mornings and evenings. The rest of her time, including most weekends, is free. This is great news to Ren, who is looking forward to a quiet, mellow summer as she recovers from a heartbreak. 

However, Ren soon finds herself swept up with a group of young and rich private school kids, attending parties and cozying up to handsome and preppy Jeremy Thorne. Despite her plans to swear off boys for the summer, Ren spends a lot of time with Jeremy and also starts getting to know the local “bad boy”, Jesse Miller, at the same time. Jeremy and his friends don’t like Jesse and warn Ren to stay away from him. It turns out that Jesse has spent time in juvie in the past due to beating up one of Jeremy’s good friends. But Ren has a strange feeling that there’s more to Jesse’s story than everyone lets on, and she’s not really sure who on the island she can truly trust. When young, foreign nannies start being attacked and left for dead on the beach, Ren’s hopes for a peaceful summer are ruined. Will she survive the summer, or will the Nantucket Nanny serial killer strike again? 

The Sound was a fast-paced read that I flew through in just one day. The first few pages hooked me with a suspenseful prologue in which Ren was trying to escape a dangerous man (a glimpse of what was to come!). Then it flashed back to the present day, and I was immediately intrigued by the vivid setting and the interesting cast of characters. 

I had a pretty good idea who the serial killer would turn out to be, so the big reveal wasn’t much of a surprise to me in the end. And actually, the serial killer plot didn’t seem to get as much attention as the romantic/love triangle plot over the course of the book, so the whole story felt a little off balance to me. But ultimately, The Sound was an entertaining read that I would recommend to fans of contemporary YA thrillers.