It’s been a long time since I’ve had a novel that completely enthralled me from beginning to end.

The premise is simple. A maid who discovers a devastating secret about the owners of the house she’s cleaning. You see that and think to yourself, “Huh. I may have already read a story like this before.”

But that’s the important part. You haven’t quite read something like this before.

It’s riveting from the start. It’s a story that grabs you, anchors you, and doesn’t let you go until the very end, when you reach a very satisfying conclusion. 

You’re going to want to try this one out, because you’re in for a wild ride.

*Spoilers Ahead*

The narrative follows a maid, Kit Darling, as she unknowingly takes on the cleaning job for the Rittenbergs. Kit has recently lost her mother, she lost her father years ago, and the only person who is truly there for her is her best friend, Boon. Or so she thinks.

But the beginning of the novel starts off… interesting. The narrator is the next-door neighbor to the Glass House who has often seen Kit cleaning for the North couple. She’s an older woman whose health is failing, so she often window-watches to pass time and to retain parts of her memory.

Late in the night, she wakes up alarmed due to screaming next door. Then, she sees a couple drag out a carpet and speed away in two cars. It’s only natural that she assumes the worst, and she quickly calls the police to report what she saw.

In a different part of time, we have a pair of lovers engaged in an illicit love affair in a car near the river. While in the midst of their passionate encounter, they see strange cars approaching in the distance. That’s bizarre. No one ever comes to that part of town. No one. That’s why they chose this spot in the first place–it’s far away from prying eyes.

The couple watches in terror as a pair of people get out of the two cars, dump a carpet into the water, and send one of the vehicles, a yellow Subaru, into the water soon afterwards. They depart, completely shocked by what they’ve seen, and decide to depart. But they don’t want to tell the police, as that will reveal what they’ve seen, so they leave quickly.

From the neighbor’s perspective, it’s giving us the impression that Kit Darling was killed in the Glass House. The neighbor says she saw a couple, a pregnant woman and her husband, approach the home and enter it. Then, she saw that same pregnant woman and man exit the house with the carpet. Kit Darling entered the house earlier that day to clean, so the couple must’ve had something to do with it.

In the Glass House, a murder has occurred. There are blood splatters, signs of a struggle, and even the maid’s shoe is left behind–a clue that reveals she tried to fight back against her attackers.

But why? Why would that couple kill Kit? What did she know that was so dangerous?

Well, to put it simply, Kit was dangerous. Because she knew too much.

You see, Kit Darling already knew about the couple she was cleaning for. Daisy and Jon Rittenberg. They’re a pair from her past, as they’re all from the same ski town. Jon is a retired Olympic winter sports athlete, who won two gold medals for his country and who was adored by many from the time he was a teenager.

One of his fans was a young Katerina Popovich. She was unattractive back then, but that didn’t stop Jon and his other friends to take advantage of her at a lodge party, drugging her and raping her in front of many other witnesses. The assault was caught on camera, as well. Afterwards, Daisy helped Jon conceal the evidence of the crime by dumping Katerina back at her parent’s house. No one at the party told the truth about what happened to the authorities when Katerina later reported the assault.

Then, Katerina became pregnant. She always wanted children, but she wasn’t allowed to keep this one. Daisy’s mother pressured Katerina’s mother into signing an agreement: $500,000 for Katerina to get rid of the baby while Katerina’s mother would drop the charges on Jon and the others involved. Katerina’s mother took the offer, forcing Katerina to get an abortion that would leave her infertile.

What’s particularly heartbreaking about this part of the narrative is how realistic it is. This, most certainly, has happened to many young women across the world. They get taken advantage of, but then they get villainized by the rest of the world who either doesn’t believe them or who wants to shut them up entirely. It’s a horrifying position to be in, but what’s worse is the fact that there were women involved in destroying Katerina’s life, dignity, and autonomy. Women are supposed to stick together, but sometimes, they can be just as vicious as the men who violently attack the ones they want to dominate.

Katerina drops out of school after the event. Years later, Katerina, under her new name Kit Darling, has finally made something of herself by being a maid. She likes the role of being invisible, of cleaning houses all while discovering the innermost secrets of the people who she cleans houses for.

Only this time around, she unknowingly becomes the new maid for the Rittenbergs. The couple who helped destroy her life.

She learns many things about the two of them. One: Daisy is pregnant. She’s expecting Jon’s baby, which is gut wrenching for Kit. Kit was left infertile because of these two–now they get to enjoy the opportunity of bringing a new life into the world. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.

Another second: Jon has raped and impregnated another woman before. A woman named Charley. And again, Daisy threatened, intimidated, and coerced Charley into getting an abortion by blackmailing her with taunts, hoping her baby would die. Charley signed an NDA, got money, and was forced to retract the charges. 

Third: Daisy has kept evidence of the crime against Kit. More specifically, the video evidence of the assault, as well as the contracts that Daisy’s mom and Kit’s mom signed to force Kit into getting an abortion. 

She also learns through this video evidence that her best friend, Boon, was also there on the night of the assault. It feels like her world is ending. How could this have happened to her?

Why is this happening to her?

Anyone in this situation would spiral. And rightfully so. It’s as if the whole world wanted to see her fail, to trample on her and destroy her. For what? For being a young, impressionable sixteen year old girl who made the mistake of crushing on an older boy? It’s something so innocent, something that happens to many young girls. And Kit was destroyed for it.

But she isn’t intending to go down easily.

Kit begins enacting a plan, using this newfound knowledge, to get revenge on the Rittenbergs. She confronts Boon about being present at the party, and he cries, begging her for forgiveness as he would’ve been outed if he went forward as a witness. So he kept quiet to save himself.

Now, he is willing to help Kit was everything.

Kit begins to disguise herself as Vanessa North, the owner of the Glass House. The North couple are overseas, so it provides her the perfect opportunity to dupe Daisy into believing she is Vanessa. Kit loves theatre and has access to a lot of props via her friends, so she gets a belly bump and pretends she is pregnant to start getting closer to Daisy.

Daisy falls for this, truly believing that Vanessa/Kit is her best friend. 

Simultaneously, Kit also learns that Jon is up for a promotion at his company, so she intends to sabotage him. First, she seduces him under another disguise, presenting herself as a woman named Mia. Jon, unsurprisingly, is easily enticed by Mia/Kit, jumping at the opportunity to see her again when he gets the chance.

Meanwhile, Boon is following Jon around, documenting his whereabouts, and learns that Jon is trying to dig up some dirt on a competitor for his promotion. Jon basically thinks the other guy is some sort of DEI hire and wants to take him down for it. Boon documents everything via photographs.

Daisy is getting closer to Vanessa/Kit, but Daisy is also suffering from some intimidation of her own. Someone is trolling her, commenting strange things on her Instagram posts relating to how she intimidated Charley. She is also receiving intimidating notes in the mail. Someone knows about what she did. But who? And how?

All the while, Jon is fully intending to cheat on Daisy with Mia, and he gets the chance to. He meets her for drinks, but his drink gets spiked. She leads him to a hotel bedroom, where Kit chains him to the bed and makes it so that when Jon wakes up, he thinks he’s been assaulted. Boon makes sure to get some photographs of this all happening, as well.

The next day, Jon wakes up and is stunned. He doesn’t remember anything, there’s a sticky substance on his genitals, and he’s burning from behind. He cries as he gets dressed again and concocts a story for Daisy to believe–that he suffered a medical emergency, which explains why he didn’t come home immediately.

Kit’s revenge really begins to kick in. All of the photographic evidence against Jon, from his supposed affair with Mia to him hiring a private investigator to find dirt on a colleague, is presented to his boss, who is infuriated and fires him on the spot. 

Meanwhile, Daisy is planning a dinner date with Vanessa and her husband, wanting Jon to tag along. He does so begrudgingly, unwilling to tell her how his life is falling apart all around him due to his own actions.

When Daisy and Jon go to dinner with Vanessa, they soon learn that Vanessa hasn’t been telling them the full truth. She isn’t Vanessa, she isn’t Mia, but she is Kit Darling. The girl who they wronged so many years ago.

And she presents them with all the evidence she has against them, pitting Daisy and Jon against each other before giving them an option: transfer a large sum of money into her account, or she goes to the police. Jon does so, and there’s a huge tension between the trio before Daisy and Jon eventually leave. 

Once they’re gone, Kit stages her own murder scene, making it seem as if Daisy and Jon killed Kit, which loops us back to the scene from the beginning of the novel of what the neighbor saw. With Boon’s help, Kit goes through great lengths to present a believable scene at first. But really, she wanted media attention on both Daisy and Jon for their role in ruining her life. She knew that the police would figure out the murder never happened.

Kit then flees the country with the money Jon gave her, heading off to travel the world, which is something she always wanted to do. And via her Instagram account, one where she posts to maintain an illusion that she has a perfect life, she invites Boon to come join her. And due to his platonic love for her, he plans to do just that.

All in all, it’s a revenge story through and through. A very satisfying one. I always like reading a story where the main character leaves everything behind to start a new life elsewhere, and that’s what Kit achieves in the end after completely obliterating Daisy and Jon’s life. And honestly, they deserve it!

To be fair, I did feel a bit bad for Daisy. A little bit. She’s pregnant while everything is happening, so it would be a very stressful situation to go through all while carrying a baby. Not to mention, her husband nearly cheated on her again. And her skeletons in the closet are rising up and knocking hard on her door.

She’s a bad person, though. She has no issues covering up for her rapist husband because they “deserve a good future together” and Kit was standing in the way of that. She thought that Jon was truly a man worth going through all this trouble for; meanwhile, Jon was willing to throw away Daisy and their unborn son for a woman who didn’t even know. 

Jon is the true villain of this novel, though. A coward, a rapist, an entitled individual who thinks the world should bow down since he won Olympic gold in his youth. But now that he’s getting older and the world is forgetting about him, Jon realizes that he actually has to work hard to get what he wants now. And he just can’t do it. He has to play dirty, which leads to his downfall.

In novels like this, I can’t help but think about all the people who it would resonate with. Abuse victims, people who never got justice, people who were wronged and who had to see their enemies win. It hurts to know that this is reality for so many people.

Which is why it feels so good to see Kit Darling win. She made it. She got her revenge, she got a lot of money, and she got to live out her dream of traveling the world. There’s no loose ends left in this book–everything is answered and accounted for, and you’re left with the image of a young woman on a beach, enjoying what she earned through the hard, diligent work of revenge.

The novel also brings up an interesting observation: within a society, the rich man has a lot of power. He can dominate, he can ruin, he can destroy, but it’s quite uncommon to see his victim fight back. And when the victim does fight back, it is truly a glorious thing to see. Even better when the victim wins.

I love a good underdog tale. And I love a good revenge tale. And I love a good main-character-achieves-her-dreams-and-travels-the-world-in-the-end tale. This novel had all of that, all while being a captivating thriller. It’s not a murder mystery per se, since Kit never got murdered, but it does a fine job of presenting itself as one before the truth is revealed!

I’m excited to read more of Loreth Anne White’s work after this one! Just so you know, I finished this book in one night. It was just that good!

5/5 stars!

Happy reading!