When her beloved nanny, Hannah, left without a trace in the summer of 1987, seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt was devastated. Haunted by the loss, Jo grew up bitter and distant from her family, and eventually left her parents and Lake Hall, their faded aristocratic home, behind.
Thirty years later, Jo must return with her daughter to the family estate and her long-estranged mother, Lady Virginia Holt, after her American husband tragically dies. Dreading the stuffiness and status-obsessed world she gladly left more than a decade before, she’s despondent. But shortly after her return, human remains are accidently uncovered in a lake on the estate, and everyone in town assumes the Holts must be guilty because they lived fast and partied hard with the highest levels of British society. Jo doesn’t want to raise her daughter under such scrutiny and is desperate to get out of her mother’s home.

Then an unexpected visitor—a woman claiming to be Hannah—knocks on the door and Jo’s world is turned upside-down. Hannah, the woman Jo always felt truly raised her, seems heaven-sent as Jo desperately needs support and a direction forward. But as they spend time together, Jo begins to piece together the gaping holes in her memory and everything she thought she knew about herself and her childhood comes into question. Jo must uncover who her nanny really was, why she left, and if she can trust her other mother. Because when your mother is absent, and your nanny leaves you… you can’t help but wonder who loves you more.

In this compulsively readable tale of secrets, lies, and deception, Gilly Macmillan explores the darkest impulses and desires of the human heart. Gilly Macmillan is a talent worth reading and THE NANNY reminds us that sometimes the truth hurts so much, you’d rather hear the lie.