Who is watching the house at night? A tragic scary story of living in fear.

Many readers rate a book highly as long as the last part of it is good, even if the first part is mostly tedious and the middle is frustrating and annoying. I don't.

No one in NIGHTWATCHING has a name. Even the setting is unnamed; we know only that it is someplace in New England.

A small shy widow lives in a big old house with her young son and daughter. She wakes one night to hear an intruder in her home. Sounds like a good beginning. But the nail-biting minute-by-minute description of what the widow hears and how she decides to best protect her children gets tedious with the frequent interruptions of her remembrances of the past. Yes, we need to know this background to understand her present. But its presentation nearly spoils an otherwise pulse-pounding situation.

We get to the point where the widow is being questioned by the police. They have taken her children to live with her father-in-law while she is recuperating. He is a bad man and has already given to the police his unreasonably bad opinion of her. As a result, they do not believe much of what she tells them. One of the policemen even reports the widow to Child Protective Services because he doesn't feel they are safe with her. So now she can't get her kids back. No matter that she is the victim here. The story gets so frustrating I wanted to throw the book against the wall.

After this, though, NIGHTWATCHING gets thrilling again but with no interruptions. I'm convinced this is how Tracy Sierra has received so much praise for this book.