When No One is Watching

I really loved the social commentary aspects of this book but the thriller parts weren't something I enjoyed at all. I actually hated the end but I would read more from Alyssa Cole in the future

This was sooooooo good.....until that ending. What was that? But despite that crazy ending, the rest of it was well worth reading. Scary because it's true?

This is a must read book. Can I see this happening in Brooklyn, abso-freaking-lutely!! Thisbook is indicative of every neighborhood that is being colonized. This should be considered non-fiction, not a thriller.

Suspense/thriller/horror isn't really my genre of choice, but Alyssa Cole is such a talented writer I gave this a shot anyway. I loved the NextDoor-style posts that started off a lot of the chapters, and the community garden/gentrification theme of the book reminded me of [b:Open House 46155804 Open House (Uptown, #2) Ruby Lang https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1565202407l/46155804.SY75.jpg 71108926], but obviously from a very different angle. I'm not sure what purpose Theo's Russian mafia connections and possible teenage-murderer backstory served, but it seemed pretty undeveloped and I think there was enough going on with him to make that unnecessary. Sydney's POV was stressful and exhausting, but that seemed to be the point - I was legitimately worried for her at times, which is a weird thing to think about a POV character in a work of fiction, but like I said, Alyssa Cole is just that good. The pacing was a little wonky toward the end, but I thought there was a really good gradual buildup of suspense throughout the earlier sections of the book. I probably wouldn't have read this if not for Alyssa Cole, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

3.7

this was bland, disappointing, and a poorly written book - I wanted “rear window meets get out” per the blurb NOT whatever this was lol

4.5 stars.
so so good!! would definitely recommend going into this thinking of it as a contemporary, not a thriller. I loved the social commentary and discussions of gentrification, redlining, & racism. I found the ending to be a bit rushed and too unbelievable which knocked my rating down a lil.

I finished this book this morning, still sort of sleepless from nightmares last night and crying about the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With the big reveal of the fact that a group of high powered white people had been kidnapping Black people to steal their home and do medical experiments on them it seemed laughable at first. Yes, this is fiction but is it really believable?

But that's my privilege to forget (willingly? perhaps) that things like this, even if not altogether at the same time, have happened in the U.S. and still happen now. Hysterectomies are being performed on migrant women without their consent, unscrupulous real estate firms and fraudsters work to take homes from disenfranchised communities, redlining, medical experimentation. It goes on and on.

I was never a huge fan of Alyssa Cole's romance novels, but this book completely knocked me out. Scared the sh*t out of me, made me angry and uncomfortable, and kept me turning the pages as I read the whole thing in less than 24 hours. Like the movie Get Out that the book is being compared to, the gentrification horror story is so believable in our racist world that it doesn't feel exaggerated.

The ending is admittedly rushed and several questions are left unanswered, but the book left an impression that I won't soon forget. Dark, gritty, foreboding with just a touch of hope, this is about as far from a romance novel as you can imagine. I hope Cole has more to say in this vein, although I wish our world was different so she didn't have the need to say it.

Review to come.

Wow this was so good. This was sad, but so, so good and so important. Please read.

With the protests and alt right people planning the riots happening this story might just seem not so fiction after all. A very timely read.