An instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
“I was knocked over by the momentum of an intense psychological thriller that doesn’t let go until the final page. This is a terrific read.” – Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author
*Marie Claire’s September Book Club Pick*
Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable … Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
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I’m so glad I read this but so glad I waited until now to do so. I really struggled to read the bits of history Sydney uncovered and to see what those in power did to those they think don’t have power. It made me sad and furious and a little guilty. I’ve lived in gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC and even if I know that my finances track more like Theo’s than Kim’s, corporations will always view me as a symbol of gentrification.
I loved the characters. Sydney, Ms. Candace, Mr. Perkins, Theo, they all felt real, like I had seen them in my neighborhood or passed them on the street regularly. The whole neighborhood vibe was authentic and made me smile. And that’s what made everything have a real impact when it started to go really wrong. I was drawn in and cared about these people and this community and I wanted to see it survive and thrive.
Some reviewers complained about the pacing of the events but I think the timing was good. The slow build-up drew me in, the small moments that seemed off could almost be brushed away, and then it all came to a head. And the ending was perfect, in my opinion. It rang true, unfortunately. The events are believable.
I’ve been recommending this to everyone!
When No One is Watching tells the story of Sydney Green and how her life begins to change along with the residential changes being made in her Brooklyn neighborhood. With all of the new faces and tacky tour groups around, Sydney decides to form her own tour group – one that will really show the history of this street and those who resided there. But, her plans become delayed as more extreme acts begin happening in the neighborhood, such as her lifelong neighbors beginning to suddenly move out with no warning, and new white families immediately move in. Leaving Sydney with no choice but to pair up with a new neighbor named Theo, they must investigate where these neighbors are really going to, and who is being all of this.
Honestly, I felt like this book had great potential for a truly eye-opening book. Unfortunately, it almost seemed like too many ideas were jumbled together too quickly. The brief occurrences of romantic relations in this book did not fit in well at all in my opinion. Along with this, I really felt as though I did not connect with the characters. Also, the ending completely fell flat for me and I felt like I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. Overall, the idea for the storyline was very intriguing, but I felt as though many parts were rushed, needed more detail, or simply just shouldn’t have been included.
I truly hope that Alyssa Cole continues writing thrillers because this is genuinely the best thriller I’ve ever read. Cole managed to effortlessly blend social commentary, horror, comedy, romance, and a bit of psychological tension into one novel. When No One is Watching is truly chilling and unforgettable.
loved the book amazing
thanks you for this book https://celotehpraja.com
Wow….ok so this was a bit of a slow start for me but it ramped up and was nothing like I was expecting! Took me on a wild ride. Sydney is hurting and scared and trying to save her mom’s house and watching her neighborhood change for the worse before her eyes. Theo is interested but a bit boring at first and hard to figure out, but like Shrek, he has layers that get more interesting as the book goes on. Every turn along the way is unexpected and fascinating.
I don’t usually read thrillers – although I’m not sure this fully fits into one category – but I really liked this book. The author spent probably 80% of the book building up the characters, familiarizing the reader with the feel of the neighborhood and hinting at its untold history. While I did expect it to be fast paced from the start, I wasn’t disappointed that it was mostly a slow burn – because the author so eloquently describes the feel of any given moment – I felt like I was in Sydney’s old brownstone with her, like I could feel the hot summer sun on the Brooklyn sidewalk… She has a beautiful way of describing the ordinary, the mundane, the small moments that make up a day.
The book took a pretty crazy, action filled turn near the end. It was intense but felt necessary – like it was a commentary on or reflection of what racism feels like to those who are constantly experiencing it, and the urgency needed in dealing with it. Overall this book deals with important and highly relevant social justice issues like racism and gentrification, and is a must add for your TBR.
Is there anything Alyssa Cole can’t write? Page-turner is the only way to describe this book.
I didn’t know what to expect when I started this book, but before I knew it, I was caught up in the story. Alyssa Cole takes gentrification of a neighborhood to a whole new dark level. As more secrets are uncovered and the main character begins to doubt the person helping her, you hope she gets to the bottom of the mysterious disappearances and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. A thriller to keep you guessing until the end.
This is the kind of thriller that lays a lot of groundwork and then creeps up on you. When things go wrong, they swiftly get worse. There is a lot of history in this book, and I think Cole does a fantastic job of showing the reader the ramifications of gentrification. We also see how Black neighborhoods were kept poor on purpose with little help to keep, and maintain their homes. Cole’s characters and experiences are real, even “Bodega Becky” which we see every day in America. I liked the alternating points of view. When No One is Watching is well crafted, and I’m glad I read it; nicely done.
When No One is Watching took me on a bonkers mad ride through Brooklyn’s gentrification and gave me an eye-opening lesson in racial bias and issues.
Cole has packed in hard truths with page-turning action and if this book doesn’t adapted into a movie or a series, I don’t know what can
Thank you Alyssa Cole, William Morrow Books and Librofm for the #gifted copy of this audiobook.
4/5 Stars
3/5 Steam Rating
I went into this book not knowing what it was about, but knowing it was a thriller and that a lot of people have been raving about it. You know me… I never read a synopsis, are you surprised?! What this book turned out to be was so much more than your a run of the mill thriller. Instead, it’s a story that is expertly woven to tell an incredibly rich story of a gentrification of a predominantly black neighborhood and what that means for the current residents.
I loved how Cole added such a heavy layer of cultural inequality and bias into the storyline. While I really enjoyed this aspect of the story, it left more of the thriller theme to come in towards the end of the book. The ending was thrilling, with several big twists. Some of what occurred felt a bit far reaching, but it was still entertaining and kept me on the edge of my seat. There was one fairly steamy scene within this story; if that’s not really your thing you can easy skip a couple pages.
Audiobook Thoughts: This book is told from the POV of both Sydney & Theo. I appreciate that each narrator was able to bring their character to life. Their voices were easy to understand and really helped to bring an extra element to Sydney & Theo.
I felt like this book has a rather slow start and I had just a little trouble getting into it. Overall it was a good read and I enjoyed it by the end. (Spoiler alert) I did find it difficult to believe that so many people could be killed and it would all be swept under the rug. I mean could a person really go into a meeting of a big corporation even a corrupt one and kill a bunch of people and expect that no one would notice? Found this part of the story slightly unbelievable.
: ℎ ℎ
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: 352
: ℎ ℎ
: 09/01/2020
: (3.5 stars)
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This is the first book I have read from this author. Thank you Olivia of Thriller Book Lover for the #gifted copy.
In this book we follow Sydney Green who is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change everytime she blinks. Condos are sprouting up like weeds, For Sale signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing.
I had trouble getting through the first half of the book because the pacing wasn’t the same as the second half. The second half sent me on one hell of a ride all the way to the end, and felt very realistic. In my eyes, this book had a ton of potential to be an amazing thriller, but a few parts didn’t match up for me. All in all, this was a solid book that I would definitely recommend people checking out.
There’s no beating the premise of this book, which is basically that there is a vast conspiracy to steal from Black people one of the most valuable commodities in America that can help build wealth, community, and a sense of belonging — real property. Except wait … there is and always has been such a conspiracy in America, and the historical record supports this. That history, which Alyssa Cole sprinkles throughout her thriller both to bolster the plot and educate the reader, makes this book much more than a light read. I learned a few things, and was felt compelled to read more, sometimes just so the learning could continue.
Here’s the set up: Sydney Green lives in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn in the brownstone owned by her mother since she was a kid. Except the speed with which her neighborhood is changing is accompanied by a strange series of unfortunate events befalling the longtime Black residents just as more and more white people move in. Sydney, having just left an emotionally abusive relationship is bruised, insecure and hiding a secret that has her justifiably paranoid, so the neighborhood goings-on have her second-guessing herself even while she grows more certain that something is very, very wrong.
Theo, Sydney’s neighbor, is one of the gentrifiers, only he isn’t “to the manor born” like his girlfriend Kim, and actually notices his Black neighbors. And what’s more, he likes them as neighbors, not seeing them as the pesky holdovers that Kim and some of the other new white residents see them as. True, Theo “notices” Sydney more than he does anyone else on the block, but that becomes less of an issue when his relationship with Kim seems to be going south. Through a series of unexpected, and later, unsettling events, Sydney and Theo are thrown together and begin to unravel a much more nefarious plot than either of them could have imagined.
The concept of this book won the day for me, as did the author’s humor. I laughed out loud more than once at her wry observations, and smiled quite often.
**SPOILERS AHEAD **
My small quibbles were as follows: there were moments where the white characters felt like caricatures, while the Black characters (even the minor ones) felt multifaceted and complex, and had backstories, even if they made brief appearances. And the root of the conspiracy, once uncovered, was still a little murky; and its breadth and reach a little fuzzy. “We have the media and the police on our side,” one of the villains crows … but the “we” was a little unclear. I didn’t expect a tidy wrap-up, but the ending felt a little chaotic, with Sydney and Theo going on a Rambo-esque rampage which resulted in an unlikely standing down of the forces of evil, unlikelier still if they have law enforcement and the media on their side. Could be the author is planning to revisit the Sydney-Theo duo, or … and this is my preferred interpretation, she’s telling us that these issues of race and property ownership and wealth-building, and gentrification, all remain unresolved.
Recommended for those who like domestic thrillers.
AUDIOBOOK NOTE: I got both the galley and audiobook from Netgalley, so I read some parts and listened to others. The narrator is perfect for this project. Well done.
WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING by Alyssa Cole is a standalone, psychological thriller. If you follow my reviews, you know that along with romances I love psychological thrillers. There’s just something about novels that keep me on the edge of my seat that excite me. Therefore, I grabbed a copy of this this one knowing virtually NOTHING about it. ? Yes. There were many fantastic pieces to this puzzling story that kept me interested. For one, Alyssa Cole takes a stance on gentrification and how the process is harming those who live within the neighborhoods that are being changed. I honestly learned a lot about the process just from reading this book! I also love how history was interwoven with the mystery in the novel and found it to be quite perfect for everything going on in todays world. However, these few things didn’t make the book loveable for me. Had the focus JUST been on these issues and all the others that people of color are/have faced, I would have loved the novel. But the book took some really weird turns that didn’t sit well with me as a reader. I’ll describe those below ( ).
First and foremost, the suspense building in this story was SLOW. I’ve learned from the past few books I read that I actually prefer a fast-paced thriller rather than a slow paced one so this took away from a lot of my enjoyment. , . Many people do like a slow buildup and that’s fine. But my personal preference is one that goes hard FAST. This one didn’t actually pick up until we were 200 pages in, and I almost stopped reading! That’s how slow it felt to me. (PS: The book is just under 350 pages).
Another thing that I didn’t care for was the ending. I wanted some more answers. We get this massive climax that’s action packed and thrilling, but nothing on what happens NEXT. I feel like it ended to quickly in that aspect and would have loved an extended epilogue of some sort that wrapped things up. I mean, I totally understand why the author decided to end it with those messages at the end, but again, my personal preference would be a snappy ending with answers.
Finally, I felt the book was a bit farfetched. For a thriller to be nearly unbelievable takes away the enjoyment from some readers (like me). I just couldn’t see things happening quite like this.
Aside from the few things I didn’t like about this book, there are many things that make it remarkable and memorable. For one, this is one of the most original thrillers I’ve ever read. Alyssa has built up quite the story here and I think many readers are going to find it to be wholly unique. Additionally, the book holds a creep factor and parts of the novel made my skin crawl which was really cool and unexpected.
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This is a thriller, it builds slowly and ends with a bang! Some might say its far fetched but it is fiction and it is entertaining. I believe that’s exactly what the author was going for and she succeeded!
Neighbors are disappearing from the neighborhood and nobody knows where they moved to or what happened to them! This is in a close knit part of Brooklyn where everybody knows everybody! As paranoia and fear take over, one woman begins to investigate what’s going on and what she discovers is unbelievable!
Sydney Green grew up in Brooklyn and now she’s back in her mom’s home after a failed relationship. But her Gifford Place neighborhood seems to be changing daily–houses selling, new neighbors moving in, familiar stores closing. To try to help deal with the change, Sydney begins researching a walking tour: one that will truly showcase the real history of her neighborhood. In doing so, she winds up with an unlikely assistant, her bumbling new neighbor Theo. But the more Sydney and Theo delve into the neighborhood’s past, the more horrifying things they uncover. And the push for gentrification around them seems to have even more sinister undertones than anyone could have expected.
“The landscape of my life is unrecognizable; Gifford Place doesn’t feel like home.”
Wow, an insane and wild ride happens when you pick up this book! Told in alternating perspectives from Sydney and Theo, peppered with posts from Gifford Place’s “Our Hood” app, this is a tense and utterly spellbinding thriller unlike anything I’ve ever read before.
This is an incredibly timely book–covering racism in a straightforward and upfront format. Some of the characters are downright despicable, and Cole does not shy away from showing how utterly racist and hateful people can be. Yes, today, in America. The book is, honestly, eye-opening, no matter how informed you think you may be. It delves into the history of Brooklyn and how black property owners were pushed out, and I found it to be very informative (and heart breaking). Just as bleak is how it clearly shows the institutional racism in place today. Slavery may be gone in its original form, but its legacy still exists, and there are still so many ways to keep black people down, to hold them back.
While illustrating this, Cole gives us a completely terrifying thriller that borders on horror. It’s suspenseful and horrifying, filled with paranoia and conspiracy theories. I was completely caught up in Sydney and Theo’s world–and honestly the entire neighborhood of Gifford Place. This book takes a wild turn near the end and the crazy plot is, well, crazy, but at this point, with everything we’ve learned and realized, you begin to think that it’s almost entirely plausible things could go down the way they do.
No matter what, the result is a truly spellbinding and illuminating read. It’s not often a book teaches and yet terrifies, educates and still captivates. I definitely recommend this one. 4+ stars.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and HarperCollins/William Morrow in return for an unbiased review.
One word constantly kept repeating in my head while reading this “RACIST KAREN”. The beginning was slow as hell, it started to pick up after maybe 60-70 pages. and I didn’t know this kind of stuff happens with black community truly shock full. I would really recommend this book.
The scariest part of this one is that I can see it happening. That is a horrible truth to be able to say about a work of fiction. Alyssa Cole’s WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING is a well-written thriller that not only kept me on the edge of my seat, but also folded in a wealth of historical information that was interesting and eye-opening.
This was an unexpected read for me and I appreciated the way Cole crafted the story and its characters. There were some unexpected twists, and I finished the book wishing for just a little more. It is also a novel that will have you thinking about it long after you finish.
Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.
#WHENNOONEISWATCHING #ALYSSACOLE #WILLIAMMORROWPAPERBACKS #SCENEOFTHECRIME #THEBOOKCLUBGIRLS