Audiobook Review: When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

Book: 143/150

Rating: 4/5

I loved the movie Get Out so much that any time I see something compared to it I am IN. I always have to keep my expectations pretty reasonable because once you're compared to Get Out those are some high standards to meet.

I did not know that Alyssa Cole was a romance author and this is her first foray into the thriller genre (sidebar: I'd categorize When No One is Watching as a social thriller). And it was really good! I find that smart thrillers are hard to pull off but this one was really well done. There was also a romance subplot that was executed so well which makes me really want to read some of her romance backlist.

Here's the gist: Sydney, a Black woman, moves back into her Brooklyn neighbourhood to care for her ailing mother. It seems that every time Sydney blinks something is changing: new condos are going up, Black neighbours are "moving to the suburbs", the local convenience store is totally white-washed. Is this good ol' gentrification or is there something darker going on in an effort to 'revitalize' the neighbourhood?

Sydney throws herself into doing research for the local neighbourhood walking tour, aided by her new "woke," white neighbour, Theo, and they slowly discover there is something much deeper going on in their neighbourhood than they could have imagined.

For whatever reason, I imagined Issa Rae and Ryan Gosling as the leads, and now I NEED THIS MADE INTO A MOVIE. This is a smart, well paced, relevant, and thought provoking thriller that will force you to confront your own racial biases. Even though I had this one figured out before the big reveal I still enjoyed it until the end.

Thank you to Libro.fm and William Morrow for an advanced listening copy of this book! It came out on September 1, 2020.