When No One is Watching Book Review

If you’ve seen Get Out and liked it, then you will be a fan of this too; it has exactly the same chilling atmosphere and that feeling throughout that something darker is going on than first anticipated. As characters, Sydney and Theo’s relationship was animated and compelling and their polarising personalities made the dynamic of their friendship really interesting to watch.
8.1Chilling, Thrilling, Captivating

A thriller with twists and turns and an important commentary about the state of the US, When No One is Watching is a great exploration and reflection of the negative effects on Black communities like Sydney’s when they are so vociferously disregarded. Really worth the read (but maybe don’t pick it up after dark if you’re easily scared like me!)
If I’m being honest, while I loved the book, I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending. Endings are hard anyway, especially for thrillers, and I know they won’t please everyone, but it felt a little rushed to me and verged almost on sci-fi rather than a thriller as a genre, but I see what the author was trying to achieve.
Title: When No One is Watching
Author: Alyssa Cole
Type: Fiction
Published: 2020
Pages: 352
TW: Racism, Violence, Death
When No One is Watching is a thriller set in the suburbs of New York. Sydney Green has lived in her neighbourhood for a lot of her life. Having moved away and then returned, she can see how much it’s changed from the friendly and reliable place she knew as a child. After witnessing a walking tour of the area with little information about what she knows the neighbourhood to be, she decides to start her own and finds an unlikely assistant in Theo, who’s just moved into a house on the street. As the two of them begin to uncover the true history of the place, people from the street start to disappear, and what they learn will shock and chill them to the core.