After reading and absolutely loving I Found You and Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell this year, I was anxious to read her new novel, Watching You. The book starts with a bang : a murder. We don't know what happened or who the victim even is. Immediately you want to keep reading!
What threw me off after the first chapter was the number of characters and the different POVs. It took me a little while to put everyone together and fully understand what was going on and enjoy the book. I think the reader should set a big enough amount of reading time to be able to read a big chunk of the book in one sitting in order to better understand the story quickly. The reader needs to pay attention!
Although, after getting the characters sorted out, I really enjoyed the book. The author did a great job in keeping the reader interested and guessing. It is also very well written. I am definitely a big fan of Jewell and will be looking forward to all her future work!
I really enjoyed this book and will recommend it to anyone who loves a great well written, characters driven thriller. It is set to be published on December 26th.
Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for my gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mommy Reads
I was told there would be a lot of characters to remember in this one but I was surprised I caught on pretty quick. There was a couple of storylines at the beginning that got me confused but after reading a bit more it all made sense.
With all these different characters, we were able to read their different POVs. Along with the different POVs, the story is told backward. You find out there is murder, then the story goes back to the days leading up to the murder. I found that quite creative, it really kept you interested and guessing. When reading these different POVs, I really loved that I could read all the different sides to this particular story, and really loved the different dynamics between all of the characters. There were multiple storylines to follow but again, I feel like that's what kept me interested. Additionally, I found that the story wasn't predictable, up to a certain point since I wasn't really surprised by the ending. However, given the circumstances of the story, it was a great ending.
The only negative point I have is that it was a slow-burning novel, there wasn't a lot of "action", but the story was very well written that I didn’t mind. Highly recommend
Summary
Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Bristol, England; home to doctors and lawyers and old-money academics. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens. But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.
Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Bristol, England; home to doctors and lawyers and old-money academics. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens. But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.
As the headmaster credited with turning around the local school, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by one and all—including Joey Mullen, his new neighbor, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming yet unavailable man. Joey thinks her crush is a secret, but Tom’s teenaged son Freddie—a prodigy with aspirations of becoming a spy for MI5—excels in observing people and has witnessed Joey behaving strangely around his father.
One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she’s not convinced her teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate, and Jenna’s mother—whose mental health has admittedly been deteriorating in recent years—is convinced that Mr. Fitzwilliam is stalking her.
Meanwhile, twenty years earlier, a schoolgirl writes in her diary, charting her doomed obsession with a handsome young English teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam…
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