You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

This book rating is brought to you by me and my trusty sidekick, Lupin the Corgi! 

Star rating: 5/5

That's right, y'all! Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's third joint novel gets a perfect score from me. Here's why... 

Summary: 

Shay is just an average New Yorker, feeling lonely in the big city. Her job is unsatisfying. Her love for her roommate, Sean, is unrequited. Then one day, her very average life takes a sharp turn when she watches a woman throw herself in front of a subway train. 

Shay can't get the woman or the image of her death out of her head. She feels compelled to learn more about the woman (who she quickly learns was named Amanda) and why she ended her life so violently. But those who were closest to Amanda don't want her death - or life - looked into too closely. 

Review: 

I have been craving more work by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen since their first joint novel, The Wife Between Us, which is one of my FAVORITE thrillers. While their second novel, An Anonymous Girl, didn't quite hit the mark for me, nobody can deny that these two excel at telling unique stories with intriguing characters, and they certainly did it again with this one. 

What made me give this book a perfect 5/5 came down to the way the characters were written, which was  brilliant. Once Shay meets Amanda's friends Cassandra and Jane, she is instantly drawn to them, and as the reader, I was too. Cassandra and Jane were written about so seductively that I found myself wanting to know more about them. Every chapter about them gives the reader tiny teasers about their world that slowly build on one another, and that's the side of the story that kept me turning pages. Shay, on the other hand, while not necessarily unlikeable, was bland, timid, and mousy. At times I questioned who I was really rooting for in the story, and I always appreciate when characters have enough complexity to keep them from falling into neat "good guy" and "bad guy" boxes. 

For me, this book felt more like a drama than a thriller (not a criticism), and for that reason, the "twist predictability" didn't matter as much to me. While there was a twist ending that I didn't predict, it wasn't a very jaw-dropping one. That being said, this book made my jaw drop at so many different points throughout the story that it really didn't need a huge twist ending to finish off strong. Fans of The Wife Between Us, Big Little Lies and The Mother-In-Law, this one is for you!