So, this was my first Lisa Jewell read & won't be my last... Watching You, was a clever, disturbing but compelling story with many enjoyable characters and a well-plotted mystery, even though i guessed at the ending early on, but not exactly how it played out, so I was very happy to read on and wasn't bored. Totally recommend this book.

Thanks to Netgalley for this copy of Watching You in exchange for an honest review.

People aren’t as they seem and this theme was highlighted throughout this novel. Of course the reader automatically assumes that this term really only applies to Tom, one of the main characters. However, as the story progresses you see that this is true of many of the characters.

Watching You is about a neighborhood full of messed up people. The story starts out with a murder. We don't know who has been killed or where except it's in a house and a red boot tassel has been left at the scene.

Tom, the headmaster at a local school, his wife Nicola, and their son Freddie live in a nice neighborhood. Freddie sits in his upstairs bedroom creeping on the neighborhood out his window. Everyone, including some of Tom's students, loves him, bordering on obsession. His wife caters to his every whim, and if Tom isn't around, doesn't even acknowledge her son as everything she does is for her husband. A few doors down from them live Joey, who lives with her husband, her brother, and his wife. Joey is a sad sap who is obsessed with Tom and is always watching him, swooning over his every move. She is struggling finding a job, as is her husband, which is why her brother, a surgeon, let them move in so they can get back on their feet. Also on the street is Jenna, a student at Tom's school, and her mother, who is delusional and on the verge of a mental breakdown. She blames Tom for something and watches his family constantly. Everyone in the neighborhood seems to be watching someone else, but why? When you find out who has been murdered, it seems pretty obvious who the killer is, but when you piece together all the secrets the various neighbors have uncovered you might begin to question who the suspect is!

In my opinion this was a pretty good mystery, but I typically prefer more fast paced psychological thrillers. The revelations at the end were stunning, I just felt it was a bit bogged down and slow moving at times, but the last bit was crazy!

📸📸Book Review📸📸
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

📸I’m thinking that it’s time for me to break-up with thrillers. This is definitely a “it’s not you, it’s me situation” and I do feel bad. Really I do. Watching You was merely another example of thriller mediocrity. Was I thrilled? No. Tense? Negative? On the edge on my seat? Nope, I was firmly planted for all but the final page.

📸Melville Heights is an affluent area in England where everyone is in everyone else’s business. Keeping secrets is truly an impossibility. Tom Fitzwilliam is the new headmaster at the local school and everyone is obsessed with the lad- his wife, the married neighbor and even the students. But something just isn’t right with Tom. He has a scandalous past that has neighbors curious and obsessively trying to seek answers. Even his own son is sneakily lurking and spying on his neighbors AND his dad. Although this town is filled with a bunch of weirdos, no one would ever expect one of their own to be murdered in cold blood at the hands of someone next door.

📸This was actually the hardest synopsis to write because there was literally 937389229 characters that played semi-inconsequential roles. However each character was necessary to tell this tale and give it at least a tiny bit of mystery. Overall the book was just strange with unlikeable characters being terrible people. The last page was the only part that held any thrill and I would have been psyched if the rest of the book channeled the essence of that sick twist. Sadly- the bulk of the story was forgettable.
***Thanks to @atria and @netgalley for this ARC. Publication date 12/26/18***
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In Watching You, Lisa Jewell held my attention throughout, No one is who they say they are and everyone has secrets. My favorite character is the brilliant but socially awkward son of the headmaster. I enjoyed “watching” him develop as he observed others, took chances, and learned a lot about himself.

Lisa Jewell has become one of my favorites and it's because of stories like this one.

Watching You has multiple POV's that all work in harmony as they build the story surrounding a murder. In Melville Heights, it seems that everyone is watching everyone else. You have some that openly do it. And some that hide in the shadows, not wanting to be noticed.

Lisa Jewell has this talent of giving you all the clues, in plain sight, but you just don't know it until the very end. Some of them are subtle and others are unmistakable. Sometimes you'll think that some pieces are meant to throw you off the trail, but they all fit together in the end. I'm not sure how she does it, really. And the ending. You might think you worked it all out, by some point. But you'd be wrong. Completely. Wrong. I know because I made the same assumptions.

I was fascinated from the very first page.

Psychological thriller fans: Lisa Jewell is a gem! Originally in more of the chick-lit (sorry, hate the term, but everyone gets what it means) genre, since Before I Met You she has moved more into more of a psych-thriller-mystery writer. Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley, I received a copy of Watching You in exchange for this honest review.

The setting is Melville Heights, a tony neighborhood in Bristol (England), and the story is told from the points of view of three main characters: Tom Fitzwilliam, whose wife is the victim (making him suspect #1); his neighbor Joey Mullen, who has recently moved to the neighborhood and has a big crush of Tom; and Tom’s son Freddie, who is a slightly creepy teenager whose big avocation is spying on his neighbors (primarily academics with inherited wealth, attorneys, and doctors).


Tom is the headmaster of the local school, and everyone loves him one. One of his students lives on the same street as Tom and Joey, and she thinks Tom isn’t the good guy everyone sees him to be.

There is also a diary from twenty years ago, chronicling a schoolgirl’s crush on the young English teacher Tom Fitzwilliam.

So, there are lots of twists and turns and a big reveal at the VERY end…none of which I will spoil. I’ll just say settle in and enjoy the ride! Four stars.

Watching You was an intriguing, creative and captivating psychological thriller. Cliffhangers at the end of many chapters made it hard to put down. This suburbia drama reminded me of Big Little Lies, Three Wishes, Girl On The Train and Gone Girl. It starts at the end of the story with a murder. Then the bone-chilling, suspenseful thriller continues with different characters viewpoints until the big reveal of who was murdered and who did it.

All of the characters were well developed and entertaining. It was captivating to see how their lives intertwined as the story went on. None of the characters in this story are who they seem at the beginning.

I look forward to reading more books written by Lisa Jewel.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

Told from multiple characters' points of view, Lisa Jewell has created a masterpiece in Watching You. Her characters are diverse, from high-school students to a headmaster to a heart surgeon... and everyone in between. The reader is never quite sure how it's going to tie together, but Ms. Jewell does so wonderfully. From close to the beginning, the reader is given insight to the mystery, but there are more questions added to the read, as well as multiple points of view to consider. This book is absolutely fantastic! A read you want want to put down.

The synopsis may seem a little confusing and hard to follow, but I promise once you start reading it, it is very easy to follow. Lisa Jewell does a great job of writing very descriptive details about her characters and their back stories, so it is easy to differentiate between who is who and how they are connected to the main storyline. Therefore, the plot is very character driven and is based all of the opinions and assumptions surrounding Tom Fitzwilliam and who he really is. I love reading domestic thrillers or thrillers where all the people involved live on the same street or very close to one another, which was exactly what this book entailed. The ebb and flow of the book and all of the minor events going on in each individual characters lives was written exceptionally well, especially since they are also somehow connected to Mr. Fitzwilliam and his mysterious story.

One of my favourite parts of this book is the mystery aspect. The beginning of the book opens with a detective finding/recording a piece of evidence from a crime scene. We don’t know what the crime scene is about – other than the fact that it is an apparent murder, we only know that she has found some sort of a red tassle that appears to have fallen off of a shoe. Slowly, readers learn more and more about the incident and who/what may have been involved. We don’t really find out the main piece of information until the end, which is also when the characters are finding out about it . I really enjoyed that aspect of the book, rather than telling us what exactly happened at the very beginning, and then telling the entire background of the story after the first chapter when we basically already know how the book is going to end. The best part was that the assumed muderer and victim were always changing throughout the story, as different characters had different motives/incidents, which could have resulted in them murdering different characters they communicated with throughout the story.

The twists in this book were unexpected, but made a lot of sense when starting to put the puzzle pieces together. A lot of big clues/foreshadowing was revealed throughout the book, but it wasn’t until the end when it started to fit together and make sense. There was no stone left unturned, and Lisa figured out how to make every single aspect of the crime scene/story relevant until the very end.

As I said before, the setting was absolutely perfect for this story. The fact that everybody is always watching one another could only have been accomplished by making the characters live very close to one another. I love neighbourhood stories as everyone is familiar with one another, but there are still so many things the neighbours don’t know about each other. It’s kind of like they are familiar strangers.

The only reason I didn’t give this book 5/5 stars was because for me it was quite a slow read. I tend to read ebooks/eARCs within a day or two, but this one took me about five days to get through. I found a lot of the description and dialogue unnecessary, as not all of the events in this novel helped to advance the plot, but rather made it seem a bit slower and dragged.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and gave it 4/5 stars. I hope to pick up another Lisa Jewell book sometime in the near future!

This novel tried to be too much of everything - thriller, romance, coming of age...while the plot is generally interesting enough, the characterization is stereotypical, the momentum and movement of the story is sporadic and uneven, and the conclusion is expected. Points for decent writing skills.

Solid 5/5 stars! Full review to follow shortly.

Always a fan of Lisa Jewell and this is probably my favorite of hers that I've read! Multiple POVs, short chapters, and a building suspense that doesn't stop. Some thriller fans might think it has a slower burn feel to it, but Jewell has a way of keeping the suspense up to pull you in.

Lisa Jewell’s latest novel Watching You is the thrilling domestic drama you need in your life.  It’s a murder mystery that is filled with suspense, complicated characters, and a myriad of plot twists that will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat until the final piece of the puzzle is in place and the murderer is revealed.

Watching You is set in an upscale neighborhood in Bristol, England, and although several of the neighbors play important roles in the overall story, the novel primarily follows a character named Joey Mullen.  Joey apparently has a history of not always making the best choices in life and so when we meet her, she has just moved back to Bristol with her brand-new husband (who she has only known for a few months) and the two of them are living with Joey’s brother and sister-in-law while they try to find jobs and save up to get a place of their own.

One night Joey encounters Tom Fitzwilliam, the beloved headmaster at one of the local schools, and she, like most of the female student body at his school, develops a crush on Tom.  Even though he is happily married and therefore unavailable, Joey thinks about him all the time, makes up excuses to walk near his home to see if she can catch a glimpse of him, and goes out of her way to find ways to cross paths with Tom.  She thinks her secret crush is safe, but she doesn’t realize that Tom’s son, Freddie, has been watching her just as much as she has been watching Tom.

Ah yes, the watching.  That’s what it’s all about with Watching You.  Everyone in this novel is watching and spying on someone else.  It’s disturbing and yet also quite fascinating because none of them are as innocent as they would like for their neighbors to believe.  They all have secrets they’re trying to keep hidden, but at the same time, they’re almost desperate to find some dirt on their neighbors and in the end, everyone involved gets way more than they bargained for…

There’s so much to love about this book because Jewell just sets up the drama so perfectly.  She opens the novel by introducing us to Joey, Tom, and a few of their neighbors but then immediately hits us with a murder.  She starts building up the suspense immediately too because she doesn’t give the reader any details as to who the victim is or what has happened.  I was hooked right away and immediately started looking closely at the characters I had met so far, trying to figure out who might be the victim, who might be the murderer, etc.

Speaking of the characters, Watching You is filled with realistically flawed characters, any of whom seem capable of having murdered someone.  Each of the neighbors had messy, complicated lives and their individual dramas just added so many more layers to the story that made it so much more than just a murder mystery.  It was interesting to learn more about each of them and to watch them in action.  Fallible is probably the best word to describe them because mistakes and human error play a large role in the story.  As I’ve mentioned, these neighbors like to observe each other, but not only do they observe, they judge and make assumptions about people, they take things out of context and try to fit them into whatever narrative they’re trying to spin, and unfortunately, more often than not, they’re wrong.

All of these wrongs are what Jewell skillfully weaves into the narrative to drive the story along.  She presents the story to us from the viewpoints of several of the neighbors, so we get to see several perspectives as to what is going on in the neighborhood.  Those chapters move us forward toward the murder so we are able to see what tensions are mounting throughout the neighborhood – who might have been a likely target, as well as who might have the biggest motive to commit the crime.  Interspersed throughout, however, are also police interviews with the various neighbors to specifically give us their thoughts and theories about the murder.  The novel’s structure actually reminded me a lot of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, and it works here just as well as it did there. It really made for a fast-paced read that held my attention throughout, and the more I read, the more I desperately wanted to know who was dead and who had done it.

Overall, I really enjoyed Watching You.  I thought the pacing was fantastic and I loved how Jewell kept the suspense and tension building throughout the novel.  The only aspect of Watching You that fell a little short for me was that I didn’t really feel much of a connection to any of the characters.  Joey was probably the character I connected with the most, but even then, for the most part, I still felt like I was on the outside looking in.  Maybe that’s fitting since this is a story full of people watching each other, but that distance kept this from being a 5 star read for me.

Lisa Jewell’s Watching You is a riveting read that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys domestic thrillers.  If you’re a fan of Liane Moriarty’s books, you would probably enjoy this one too.  This was my first time reading Lisa Jewell but I'm looking forward to reading more of her twisty thrillers!

In the past, I have been in the minority in not really loving Lisa Jewell’s novels. When I read the description for Watching You, I knew I had to read it. I’m so glad I did because it is my favourite Lisa Jewell novel!

The book alternates between Joey, Jenna and Freddie and I really enjoyed each of these characters. It was interesting to see them come together in storylines and how they interacted with the other main character – Mr. Fitzwilliam.

Even though this novel isn’t necessarily creepy, it had just the perfect amount of creep factor. You never knew the full truth about Mr. Fitzwilliam and you kind of got a creepy vibe from him.

I really enjoyed it and will definitively be getting more Lisa Jewell novels!

Watching You is an unputdownable, psychological thriller by Lisa Jewell and is my second Lisa Jewell book and I plan to work my way through all of her works after reading this one.

In the affluent neighborhood of Melville Heights in Bristol, England a murder takes place at the beginning of the book. The psychological roller-coaster ride that you’ll experience while reading the rest of the book is devilishly, delightful. There are multiple viewpoints as well as unexpected twists, turns and scenarios. Just when you think you have it figured out……wait, there’s more.

Watching You is supremely interesting from the opening scene to the last page. Lisa Jewell does a great job developing the characterizations with a juxtaposition of flaws, insecurities and in some instances traumas. I enjoyed the basic premise throughout being that someone could be watching you at any time and do the watchers (or watched) have nefarious intentions? It’s this idea that contributed to the creepiness that is this book.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Synopsis from the Publisher/NetGalley.com
Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighborhoods 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…

In Lisa Jewell’s latest brilliant “bone-chilling suspense” (People) no one is who they seem—and everyone is hiding something. Who has been murdered—and who would have wanted one of their neighbors dead? As “Jewell teases out her twisty plot at just the right pace” (Booklist, starred review), you will be kept guessing until the startling revelation on the very last page.

WTching you by Lisa jewell wasn’t the first book I’ve read by this author. I was grateful to have been given a arc of this book for a honest review. At times I felt it was slow and was unsure of where it was going. This book definitely had me guessing to the end and every when it took quite a turn towards the end I have to say I still was guessing! Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read this early, much enjoyed.

So many people watching so many other people ! Everyone has a story. And they al revolve around the other. Throw in a murder, and you have a really good book ! Quick read as long as you are paying attention ! Not my favorite book by this author, but still really good. Definetely worth reading ! Enjoy !

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC ecopy for my Kindle.
I've read several of Lisa Jewell's books and enjoyed them all; this one was a good one, too.
The story opens up with a woman being murdered and found in a pool of blood in her kitchen floor.
Who is she and who murdered her?
"Watching You" involves neighbors watching their neighbors for good reasons i.e. someone's been murdered, who murdered her, and who may be the next victim; are rumors about Tom the new local school's headmaster just rumors or are they valid; and Jack's sister Rebecca is newly married but is infatuated with the new neighbor.
Several characters residing in 2 households with each character's story told from different points of view makes the story engaging and interesting. In one house resides Tom the new headmaster of a local school, his wife and nerdy son. Two 2 doors down reside jack, his wife Rebecca along with his sister and new brother in law who recently moved in the house. All the characters play important parts of the story and "who done it," but I didn't figure out who the murder was or why the murder occurred. A little dark but a good suspense novel!

Melville Heights is a small affluent neighborhood in England, that has as many secrets and scandals as a daytime soap opera. Very little can happen in such a close-knit neighborhood without someone witnessing it. The neighborhood’s cast of characters are full of secrets. First, there’s Tom Fitzwilliam, the Head of the Melville Academy and his wife Nicola and son Freddie. Leaked secrets of Tom’s past from several decades prior threaten to jeopardize his current employment. His wife is harboring some secrets of her own that hint that there may be some marital woes. Their son Freddie is obsessed with spying on neighbors with binoculars, especially the young girls who are close to his age. Jenna Tripp and her friend Bess Ridley are two teenaged girls who are students at Melville Academy and frequent objects of Freddie’s surveillance. Bess has a schoolgirl crush on Headmaster Fitzwilliam. Jenna’s mother is a paranoid woman who believes that Headmaster Fitzwilliam is stalking her. Josephine “Joey” Mullen and her new husband Alfie have recently moved to Melville Heights to live with her brother and his wife, until they can get settled. Joey becomes entranced with Tom Fitzwilliam and considers being unfaithful to Alfie. Alfie is a painter who attracts the eye of one of the local wives when he’s painting the interior of their home. As the storylines develop and converge and wires get crossed, it is challenging to determine who might be the suspect when a murder takes place in the neighborhood. It is up to DC Rose Pelham to follow the clues and try to solve the mystery. This whodunit has so many possibilities as it twists and turns that readers will find themselves suspecting just about every character before it reaches its surprising conclusion.

This was a great book, very suspenseful and a good story. All the characters in the book have secrets and a past that ties them all together though the reader only finds out about this towards the end. Nothing is what you think and the reader is left guessing right to the end. Another good book by Lisa Jewell, it does not disappoint.