Thank you to Atria Books for providing me with a copy of Lisa Jewell’s latest novel, Watching You, in exchange for an honest review.

A brutal murder has taken place in one of the beautiful Victorian home in the affluent Melville Heights neighborhood in Bristol, England. In acclaimed novelist Lisa Jewell’s latest crime novel, Watching You, the reader quickly realizes that there are as many suspects, as there are potential victims and we will not know the truth of the situation until the final moments of the story.

I’ve read several of Jewell’s previous novels and she is simply a master at writing crime fiction. This is not a genre that I often read, yet I am thrilled every time she publishes a new book, because I know that I will love it. Watching You is no exception. Jewell knows exactly how to pace her novels to keep readers engaged. She always has a twist that is unexpected, yet makes perfect sense when you rethink through the hints that she has been cleverly dropping throughout the entire novel. At the very start of Watching You, we are told that a murder has taken place and we know that one of the characters is being questioned as a suspect, yet we do not know the murder victim until the last chapters of the novel. It’s brilliant.

More than a crime novel, Watching You is a solid drama. Jewell’s characters are having affairs, teenagers navigating first love, and families in crisis. The drama is as equally important as the crime element. I feel that this is a strong reason for why I gravitate towards Jewell’s novels. She has rich, well-rounded characters who are facing difficult situations. The crime element ups the stakes and intensifies their troubles, but it is not the root or only cause of tension in the story. Jewell’s characters are complex and troubled, even if murder wasn’t on their street.

Watching You is creepy. It has themes of power and dominance, especially through the character of Tom Fitzwilliam, a school headmaster in his early 50’s. Tom has a history of showing attention to young women. He’s charismatic and someone that women, young and old, tend to crush on. Throughout the entire story, we never quite know if Tom is a villain or victim. Is he a predator or misunderstood? The character of Tom reminded me of one of my college professors, who lost his career for predatory behavior. I never had an inappropriate situation with him, but I did get swept up by his charisma and when he was very publicly fired, it was both a shock and not a shock at all. I kept imagining this professor, every time Tom was on the page.

Culpability is a theme throughout Watching You. The recently married Joey Mullens, Tom’s neighbor, is enchanted by Tom and has an affair with him. She knows that she bears blame for this decision, yet she can’t help but focus on Tom’s power over her, as if she is possessed. Another character is confronted with her extreme bullying behavior as a teenager. Many decades have passed, but she never took responsibility and now her past has come back to haunt her. As the title implies, we are all being watched and cannot hide from our sins.

Watching You is a page turner and I was enthralled until the last word. I think this might just be my favorite Jewell novel yet.

The book opens up with a diary entry dated September 6, 1996 from a teenage girl. She thinks she’s in love with her English teacher.

Next is the prologue that opens up with a detective in a kitchen. She is bent over looking at what looks like a tassel that has come off of a shoe. It’s laying on top of a pool of blood. She collects it in an evidence bag and dates it March 24, 2017. She turns and looks at the body of woman laying face down in an even bigger pool of blood. She has been stabbed at least 20 times.

From there on, we back up to a few months before the murder and work our way up to it. In between the events of the past are current events surrounding the murder, interviews with neighbors and such.

What makes this book so good, besides the twist and turns of the murder mystery are the characters. Each character is so unique and so fully fleshed out. There is Tom Fitzwilliams, a headmaster, who may or may not be having affairs with young girls. Newlywed, Joey Mullen, who finds herself weirdly attracted to Tom. Jenna Trip, a student at Tom’s school who thinks he’s a little creepy and is behaving inappropriately towards her best friend, Bess. Then there’s Tom’s son. Freddie, who watches and notes the behaviors of all the neighbors of Melville, especially the attractive girls.

A really good mystery, with plenty of twists and turns.

I received an ARC of the book.

Too much stalking in this story although the mystery was very intriguing so I had to read it to the end.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love whodunit books, even if it's obvious sometimes I still enjoy them. But this one from the beginning I thought I knew who it could of been, obliviously i was wrong. But that's what's so intriguing about books like this. They capture your attention with every line.
In a nice town in Bristol, England a murder takes place. All of the characters have a secret and are all being watched. Told in multiple points of views and even police transcripts this story will have you on the edge of your seats.

When I started this book, I had a deep sigh. It was exactly what I needed. I have been in a bit of a book slump where no matter what I read felt tedious. This was the opposite. I couldn’t find enough time in my day to read this book as much as I wanted. It was the type of read that you could quickly lose yourself in.

About halfway through the book, I thought I had it all figured out, but was thrown a bit of a curveball around the 80% mark. I got to that point on my lunch break and was bummed when I couldn’t read more!

I highly suggest this book!

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This review was posted on Goodreads 18 November 2018

Watching You is the fourth novel by Lisa Jewell that I have read,one of sixteen by her count, but I feel I’ve had a fair sample to know what to expect of her, and I was not disappointed. As in The Girls in the Garden, the setting is a principal character in itself - in this case the delightful neighbourhood of Melville Heights in Bristol of brightly painted houses that overlook the harbour and each other, that last detail crucial to the plot. Our story centres on Joey Mullen, a twenty something who has returned from tending bar in Spain along with her new husband whose delightful name is Alfie Butter. They live with Joey’s brother Jack, a surgeon, and his wife Rebecca, a systems analyst. Nearby is Tom Fitzwilliam, aged 51, his teenage son Freddie, who wants to become a spy, and his obsessively homebody wife Nicola. Tom is a school headmaster (actually he’s called a ‘head teacher’ because ‘master’ these days implies that you owned slaves but I’m writing this review so we’ll use correct nomenclature) - what the English call a ‘superhead’ who specialises in fixing bog-standard schools. One of his new students is Jenna, child of divorced parents whose mum Frances is obsessed with the fear she is the target of a secret society of stalkers. Jenna and Joey both develop major crushes on Tom.
He also seems to have a somewhat dodgy past. When he was a newly starting his teaching career, one of his students committed suicide and he was under suspicion, though had a perfect alibi. Whilst on holiday in the Lake District, an apparently mad woman had accused him of being responsible for something terrible.

Lisa Jewell brings the threads of the story together beautifully. Freddie and Jenna and their teenaged friends are both quirky and very attractive. As so often with Jewell and other contemporary authors of domestic fiction - the teenagers are much more mature than most of the adult characters - because most adults today still think they are teenagers, which is certainly true of the Joey and Tom. But as the central mystery of the story goes back to an old teen crime that is still unavenged, it’s appropriate they are stuck in adolescence.

One stylistic tic continually annoyed me, though. This book had already been published in England and the version I was given by Netgalley gratis for favour of review was the American edition. Of course one expects the spellings are American, but changing the usage in the body of the text for the benefit of a naive provincial audience is irritating. ‘Officers from Avon & Somerset Police’ wouldn’t abbreviate a date as ’03/27/17’ (just when is the 27th month of the year?) And Freddie’s mum didn’t say, ‘I just took some acetaminophen’ - if you find yourself with a headache at a chemist’s in England, ask for ‘paracetamol’ instead. I’m not so sure about the ‘sneakers’ (twice) though I’d expect ‘trainers’ and I suspect the author herself wrote ‘Jenna and Frances Tripp had walked into the station this morning with their big bag of curveballs’ - I had no idea you could get baseballs already curved, much less by the bagful.

Leaving quibbles aside, readers should very much enjoy this story. Jewell has weaved a tight plot (actually knitting figures in the story) with a tricky but appropriate ending that continues to surprise up till the last sentence. Checking back through after the mystery is solved, I found just enough clues about characters’ dodgy behaviour and pasts to play fair with the reader. I may have felt that the backstory came down in a bit of a heap, but it was the backstory I should have been expecting. I place Watching You alongside The Girls in the Garden as a delightful suspense story with amusing characters.

Lisa Jewell does not disappoint. She has easily become one of my favorite thriller authors recently. <I>Watching You</I> is brilliantly written. (I may have used that word because of all the British authors I have been reading lately. Ha!) But in truth, it is a wonderfully spun tale. Just when you think you have it all figured out, she throws in extra details that fill in holes you didn't even know were missing and it changes the whole trajectory of your thoughts.

There are many characters in <I>Watching You</I>. Maybe you might need to pay close attention to who everyone is. I did find myself stopping to think of who I was reading about at the time, but it wasn't a cumbersome task like it is with other books. These characters were spread across multiple generations and Jewell was able to capture the distinct ways that each think and act. The teens were using social media, specifically Snapchat and Snapmaps to locate friends. Completely relevant in this day which I thought was a very thoughtful addition. Adults were shown as somewhat composed on the outside, but their inner dialogue described just how unsure they truly were.

I will continue to place all of Lisa Jewell's upcoming releases to the top of my must read lists.

Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgally for review purposes.

Wow that was a ride!

Initially it took me a while to get into it. There were a lot of characters and for whatever reason I had a tough time with who was who. The more I read it worked itself out thankfully lol.

This book had so many twists and turns that you don't know what's going on. It kept me guessing the entire time up until I think literally the last page. I absolutely loved it. It was so heavy/dramatic though I feel like I need a palat cleanser after this 😂

Recommend!!

What a captivating ride this book was! I fell in love with Lisa Jewell’s organic and immersive writing style when I read Then She Was Gone, and Watching You only succeeded in solidifying my high opinion of her as an author.

I really enjoyed this book! I love the short chapters as you witness the events that culminated in the murder of a resident of a little village. The multiple POV’s only managed to bring more depth to the story, as all the facts raced to one surprising conclusion.

And while I highly suspected I knew how this story would end, Lisa Jewell managed to keep me guessing right up until the very end. This is easily one of my favorite reads of the year!

If you enjoy cozy mysteries and psychological thrillers. I highly recommend this book!

3.5 Stars!

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for an Advanced Reader Copy of Watching You by Lisa Jewell.

While this book is not particularly suspenseful, it does have an eerie, thrilling quality to it. As the title notes, Watching You has more of an observational feel, told in the point of view of three main characters as they watch and observe their neighbors and friends. Everyone watches and notices what everyone else is doing, but no one truly knows what goes on behind closed doors or in someone else's mind. Although I enjoyed the novel, I felt like I knew what was going to happen quite early on. There were many characters jumbled in to help throw you off of the ending, but it was all to plain for me to see.

This is my first book by Lisa Jewell and I am interested in reading more.

Couldn't put it down!! Love Lisa Jewell's writing and was not disappointed. Was suspenseful and kept me turning the page. Of course a twist ending wrapped everything up. I'd recommend!

This hooked me right from the beginning and kept me guessing until the very end. Right from the start, it is revealed that someone was murdered. The reader just has to figure out who was murdered and why. Jewell is a master at distracting the reader and making everything and everyone questionable. Nothing and no one is quite what they seem. Everyone that lives in this neighborhood has secrets and a motive. The killer could be any one of them.

Watching You is told from multiple perspectives. This plays a huge part in how the plot is revealed. Since the story is told this way we get the viewpoint of each character and along with that their theories on what really happened in their neighborhood. Which all clouds the truth of the events that lead to the murder itself. This is also why, in my opinion, Jewell is so damn good at writing suspense thrillers. She gives her readers just enough information to lead them down various possible conclusions.

Overall, this was fun to read. I could not put it down. This had me completely hooked between the intriguing characters and the mystery of the murder plot. I seriously did not see that twist coming at the end either. If that sounds like your type of book then you definitely want to give this one a try.

Lisa Jewel has nailed it with “Watching You”. This story will gran you on the first couple pages, then your stuck. You will NOT want to put this book down until the end! There’s twists and turns and everyone is a suspect. You think you know your neighbors, guess again. Once you open this book, be prepared to not put it down until it’s over...you have been warned. lol happy reading! :)

Fascinating book with some diverse characters. It flashes back to a murder while police question the many suspects. You will not find out until almost the end who was murdered.. I got the feeling of a small English village, where most of the neighbors know each other. Expect to find some English words and terms, like nappy for diaper. The title comes from one of the main characters, who is a teenage boy who likes to watch the neighbors from his window..

I enjoyed this dark-twisty thriller, a departure from my genre-of-choice, and found it quite intriguing. Ms. Newell deftly choreographs the plot line, unfurling a list of who-done-it candidates while keeping this reader engaged until a satisfying and surprising end. Fans of recent best-selling thrillers should add Lisa Jewell's books to their TBR lists!

This book was a slow goer for me and left me confused with all the multiple characters that seemed to have nothing in common until the end...so took me a while to read. I was expecting more of a fast pace thriller but it was more slow and creepy and the action didn't happen until the last part of book. I really felt uncomfortable at the thought of all these people spying on each other and there was just too much going on at the same time. I didn't like the plot not did I care For the characters. While not a terrible book, I was left underwhelmed...3 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher for providing me with a copy to read and review!

Lisa Jewel is rapidly becoming one of my favorite thriller authors. She has a way of pulling you in and keeping you engaged with a story from start to finish. I would happily follow her into any dark alley based solely on her storytelling ability. Great book!!!

This is another case of a book that will steal away your day. It is what I like to call unputdownable. You will, however, want to be sure to lock the doors and windows and pull the shades and blinds down tight.

This is my first book by this author, and it will not be my last. I love a good psychological thriller and this did not disappoint. This is a book that was even creepy, a feeling that I have not had in a long time with your average thriller. This book will make you worry that there is someone out there who is watching you, making the title even more true. This book had all the twists and turns that I love so much, and the chapters are not pages and pages long. This was a quick read, you can do it in a day if you have the time because it sucks you in from the very beginning and does not let up until the very end. I highly recommend this book! And a nightlight for during and after.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the advanced copy.

Melville Heights is one of the poshest neighborhoods in Bristol, England. Even though the houses are grand and opulent, the residents are a mess. That is never more evident than the night that the wife of the local headmaster is found stabbed to death in their kitchen. Tom Fitzwilliam is a bit of a dreamboat and the women (and girls) have a hard time keeping their eyes (and hands) off of him. It was his wife that was murdered and their son, teenage son, Freddie, doesn't believe that his father is completely innocent. Down the street is Jenna and her mother, who has been a bit off ever since her husband left her and took their son. Also on the block is Joey and her new husband, Alfie. They got married on the spur of the moment and are living with Joey's brother, Jack and his wife Rebecca. Jack is a successful doctor and Rebecca works from home. The police find a piece of evidence that leads them to believe that Nicola's murderer lives in Melville Heights. Was it Joey who had a crush on Tom Fitzwilliam? Or Jenna's mom who is a little unhinged. Or someone else on the block?


Watching You was exactly what I needed for a holiday break read. Her characters are always complex with more to them than meets the eye. None of them were completely likable, well maybe Jenna. She was struggling to hold things together for her mother and had to deal with stuff a child should never have to deal with. Same goes for Freddie. He was a bit odd, always taking pictures of friends, neighbors, and complete strangers. The author explains why a little later, but it was not soon enough to keep my spidey senses from being triggered. And let me just say that Tom Fitzwilliam gave me the creeps. From the very first page all the way to the very end. I did figure out the "whodunit" but not until nearly the very end. - CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS.

Bottom Line - I love reading good mystery novels set in England. It serves as a reminder that England isn't all Royal Weddings and American Princesses. Watching You is a great mystery that will keep you on your toes and guessing to the very end.

Details:
Watching You by Lisa Jewell
On Facebook
Pages: 336
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: 12/25/18
Buy it Here!

What a great book! Kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat. The author knows how to tease the reader and it works!!