Wow. Not in a feel good way but in an impressive way. This book depicts the failing economy of Atlantic City as a macabre depressing city. Focusing on the exploitation of women in a very realistic way, This story is raw from the get go. It’s a dark tale of how the declining city affects all the inhabitants but especially the women trying to survive, many having to subject themselves to demeaning behavior in order to survive. Some do it because they have no other options but others because they are damaged by life and see no other way to get by. The whole tone of this story is oppressive and depressing but also captivating as it draws you in. All the characters make bad mistakes and poor judgement abounds but the humanity of some characters is so touching. The shallowness of how some live their lives is juxtaposed with other people’s struggle to just survive in an uncaring world. The underlying theme is of a serial killer disposing of women he deems immoral but they are women struggling with hardship, addiction, mental issues or abandonment. This is a depressing book and very uncomfortable but interesting and eye opening as well. There was some light at the end of the tunnel but it was dim. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

This novel was amazing...about 80% of the way through the book. While the first 80% of the novel was integral to the development of the story, it seemed like the entire novel just skimmed the surface of its potential. The novel revolves around Atlantic City and its fall from grace, focusing on Clara, a teenage psychic who had been abandoned by her mother and lives with her aunt, Des, who exploits Clara in order to fulfill her own habits, Lilly, an aspiring art gallery owner who had returned from New York to her home in the Atlantic City after a traumatic breakup with her boyfriend, and Luis, a mute man who has connections to both Clara and Lilly and secrets of his own. Clara is visited by a distraught uncle whose adopted teenage niece is missing. Clara is visited by two other women and subsequently begins to have visions about the missing teenager and the other women. She knows something bad has happened to them, but she does not know what or how to help them. Meanwhile, Clara discovers beautiful paintings in her mother's neighbor's attic, paintings that depict the pain and beauty of the people in Atlantic City, and is determined to find out how the mystery painter is. All of the stories are eventually connected, but I was hoping for more attention to detail when the truth was finally exposed.

This dark and richly detailed story depicts a failing town and its seedy underbelly as its residents try to survive in a place with a once thriving economy that has now left them forgotten. Some of the story is told from the perspective of the Jane Does- the women whose bodies have been left undiscovered after their murders- and these are perhaps the very best passages of the book as they tell the story of how close so many people are to the tipping point of danger. There is this pervading sense of hopelessness in this story that is wrenching- Atlantic City as portrayed here could be so many places throughout the country, and its residents could be so many people. This is really compelling storytelling.

Read this egalley courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley. The decline and degradation of the Atlantic City community in the aftermath of the casinos’ rapid disappearance is mirrored in the stories of the individual women who die at the hands of a mass murderer. The main characters, Clara (Ava) and Lily, also show signs of being infected by the horrible underbelly of drugs and sex in the boardwalk environment. A deaf mute man is the glue that connects their two lives but in a surprising and unexpected way.

Please See Us is the debut book by Caitlin Mullen. It is a psychological thriller set in Atlantic City in the midst of the casino world. It was very disturbing to read at times and offered a glimpse into a dark world.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. When Clara and Lily meet up in run down Atlantic City they each have their own demons to deal with making this a twisty turn of events. Definitely recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery Publishing for the ARC!
Girls are disappearing. One, two, three, four. One by one, laid out on the shore of the marsh in Atlantic City. Each one had a past, each one crossing paths with him. All of them are connected in a way that they are ashamed to admit. Their first connection is Clara, a psychic on the broadway strip who is trying to earn enough to go to California to be with the mother that abandoned her. As Clara struggles to find money for her trip, she finds herself doing things she isn’t proud of to get ahead. Meanwhile, Clara’s visions are uncontrollable and unfiltered. She can see things, but they have no concrete meaning until she runs into Lily. Lily is a former art gallery executive running away from a painful breakup. Working below her pay grade at the local spa, Lily spends most of her free time trying to hide from her past. As Clara’s visions get stronger, she starts to wonder if they are connected to the local missing girls and asks Lily to help her search for answers. Together they use their resources to help save the next victim, even though it might be too late them.

SPOILERS:

Damn, this is a read. Loaded, thrilling, deep and honest, there is nothing that doesn’t get unturned in this novel. This is one of those stories that sticks with you, one where you remember tidbits of the story for times to come. It is truly a genuine thriller, but unlike most of them, it isn’t about the chase. I enjoyed how the author made this story more about the girls, and getting in the head of each of them. How they all had a back story, and no matter how different, and yet all ended up with similar fates. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I like that the two main characters end up surviving, yet I’m not sure if I like how the killer is never found. Yet, at the same time, I do. It gives the book a sense of mystery, a lingering suspicion. The story of Clara is so heart wrenching. To have this young of a girl grow up too fast, and fed to the wolves is hard to read. Needless to say I will not ever be visiting Atlantic City in my life. I think anyone who wants a deeper paced thriller with an actual story behind it are going to like this novel.

Rate: 5/5
Fiction
Author: Caitlin Mullen
Pages: 352

I am not normally a mystery fan so this book wasn't my type. I was very interested in it because it takes place in Atlantic city. So I was intrigued. I'm sorry

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen is a riveting story. Such a well written book. This thriller will keep you hooked and reading until the end without a doubt.

There are dead women behind the Sunset Motel, a motel that rents by the hour. They are carefully posed, and the killer isn't done yet. This story is told in alternating viewpoints, from those of the Jane Does to Lily, and Clara Voyant, a 16-year-old who lives with her less aunt, and is good at getting pictures and impressions from people, (and we even get a bit from Luis as well). The Jane Does want to be found, they want to continue their story and have the killer caught, so everyone has a story to tell.

Lily left her job at the art gallery because of her cheating ex, so working at the casino in the spa is something good for the summer while she figures out where she wants to go. Clara wants more from life, mainly to get away from her aunt, who is addicted to drugs, and to find her mother, who has long since disappeared. These two seem like an unlikely duo, but they come together well.

This was a bit of a slow-burn, the laying of the groundwork is intricate and detailed, and it pieces together slowly. You don't get to the murderer right off, and that's okay because it works here. There's a bit of justification going on, that the women were prostitutes, and therefore no one is going to miss them. I think it speaks highly to how we treat (and have always treated) sex workers.

This was a good read, and the storytelling was skillful; I liked the alternating viewpoints and the gradual unfolding of the story. I was poking around reviews and saw quite a few reviewers upset at the ending, and without spoiling anything, I would say it was true to life. There isn't anything enraging about it, and it suited the storyline perfectly. Nicely done. Thank you Gallery Books for sending this along!

Women are dead and hidden in plain sight, but no one sees them. Atlantic City isn’t the bustling place it used to be. Casinos have closed and shops are boarded up. The darkened streets breed vermin that walk on four legs and two. Women walk the streets turning tricks and dreaming of a different life, like the dead women once did – who will be next?

Teenage Clara dreams of leaving the life of stealing and scamming and finding her mother who she hasn’t seen in years. Living with her aunt, she reads palms and Tarot cards for the tourists and locals. She isn’t a total scam. Visions come to her about people, mostly unbidden, but it helps reel them in for a reading.

Lily returns home to Atlantic City after heartbreak in New York. She needs to get away from her cheating boyfriend but that comes with a price. Her rising career as a Soho gallery girl comes to a screeching halt and she finds an awful job at a drowning spa. When her path intersects with Clara they begin an unusual partnership that leans toward an awkward friendship. They may be the only two people concerned enough about the missing women.

Please See Us is a brilliantly layered thriller. The indifference and absence of the police throughout the novel works extremely well. Most crime novels have a huge police presence, but Mullen skillfully keeps them in the wings throughout most of the story. Lily is running away from her life, yet a part of her wants to go back and forgive and forget. Clara can’t escape, yet longs for it with all of her being. Luis, a young deaf mute whose life intertwines with Lily and Clara, also weaves his story into the fabric of the novel in unexpected ways.

This is Caitlin Mullen’s debut novel. Her attention to detail creates a setting and characters that come alive on the pages. The characters are complex and interesting and relatable even though most readers hopefully have not experienced the traumas they have endured. She wowed me with the depth of the plot that moved so quickly I found myself reading it late into the night to see what happened next.

I highly recommend Please See Us to anyone who likes psychological thrillers, mysteries and novels featuring strong, unforgettable characters. If you like Gillian Flynn or Paula Hawkins Girl on a Train, you will love Please See Us.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: I have a material connection because I received a review copy for free from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. Copyright © 2020 Laura Hartman

Thank you to NerGalley for the advanced copy. I wanted to like this book but found that it was too confusing. St in Atlantic City, it made it seem more dismal than it really is. The characters were confusing and it didn’t feel like things were fully developed.

Please See Us, by Caitlin Mullen

Short Take: So much beauty amid so much decay.

(*Note: I received an advance copy of this book for review.*)


Well, my nerdlings, it’s THAT time again, and by that time, I’m of course referring to refrigerator-cleaning time. I have the best of intentions when grocery shopping, and TOTALLY AM PLANNING on eating salads for lunch every day and fruit for dessert every night, but somehow, the burgers and ice cream always materialize, and some portion of fresh produce always ends up a puddle of slime in a bag pushed toward the back of the shelf. Throw in my usual round of late-winter blahs, and it’s truly a wretched time of year.

But during this difficult time, I can take solace in one small thing: that I don’t live in Atlantic City, NJ, aka the moldy fridge fruit of North America. Between the hurricane/superstorm, opioid epidemic, and the economic and spiritual malaise that has affected most of the country for the last few years, it’s the place where hopes and dreams are born in a pile of glitter and die in a gutter pile of cigarette butts and broken glass. It’s also a city of startling contrasts - high rollers parking exotic cars on the street next to decaying pawn stores is a common sight.

And it’s there that Clara, (boardwalk tarot-reader who also has a smidge of genuine psychic ability), and Lily, (art curator who left her NYC career and everything else behind after a traumatic event) become friends. Atlantic City is also where a serial killer is preying on women just like Lily and Clara - the broken ones, the addicted ones, the ones who likely won’t be missed, the ones who have always somehow accepted that they would die young and in a terrible way, the ones whose beauty is being worn away by the ugliness of their desperate lives.

Y’all, I was prepared to not love this book. It’s not a spoiler to say that there are several chapters written from the perspective of the dead girls, the “Janes” (as in Jane Does) as they wait in a marsh for their bodies to be found. And to be honest, beautiful dead girls telling their stories has been done to death (heh) by a million and one Lovely Bones knock-offs.

And yet.

There’s something so startlingly different about Please See Us. Maybe it’s the setting - there’s nothing picturesque about decrepit buildings populated by bruised and addicted hookers, nothing glamorous about young women with no future, so the flashes of beauty (and make no mistake, Ms. Mullen’s writing is beautiful, even when describing unspeakable ugliness) are that much more arresting.

Maybe it’s the way the reader is forced to stare, unblinking, at awful truths that most of us are used to avoiding. In other books, when [spoiler], there would be some plot twist that would keep it from happening, but not this one. For a book about a beautiful precocious teenage psychic in which we get the perspective of dead girls, the level of realism is astonishing.

But I think that what really flibbered my gibbets with Please See Us is the tiny but powerful thread of optimism throughout the whole thing. Every single person being pulled into the undertow of their own desperate circumstances believes deep down that it’s going to change - this is the last trick, the last hit, the winning ticket, the rose growing in the garbage pile. And isn’t that all of us? Surely I’m not the only one who opens the refrigerator door that I just closed, somehow believing that a nutritious yet delicious low-carb-low-calorie-totally-satisfying meal that I actually want to eat has probably materialized in there in the last five seconds, right?

The Nerd’s Rating: FIVE HAPPY NEURONS (and some fruit - hold the mold, but bring on the fermentation if you know what I mean and I think you do.)

I would like to thank Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster) and NetGalley for sending me an Advance Reader’s Edition. Because I did find the book “captivating and thrilling,” I am happy to offer this review.

This is Ms. Mullen’s debut novel, and it is a page-turner. Please See Us is a crime drama about a serial killer...my favorite book genre. There are millions of books about serial killers out there, so it is hard to write an original one. Ms. Mullen managed to create for me a story that I had never read before. Nice work! I loved the chapters interspersed throughout the book written from the victims’ points of view.

While I have heard stories about Atlantic City, I have never visited there. The description of the city became a story in itself for me. I could picture it as I read.

Initially, I had some trouble with the two protagonists (Clara and Lily). I found their situations...while very different...combinations of bad luck and poor decision-making. As I continued to read, I decided that my initial observation was too harsh. After all, bad luck is no one’s fault, and who in their late teens to early twenties makes all good decisions? By the end of this book, I was pulling for them both. Truly, that hasty judgment is the only negative thing I have to say. I truly liked this book.

For me, the most disappointing thing that can happen in a crime drama is for me to know “whodunnit” before the reveal. The first character offered up as a logical culprit had better not turn out to be the bad guy, and he wasn’t. That cannot be considered a spoiler, right? This character was actually my favorite character in the book. He is interesting, deep, and well-developed. He might just need a book of his own.

The end is not what you might expect. I hope you like it. I did. After this excellent debut, I look forward to what Ms. Mullen has to offer us next.

Stars: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 4 solid ones

This book is a hot mess. I had such high hopes from the description, it sounded like a true suspenseful mystery, but it falls absolutely flat. I don’t like to give bad reviews because I truly feel an author does the best they can do when researching and putting so many hours into their work, but this one just did not work for me.
I’ll start with the pro, the premise of this book was awesome, there were a few times when I thought, oh, this is going to be good when Clara starts feeling and having things happen to her, they brought out an absolute creepy feeling. (Great!!)
But now for the cons, those feelings were so few and far between all of the other people, so many people in this book, so hard to keep track of their stories. The chapters switch back and forth between, Lily, Clara, Jane 1,2,3,4,5,6, and the mysterious 7, Luis, Deborah and more people that didn’t have chapter headings. Then it went on and on with information that easily could have been left out. And the ending, I seriously told myself, I cannot believe I have just listened to this book for hours and hours and that is it? (Not great!!)
The author had a great idea, she had the possibility of a great book if she would have stayed on the creepy factor with Clara, without straying into all the other storylines. I think I’m going against the review grain here but this is only a 2** book for me.
I was given an advance copy from Gallery, Pocket Books through Net Galley for my honest review, this one gets 2 stars.

This was very well written and held my attention very well. The details throughout give this book something special and it is extremely quotable. There were a few times where I had to sit the book down because something very profound would appear and I simply wasn't expecting that in this genre. Kudos to the author for some of these feminist insights.

Set in Atlantic City around the casinos and the bad places. The story is told from multiple POV of several characters. The Jane Does who were murdered and left in the marshlands, behind the Sunset motel. Most are prostitutes and runaways, but each with a story and hurting. This debut novel was a gripping, haunting, sad story. I had to go back and re-read a lot of chapters. It was confusing with the different perspectives of each character.

Thank you to publisher and NetGalley for the eARC

2.5 stars

I really wanted to like this book and I feel badly when I give a negative review. However, this book just did not work for me. I felt the story was discombobulating . Clara’s and Lily’s friendship seemed far fetched. Too many things I felt that didn’t really need to be in the book and not enough of what I would have liked to have seen in the story. The ending with Luis was really a stretch for me.

To solve a series of murders and escape a dying economy, Caitlin Mullen brings together several life stories. These unlucky victims have little in common until they meet the wrong person. As they become the killers next targets, two women must work together and follow their instincts and premonitions to escape the fate of the Jane Doe voices in the story. A very good mix of murder, mystery, and paranormal. I enjoyed this book and have already recommended it to my book club and other reading buddies.

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen is part-psychological thriller, part-magical realism, part-supernatural twisty goodness. It is a slow-burn read, but the writer does a wonderful job of providing insight into the daily lives of our protagonists. Mullen spends a great deal of time emphasizing the unfair treatment and perception of women in society, but never does she become preachy or her writing on this matter overdone. Although this book doesn't quite jump straight into jaw-dropping scenes like some thrillers do, the pacing was still excellent, and I think we have the smart writing to thank. I was surprised to discover Please See Us was a debut novel. I don't know a single writer who wouldn't envy Mullen's growth, depth, and control over her craft, especially at such an early point in her career. Overall, I do recommend this one if you enjoy supernatural-tinged thrillers.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. This is my honest, unbiased opinion.