WHAT DID I JUST READ?!! This felt like two completely different books mashed together and I am here for it. It started out as a slow burn of a mystery and then switched gears to a full-blown, "in your face", action-packed thriller. I certainly wasn't expecting it to take that turn, but I liked the fresh take on a genre that has become predicatble. I loved Sydney's character and the way this book examined gentrification was like nothing I have read before. EXCELLENT.

I don't normally read horror, but I'll read anything Alyssa Cole writes and even when I was reading through my fingers (eeps!) I LOVED this smart, razor-sharp send-up of gentrification, red-lining, and the forces of white supremacy in urban spaces.

This story has a slow build, with satisfying character development and a believable romance. Cole teaches a lot about racist forces (both historic and modern) in New York City without it ever feeling like "teaching," all seamlessly integrated into descriptions of the neighborhood and the unfolding mystery. When the climax come, elements are expected, but some will shock the reader regardless. I was left wanting more (in the BEST way).

Ok now this is a Jordan Peele movie in book form. A thriller about gentrification?! So good. A page turner that kept me guessing till the end, but was definitely uncomfortable and hard to read at times.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins for an advanced copy of this book.

Alyssa Cole is a huge favorite of mine. Her romances are so much fun (and quite steamy), so when I saw she was coming out with a thriller I knew I needed to pick it up asap. That combined with the pitch of Rear Window meets Get Out…my excitement cannons were blasting! And let me just tell you, When No One Is Watching lives up to the excitement. It’s all the good stuff: excellent writing, rich and relatable characters, intrigue, thrills, romance, concise and relevant social commentary. But it’s also incredibly anxiety inducing, because it is so real.

Sydney Green has returned home to her mother’s Brooklyn brownstone after surviving a horrible marriage full of gaslighting and abuse. She was hopeful that the presence of her mother, best friend, and beloved neighborhood would offer her the love and support she needed to heal and thrive, but with her mother’s failing health and the predatory gentrification exploding around her, Sydney feels her life is spiraling out of her control.

As neighbors and familiar businesses start disappearing suddenly without a word, only to be replaced by white yuppies and their over-priced boutiques, Sydney starts to think there is a larger nefarious conspiracy going on…or is she going crazy? Everything happening around her goes against everything she’s known about her neighbors and herself, and when she can’t buy cigarettes or take an Uber without being directly or indirectly threatened by mysterious white people, how can she take action to discover what exactly is going on in her neighborhood?

It turns out that Sydney is not crazy at all. Something evil and insidious is happening, and Sydney might be her neighborhood’s last hope. Luckily she has a bit of help along the way from an unlikely source.

When No One Is Watching sheds a bright light on predatory and targeted gentrification and systemic racism and white supremacy. I live in a very gentrified city, and as I was reading this book I was thinking about the people I know who have been evicted from their homes that they’ve lived in for 15+ years, or folks who can’t afford to stay in a neighborhood that, for generations, meant home and community for them. All so that the Whole Foods can move to a larger lot. I even wondered about my own apartment building and neighbors. It was definitely hard to read some parts of this book, because it just felt so real.

While When No One Is Watching is not horror in the fantastical sense, it certainly is in the realistic sense. This is real life horror. Cole’s humor and style of writing make the book entertaining and exciting to read, but you would be wrong in thinking that When No One Is Watching isn’t making a clear statement. For people who are trying to understand more about systemic racism (as we all should be), this would be a good book to pick up followed closely by The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. I look forward to more thrillers by Alyssa Cole!

Sydney has grown up in a Brooklyn neighborhood that seems to be changing at warp speed. Black neighbors are leaving and white people are beginning to take over..

Sydney decides to start a walking tour after hearing the false history of other local walking tours. Her new neighbor, Theo, becomes her assistant. Together Sydney and Theo become closer but Sydney also starts to fear that more is going on in her neighborhood than she realizes. She begins to fear that she also cannot trust her new friend Theo.

This book was fabulous. It deals with systematic racism in a way I have never seen done. The book was informative as well as horrifying. Highly recommend.

Absolutely fantastic! I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but it got a rave recommendation from a coworker so I started it immediately. I wasn’t drawn into it at first, but all of a sudden I was hooked and couldn’t stop reading. Pick it up- you won’t be disappointed.

I saw the wording 'gentrification horror story" used to describe 'When No One Is Watching' and that is such an accurate description.

Sydney comes back to Brooklyn to heal after a not so fun divorce. She does not realize her neighbors are being pushed out so fancy, rich white people can take over and make it theirs. She is also deciding to do a historical tour of the area and learns some sad facts (redlining is real people). She meets Theo, a man who she doesn't want to like as he is white and part of the gentrification she abhors. She comes to realize he might not be the same as who he lives with. There is some serious suspense, some why am I reading this while home alone, some WTF happened in history moments, and a lot of room for reflection on our place in the things happening.

The ending felt a bit rushed which bummed me out as the book had such promise for the potential of an epic in your face ending.

Ending aside this is definitely worth the read. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

I had requested this book because of the hype around it and the blurb sounded interesting.

This book wasn’t for me. First, I didn’t love either of the main characters. They were fine but there was nothing about either of them that really drew me in and made me care about their issues and struggles. I was just kind of meh about them.

Second, I was with the plot until the climax at the end. It went from a racial conspiracy to “clean up” a neighborhood to neighbors essentially being kidnapped and murdered in the name of medical research. It felt a bit much to me. Up until then, I found the plot interesting. The idea of a large company coming in and manipulating poor people into selling their homes or putting them in a financial position to have to sell made sense to me and is scarily realistic. It was the stuff after that made me less invested. Things also took a bit of a brutal turn toward the end.

For me, this book was just ok. I liked it okay but don’t think I would read it again.

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley and I’m reviewing it voluntarily. I came into reading this book with preconceived notions regarding what a thriller about gentrification in a Brooklyn neighborhood would read like... I was so wrong. I don’t normally read a lot of thrillers, but I have read Alyssa Cole in the past and enjoy her writing so when the opportunity to get an ARC of this book came, I jumped at it. Even still I dragged my feet and kept putting off reading this book. With just a week left before the deadline to write my review, I stopped procrastinating and started reading... and... WOW! This book is really good, and a total mind screw and emotional roller coaster..

First, the story is written sort of in the style of a romance novel in that there are dual points of view from the male and female main characters. Sydney is back in Brooklyn living in her childhood home after getting divorced and moving her mother into assisted living. Theo grew up poor and on the wrong side of the tracks and moves into the neighborhood with his girlfriend. Theo ends up helping Sydney research the history of the neighborhood for a tour that will be given as part of the annual Labor Day block party. The information that is uncovered during their research as well as some strange things that have been going on in and around the neighborhood don’t seem to add up, and for good reason,

The story is well written, and several times things that seemed like they were awkwardly phrased or oddly worded turned out to be plot points that left me with an eerie sense of deja vu. Add to that the fact that so much of what is in this book is almost ripped from the headlines and it makes for a creepy foreboding that hangs over every scene, Alyssa Cole uses this feeling of unease to advantage and draws the reader into the story wondering what could be lurking behind every turn of the page. The primary characters are as developed as they can be, given that they are both hiding lots of secrets. The neighborhood of Gifford Place acts as a third primary character in many ways because the more we learn about its history, the more we understand what is going on in the present.

If there is any issue to be found in the book it is with the pacing, the beginning seems well paced, the middle is slow and plodding and the end seems to happen at breakneck speed with everything coming together all at once. Overall I give this book 4 stars, it is definitely a good book that I would recommend and I look forward to reading many more books by Alyssa Cole.

With so many crime and suspense novels out there, they all seem to mesh together, unless they have something to make them stand out. What Cole does with the thriller genre here is make the kind of statement Jordan Peele made with his movie "Get Out." This thriller is a message, even a teaching moment, that racism is deeply rooted in everything. No, it's not a revolutionary point, but it is one rarely focused on in genre fiction. Worth reading because it's more than just a thriller. It's a reminder.

This book covered an important issue of gentrification. However, this wasn't your typical thriller. The pacing of the story was really off. The ending felt rushed and out of context. Thank you William Morrow for the free copy.

I was eagerly awaiting this title and love the idea of a thriller with a black POV and Brooklyn setting. The neighborhood and characters were well-drawn but I didn't find it to be a page turning, can't-put-it-down read. It was more of a slow boil with uneven pacing and a side of social justice eduction. Took me a while to get into it but I would still recommend it and think there are readers who willl want and love this book.

Like so many other reviews I have seen, I am not quite sure how to rate this or even what genre it falls under. Extremely appropriate for the times we live in. Most of the book was a very slow build I felt was perfect to develop the paranoia felt by the characters. The last few chapters are where the thrills/horror, and even some romance, take over. It was a sudden shift, but one I was prepared for because of clues dropped throughout. I look forward to reading more like this one!

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

What a ride! This sly, outlandish thriller is a satisfying, quick read. Darkly funny yet thoughtful, it carries important messages about how systemic racism has harmed generations of Black Americans.

My latest review is for When No One Is Watching by author Alyssa Cole. I found Alyssa's latest book via the Book Club Girl Facebook group through HarperCollins and instantly wanted to learn more. Not only did When No One Is Watching fall within a genre that I love to read, mystery, thriller, and suspense, but I also found myself even more interested because of the synopsis. If you’ve read the synopsis, you’ll understand that When No One Is Watching is a mystery in the background, and more about the history and gentrification of a small historic neighborhood.

Having never read any of Alyssa Cole's previous books, I decided to learn more about Alyssa and her current release. Since I chose to read this book as part of a book club, I hadn't read any reviews about When No One Is Watching, so I decided to read a few reviews on Goodreads and found several mentioning the reading was pretty long before it actually got to the climax, and when it did get to the meat of the story it happened too quick. I was concerned about what I was reading in the reviews. Historically, books I've read that tend to be really long on the front end cause me to fizzle in my reading. I really find no enjoyment when I have to work to get to the whodunit and there really is no whodunit.

Even after reading several reviews noting the long front end of the reading, I decided to dive in because I made a commitment to myself for the book club along with a huge curiosity for the paranoia remark from the synopsis that piqued my interest. I'm glad I decided to read Alyssa's latest release because I found a huge amount of enjoyment in reading her book. I was honestly very surprised to read how well this mystery story came together from a writer that has typically written romance novels.

The story flowed very well. From start to finish, I wanted to understand more; I wanted to understand about our character Sydney's neighborhood and her new neighbor, Theo, that just kind of stumbled into her life; the growth that these two characters have with the neighborhood and with each other. This would have to be one of my first reads where I truly wanted to understand more about the story of the neighborhood and the people living within than simply understanding the mystery and getting to the whodunit part. For me, When No One Is Watching, is more about a good piece of written fiction and not so much about a good piece of written mystery. Does that make sense?

Yes, there is a mystery, I just simply enjoyed the story getting to the mystery. I have seen some tags around social media using thriller or horror and personally, I don't feel that this read fits within either.

As I mentioned earlier, the story flows extremely well. From start to finish there is a consistent build in the writing that doesn't jump around with a lot of flashbacks or flash-forwards, so there is no confusion understanding where the story is going. Each character has a purpose, even those characters that have a small part, they all have a purpose that culminates in the ending, so no character is left behind.

Whew. This book right here is what I want to see more of in the thriller genre. It was so refreshing to have a thriller that didn't center around the the housewife stuck in a broken marriage, the alcoholic female, or the death of a child, which seems to be the majority of most thrillers these days.

I immediately was drawn to Sydney's character. She's a Black female (which also is not common in thrillers) who is strong willed, independent, and refuses to just accept the gentrification that is threatening to erase the Black history and culture of her beloved Brooklyn neighborhood. Theo is the antithesis to Sydney. He's a white male who thinks he's woke until he's confronted with his own internal biases (one being his racist ex-girlfriend that needed a good throat punch).

From start to finish, this story was engrossing, thought-provoking, and heart racing. The author does a phenomenal job of sprinkling nuggets of lost Black history throughout the narrative as well as giving the audience some amazing plot twists that you don't see coming. I can't recommend this book enough.

Thank you to William Morrow and Harper Audio for providing a review copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.

Alyssa Cole is an original voice author that brings the reader a different type of thriller. The beginning of the book is more of a historical fiction book set in Brooklyn NY and based on the history of home ownership in the area. It takes a moment to understand how all the ground laying of the beginning of the book relates to a story. It is more character driven than plot with Sydney trying to hold on to her brownstone in Brooklyn despite all the changes going on around her. Her new neighbor Theo watches her through her window and finally approaches her to help her with research for her own type of tour that will provide history from a different perspective. The story includes the racial differences to the far extreme and the mystery portion comes into play the last quarter of the book. The end of the book and the beginning feel like two completely different books with it reaching almost to sci-fi. The pacing is very slow at the beginning but I was glad that I continued past that to see how it played out.



Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I love this book so much. I gave it 4 stars.
We’re following a young woman as gentrification is sweeping her neighborhood as she fights against it. As people begin to go missing, the question is- what are they up against?
This book reminded me so much of Get Out and I loved it. The only reason it lost a star for me was the genre. The thrills don’t really start Until the end and it read more like a contemporary.

When No One is Watching
By: Alyssa Cole
Available Now!

When No One is Watching is a very nontraditional thriller but it worked for me. I would describe the first 3/4 of the book as suspense with a lot of history but the end of the book really flew, I was frantically turning pages and couldn’t stop reading.

Alyssa Cole gives the reader an up close and personal look at the problems people of color face everyday: gentrification, racism, white privilege, mental health stigmas, violence, and micro-aggressions.

The book is told from 2 points of view, Sydney and Theo. Both Sydney and Theo are hiding things from each other.

Sydney Green is a 30 year old black woman who has recently returned to her childhood home following the end of her marriage. Sydney escaped an abusive husband. He used gas lighting and emotional abuse to control her. The abuse left Sydney questioning her own sanity. The trauma of that alone is heavy but she also returned home to care for her ailing mother. Sydney is under a great deal of stress emotionally and financially. She takes a historic tour of the neighborhood just to pass the time and realizes how white washed the history shared on the tour was. Sydney found herself interrupting the guide and correcting him. Afterwards, Sydney decides to do her own historical tour and begins researching and planning the tour in hopes of sharing it with her neighbors at the block party in a few weeks.


Sydney enjoyed her growing up in Gifford Place, her neighborhood in Brooklyn. The neighbors were all close and looked our for one another. As she is researching the history of the area Sydney starts to notice that her neighbors are going missing at an alarming rate. Neighbors she was close to are moving without telling anyone and their houses are being sold specifically to white people.

Theo is new to the neighborhood. He and his girlfriend are part of the group of white people buying up all the properties. Shortly after the move Theo finds himself without a job and things aren’t working out with his current girlfriend Kim. With nothing but time to kill he tries to get involved in the community by attending a historical tour and attending a meeting to plan a block party. He offers to assist Sydney in researching the history of the neighborhood. Sydney reluctantly agrees and the two begin spending time together interviewing people, comparing notes, and preparing for the tour.


As Sydney and Theo begin spending their days researching the history of the neighborhood and the company that’s heavily involved in buying up the properties they form a friendship. After Sydney is tricked out of her mother’s ownership of the community garden space by a white developer with a fake deed to the land, this book really takes off.

The end of the book was so fast paced it flew. Tension was high and Sydney and Theo take on vigilante personas as they uncover what’s really going on in their neighborhood.

I liked this book but I was disappointed in how slow the first part of the book was. It didn’t feel like a thriller until the end. I really prefer the pacing to be faster or spread throughout the book.

I rated this ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 rounded to 4 for goodreads. Thank you to @williammorrow for an advanced copy of the book for my review.