Just One Look by Lindsay Cameron

Disgraced lawyer, Cassie Woodson, spent five years on the top floor of a law firm until she bombed out spectacularly, all documented by TV and internet videos, as she was led out of the law firm, by the police. After long months of barely moving off her couch, she's had to take a temp job doing point and click grunt work in a tiny, windowless room, with seventeen other nameless temp workers. Above her on the 30th floor is the life she used to lead and when she latches emails between one of the hot shot lawyers, to his wife, Cassie is moonstruck by the romantic exchanges. When she realizes that the couple may be estranged now, she sets her sights on Forest and she's not going to let go.

Cassie is mentally unstable, having lost people dear to her, first when here mother left due to depression after Cassie's birth. Cassie can't let go of the failure to be what her mother wanted her to be, and she considers the leaving of other people in her life as her fault, too. This is very book smart woman whose emotional state makes her a very weak woman. She knows she needs a man in her life, the right man, and in Forest she has found her...stalking victim...ahem...perfect man. Cassie is really good at what she puts her mind to and she soon has a bulging folder of information on Forest and his ex wife.

Cassie would be a lot better at all of this, her job, her everyday life, her stalking, if she had more confidence in herself. But that's not Cassie, she always has her doubts, her feelings of not being worthy, her deep shame for being marched from her job in disgrace. She has to remake her self in so many ways that she's always on the verge of making a mistake, forgetting her lies, and exposing the shambles of her life. Obsession is a scary thing, but Cassie lives for her obsession.

I felt bad for Cassie while feeling scared of her, at the same time. She'd be one of those really, really scary psychos we read about in novels if only she wasn't such a screw up, if only she had more faith in herself. But instead, she will get so close to her goal, only to mess things up and almost lose hold of Forest. But there is something else going on and if only Cassie wasn't so focused on catching Forest, she might be able to see that he has secrets of his own. I was transfixed while also wanting to be out of crazy Cassie's head.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.

This book wasn't what I was expecting? It was a little Single White Female with a little YOU.

Cassie has been through a lot of trauma and seems to be looking for anyone to show her love. She quickly becomes obsessed with this couple after she stumbles upon their emails to one another. And it is just a downward spiral from there.

The premise was great.. This book is getting great reviews! And I think a lot of people are going to love it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't for me. The pacing was off for me. I didn't like how it skipped events and just referred to them in the next chapter. But these are personal pet peeves.

I think it had a lot of potential and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballatine Books for this eARC!

Do you live in Outlook all day like me? What if I told you that this book is one of the best thrillers, I have read all year and focuses on email, and is set in a dreary conference room with a bunch of temps? Would you believe me? Maybe you will just have to read this one for yourself!

Cassie Woodson is a temp for a law firm, reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. Cassie does not have much going on in her life – no family, no friends, no love life. But then an email between one of the partners, Forest Watts, and his wife Annabelle catches her eye and lights her obsession.

Three words to describe this book: Page-turner. Obsession. Email.

Cover: This is probably one thing I did not like about this book. I love the blue and purple hues. It just did not draw me into the novel.

Character Development: Cassie has a significant amount of character development including her relationship with her father, her humiliating firing at her previous firm, and her previous relationships. I felt like it was just the right amount that helped build the plot but not deter from the pace.

World-Building: This book is set in New York but not on the glitzy side. Most of the novel takes place in a conference room with Cassie reading messages. I very much got a sense of place from this novel.

Plot & Pacing: The plot and pacing were spot-on. I devoured this book. There are some decent twists, and the ending was a bit of a surprise for me. I ended up reading the last half of the book in one sitting which is really rare for me.

Verdict: I know it does not sound like a book about a temp reviewing emails would be the perfect beach read – but it is! You need to pack this book for your summer adventures.

This book will be published on July 27, 2021.

ARC was provided to me by Random House Publishing - Ballantine's, in exchange for an honest review.

I had a difficult time reading Just One Look (Lindsay Cameron) because I couldn't find anything I liked about the main character, Cassie. I was constantly shaking my head at just how crazy Cassie was, and how she continued to destroy her life. I want to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an early copy to review.

Holy Stalker! This book is fantastic. We meet former lawyer Cassie Woodson who demolished her career as a rising star in a prestigious law firm in New York. She has now taken a temp job at a law firm reviewing files in a basement. ( If you have seen the movie Office Space, think Milton)! As she is reviewing the files, she becomes obsessed with an Attorney, Forest Watt. She lives and breathes to read emails to and from him and his gorgeous wife, Annabelle. She starts a "Forest file" and starts accidental meetings between the two of them. After awhile she thinks that she can be "Annabelle" and starts to dress, act, smell and look like her. It will be up to you to find out if she will be the new wife! Thank you Netgalley and Ballantine for the ARC!

JUST ONE LOOK By Lindsey Cameron
Thriller fiction
304 pages

In this debut thriller we meet Cassie Woodson,  a ex lawyer turned temp worker.  Cassie has a sordid past that she works hard to bury.  Her job as a temp is excruciatingly boring until she comes across emails she's not supposed to see. Starting her obsession with Forest  Watts. She gets completely stalker behavior with Forest dreaming of a future between them. She never dreamed her obsession would turn out the insane way it did though.

Lindsay Cameron's debut is a masterpiece!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is one of the best thrillers I've read all year. Lindsay Cameron has a great future as a thriller writer if she keeps on writing and giving us readers books like this one. I highly recommend this book.

Look at me, all ready to write this book off halfway through as yet another The Last Mrs. Parrish, The Photographer, Single While Female-type thriller. Boy, am I glad I stuck with it! The last 20% of the book completely flips this trope on its head, changes your expectations, and delivers something different. I'm impressed.

Our main character, Cassie Woodson, is a temp lawyer working in the dungeon-like basement of a large NYC law firm, doing the most banal task a lawyer could imagine themselves doing: clicking through emails in a process of e-discovery for a firm's client. Working alongside other JDs who have somehow ended up here, Cassie hates her life. She's lonely, has absolutely no career prospects, and feels totally hollow. She wasn't always in this position - just a few years ago, Cassie was a rising star attorney at her corporate law firm, with a handsome, successful fellow lawyer boyfriend, a beautiful apartment, and life at her fingertips. But she alludes to an incident that occurred that basically ruined all of that, rendering her career-less and alone.

On another day clicking through these pointless emails related to a healthcare client, she comes across a personal email from one of the firm's partners, Forest Watts, to his wife, Annabelle Watts. Cassie is immediately struck by this email: its romance, its unconditional support, the perfection of their lives. In an instant, Cassie becomes obsessed with this couple. Handsome, successful Forest, beautiful, ethereal Annabelle, their amazing Bronxville mansion, and their charmed lives. She makes it her mission to know absolutely everything about them, and lucky her!, due to a mistake in the algorithm that selects emails to be reviewed, Forest's inbox appears in Cassie's queue basically every day.

After discovering that Forest's and Annabelle's relationship may not be as picture-perfect as it seems, Cassie comes up with a new mission: replace Annabelle. Using her arsenal of everything she knows about Annabelle, from her clothes to her workouts to her signature scent, she readies herself to become everything Forest wants.

The premise of this so far sounds exactly like other thrillers I've read in the past few years, where a lonely woman becomes obsessed with a life so far from her own and insists on becoming part of it. I don't hate those stories, but they're overplayed. I wish I could give a hint as to what changes in the latter half of this narrative to make it distinct from those, but part of the fun of getting there is not knowing where it's going to take you. All I can say is that it's unexpected and a great ride - I just wish it came a little earlier in the story. You really don't find out much until the tone changes around 85% of the way through.

Overall, this is a fun, new take on an old trope, and I really enjoyed reading this. Thank you to Ballantine for the ARC via Netgalley!

Disgraced lawyer Cassie has run out of options; she needs money fast. She takes a temp job reviewing an endless supply of boring documents potentially related to a large fraud lawsuit. The email of one of the firm's partners accidentally has been included in this document dump. Although she should ignore them, Cassie takes just one look at the partner's private email. Just one look, and she can't stop looking at the innocuous yet very personal emails between the partner, Forest, and his wife, Annabelle. Cassie becomes obsessed with the couple. She stalks his emails and the Internet to find out everything she can about them. She wants their life.

Immersed from the first pages, I enjoyed how the story builds suspense as you learn more about Cassie and her past. Cassie is clearly not mentally stable, and I was intrigued by how you feel like you are inside her head with an unfiltered view of all her thoughts. Cassie is a train wreck that you can't look away from.

I loved the clever, surprising ending. When you thought you knew what would happen, the story goes in a completely different and realistic direction.

Thriller fans will enjoy this quick, fun, and entertaining read full of envy, obsession, and deception!


I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Just One Look is a stalker thriller from author, Lindsay Cameran, and will be out 7/27.

One of the things I loved about this one is that it was dripping with sarcasm and quick wit—it was a nice touch and right up my alley!

But…it fell a bit short for me otherwise. It wasn’t bad…maybe middle of the road?

It kicked off pretty slowly, with a bit of suspense that kept me intrigued, but I don’t think it quite lived up to its potential. There really weren’t any like-able characters and the plot just felt…off, especially the ending. I really loved the synopsis and cover for this one and had high hopes, but for some reason it didn’t click for me.

That said, the writing itself was great, and I’m sure others will really enjoy this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the gifted eARC.

If you like books from the perspective of a crazy stalker, similar to Joe in the You series, then you’ll enjoy Just One Look. I’m a huge fan of unreliable narrators and being in the mind of someone completely different from myself, and you definitely get that with this book. It’s a very fast paced read with a few surprises along the way. Also, look at that cover.. gorgeous!

I'm not a fan of stalker stories, so this book was not for me, but that doesn't mean it might not be for you.

If you, like a lot of other people, did like You by Caroline Kepnes, you might want to try Just One Look. Cassie, the main character, has been fired from her law firm job for an unspecified offense that involves blood and sharp objects. She gets a temp job helping another law firm sort through documents for an upcoming case. (There were a lot of wtf aspects to this, but I decided to go with it.) In doing this temp job, she inadvertently gets access to the personal emails of a male partner and suddenly becomes completely and creepily fixated on him.

Cassie clearly has some kind of serious substance abuse issues or a mental illness or both. She sends emails she doesn't remember and it seems like her grasp on reality is pretty tenuous. It's impossible not to feel concerned for her at the same time that her behavior is completely alarming.

There was a twist 90% in which for me made things even weirder. For me as a reader, this was just too out-there and unbelievable. I get the appeal of wtf books but it's my preference that my books to have some grounding in reality.

Cassie is the female version of the infamous Joe from You. Cassie obsesses over most things in her life and Forest is just the latest person to cross her path. This book increased my anxiety a bit but I guess you can say that makes it a good read. If the reader is immersed into the story to the point where their anxiety increases, then the suspenseful classification fits.

I did get into the storyline although I did find my thoughts wandering a bit. The end threw me completely but was reminiscent of Caroline Kepnes’ works. 3.5 stars

Mentally unstable stalker. Just one look can't hurt, right? Cassie, after reading a personal email that she really shouldn't have, becomes obsessed with Forest Watts. Using her access to his email and other online accounts, she manages to put herself directly into his path. And it seems to work. But there's a twist Cassie (and most readers) won't see coming. This novel is a super fun, quick read. The reader is part fascinated/part horrified at Cassie's actions, but you will really want to know what happens next!

"A young woman’s escalating obsession with a seemingly perfect man leads her down a dangerous path in this novel of suspense brimming with envy, desire, and deception.

Eyes aren’t the windows to the soul. Emails are.

Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking—love, friends, stability—and leaves her with too much time on her hands, which she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point.

While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender (and totally private) exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. Cassie knows she shouldn’t read them. But it’s just one look. And once that door opens, she finds she can’t look away.

Every day, twenty floors below Forest’s corner office, Cassie dissects their emails from her dingy workstation. A few clicks of her mouse and she can see every adoring word they write to each other. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness, reveling in their penchant for vintage wines, morning juice presses, and lavish dinner parties thrown in their stately Westchester home. There are no secrets from her. Or so she thinks.

Her admiration quickly escalates into all-out mimicry, because she wants this life more than anything. Maybe if she plays make-believe long enough, it will become real for her. But when Cassie orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something that throws the state of his marriage into question, the fantasy she’s been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn’t simply admire Annabelle—she wants to take her place. And she’s armed with the tools to make that happen."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Just One Look by Lindsay Cameron is a thriller read that is very reminiscent of Caroline Kepnes’s You series. In this thriller we have a female lead who begins to show stalkerish tendencies and an unnatural obsession much like Joe Goldberg, the lead of You.

Cassie Woodson had been on a blazing career path after law school joining a law firm and working her way up the corporate ladder. However, an incident happened at the firm causing Cassie to lose her job with her failures plastered all over the media to haunt her where ever she turned.

Needing to pay her bills with her law career off the rails Cassie takes a temp job at a firm sifting through their documents for a case. The job is so far down the ladder from where she was before and completely mind numbing work, that is until the private emails of one of the firm’s partners begins to hit Cassie in box.

Being a huge fan of the You series I was actually quite taken with reading the thoughts of a female flawed character with the same traits as Joe Goldberg. Cassie was very engaging when beginning to read and I couldn’t wait to see what the author had in store for her. The thing that held this back to three and a half stars to me though was it didn’t seem as action packed of a book. Cassie spent the majority of her time in her basement job or interacting with a co-worker with only a bit of time spent pursuing her obsessions. If this became a series I would probably come back though as despite a slower pace I was engaged in Cassie’s perspective.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Daaang, can we say crazy stalker lady?! I have read so many books lately that say they are a psychological thriller, but they are really just a general fiction book. However, this one is 100% accurately classified. The MC Cassie is such an intense stalker, it made me cringe so many times during this book.

I love the writing style of this book. It kept me entertained and it didn't feel repetitive at all. It kept moving right along.

I will say, the thriller part wasn't until the very end, but I was so wrapped up in the crazy stalker that I didn't feel like I was missing out.

Thanks Netgalley and publisher for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exhange for an honest review.
"Just One Look" by Lindsay Cameron
was an addictive story that pulled me in & didn't let me go until its final page.
I loved the main character, she was relatable, hilarious & slightly unstable & insane.
I was shocked with the unexpected surprised ending.
Ms. Cameron put a new twist to the stalker tale.
This was one of my favorite books that I have read this year.
I would love to read another book this author.

4.5 stars

Wow this story was intense!

Cassie Woodson took a major tumble down the corporate ladder and, as a result, had to take a measly temp job to pay her bills. But the job wasn’t as dull as it appeared to be. She became wrapped up in the email exchanges between a law firm partner (Forest Watts) and his wife (Annabelle). Her obsession soon turned to reality as she orchestrated “chance encounters” with Forest and quickly weaved her way into his life. She not only pined after Annabelle’s seemingly perfect life and perfect husband…she wanted to BE Annabelle. But actions have consequences and Cassie had only just begun to see the error of her ways.

This was a really great book, full of obsession, envy, and deceit…everything that make the perfect suspenseful read. At first I was really bothered by Cassie and her actions but, by the end, I was questioning what would have happened if she HADN’T gone so far with her obsession. This book has a fantastic surprise ending and really brought the story full circle. Highly recommend!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4086225112

Okay…wow. A trip through CrazyTown.

I loved the way the story is told. Cassie is…interesting. Reminds me a little of Joe from Kepnes’s You.

I loved the twist however.

I read BigLaw by this author many years ago and remembered I enjoyed it. This second go round was just as good, the author is a lawyer herself so she knows what she writes. Though it took a bit to get into this once I did...I found this book to be very intense. This one threw me for a loop and I loved being surprised.

There are a lot of very terribly unlikable characters within these pages. It’s very easy to start questioning who knows what and who was responsible for the mystery...but you'll probably be wrong. Definitely a imaginative book, and an incredibly fast read. I ignored everything else in the world around me and read this cover-to-cover in one sitting...Devoured it actually. I would definitely read more by Lindsay Cameron.

If you are looking for female version of Joe Goldberg minus the murder-y stuff, this is definitely for you. It has all the creepy stalker vibes and is an amazingly engaging thriller. The book maintains the pace and intrigue all the way till the end. Cassie recently lost her corporate attorney job after a very viral incident with her boyfriend in the office premises and is now working as a temp where she fixates on Forest Watts after getting access to his personal emails accidentally. Looking into others emails can be very enticing and she literally changes her life after her obsession with him. But she goes a step further and actually enters into his life as well. It did seem too easy though!

Is Forest hiding something? Did he really fall into her life so conveniently? I did feel sad for her as she was a train wreck and badly needed mental support. But it works great for a fast-paced thriller. There is just so much information out in the world if a person wants to pursue and it can be dangerous ride if they get some private info into their hands.