4.5 Stalker Much Stars!!!

What a delightfully delicious look into the mind of a stalker, but a stalker you can silently get behind and root for. You know she's wrong, you know she's got a screw loose, you know you shouldn't be gleefully cheering on this obvious train wreck. Oh, but the pages keep steadily flipping!! And there's a nice little twist in the end (although it wasn't all so surprising). I completely enjoyed myself and got lost in the pages! And if we're being honest here, who of us wouldn't have initially taken "Just One Look" like our lead character? Hopefully we wouldn't have taken it so far though...right???

A bit predictable but I loved the pacing and thought Cassie was the perfect unreliable narrator. As a whole, the dark fascination and stalking was simply addictive. I had to know what insane ploy Cassie was going to come up with next.

“Just One Look” is a story about envy, deceit, and obsession. Cassie Woodson has been fired from a prestigious law firm after an “incident” and is now working as a temp attorney doing document review when she discovers a treasure trove of personal emails between one of the firm’s partners, Forrest Watts, and his lovely wife Annabelle. She knows she shouldn’t be reading the emails – they clearly aren’t related to the case – but surely one little look won’t hurt anything, right?

Before you know it, Cassie is down the rabbit hole and on a one-way trip to crazytown. She becomes obsessed with the Watts and goes from zero to stalker in no time flat. What follows is an addictive, slow-burn, psychological thriller that is unputdownable, with Cassie as the epitome of unreliable narrators. Lindsay Cameron’s writing is outstanding and her portrayal of Cassie is dark, witty, but also sympathetic. Perfect for fans of Caroline Kepnes’ “You” series, this suspenseful novel will have you thinking about how easy it would be for someone to follow your own digital breadcrumbs.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine Books for providing me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Cassie Woodson has never been given a fair chance. We know this because she keeps reminding us. So you can’t blame her for doing something a little bit underhanded to give her the edge she deserves in love and life, right? As we listen to Cassie explain her recent work history, it becomes glaringly obvious that something isn’t quite connecting correctly in her logic. She had an absolutely amazing successful career and tossed it aside with one quick swipe of your common pair of desk scissors. Sounds plausible and completely understanding, right?
So flash forward to our heroine in her new job: a temp reading through tons of communications for a large firm preparing for a fraud case. Can she help it if the sweet and loving private communications between a lusciously handsome lawyer and his equally luscious wife catch Cassie’s eye? To the point that she wants to be the new wife, simply sweep the old one out of the way? Let the stalking begin! It’s almost hilarious, but terribly twisted and scary how completely engrossed Cassie becomes as she monitors her new flame’s movements and purchases clothing, perfumes, and wine to mimic those of his wife. All in the name of love, right?
But this handsome lawyer and his beautiful wife have their own scheme going, and bug-eyed Cassie walks right into it. The plot twists and turns, at times sad but for the most part, hilariously engaging. No plot spoiling here; you’ll have to read the book! I absolutely love how the author, Lindsay Cameron, decides to sweep up the mess. The last few pages were my most favorite of all!
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date is July 27, 2021.

Given how much I love the YOU books by Caroline Kepnes, JUST ONE LOOK by Lindsay Cameron was sure to be a hit. For one, Cassie is an incredibly fascinating, and supremely creepy, protagonist, in that she is deeply, deeply unhappy and is so desperate for love and affection that she forms unhealthy attachments to people she doesn't even know... and then convinces herself that she loves them. Cameron does a really good job of getting into her mind, slowly peeling back things that happened to her in her past and into her emotional state, and it makes her complex and pitiful, as well as very, very unsettling. But Cameron also has some tricks up her sleeve, as while this could have definitely felt like a similar story to YOU (in that we get into the mind of a stalker who slowly circles her victim), instead we get something that feels altogether different. Especially when the twists start to unfold. There were a number of surprises in this story, surprises that I didn't see coming, and that made my enjoyment of JUST ONE LOOK all the richer.

JUST ONE LOOK is a twisted and well crafted thriller. It will probably get under your skin a bit, but I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

What makes a stalker? Maybe it’s because your mother abandoned you. Maybe it’s the moment your boyfriend breaks up with you by email. Maybe it’s when you respond to that email at work in a totally inappropriate, violent way. Or maybe after you are fired from your position as a senior associate at a law firm for that violence. But it’s definitely when, in your boring job as a research temp at a new law firm, you access the private emails of a partner, Forest Watts.

Cassie Woodson is fascinated by Forest Watts. The tender way he writes to his wife Annabelle. The expensive wine they drink. The photos of charity events. Cassie begins a file on Forest using his emails and her own research. She begins to accidentally run into him at his favorite places. Then things turn dark. There is obsession. There is stalking. There is violence. And Cassie is not the only one responsible.

It’s hard to describe Just One Look. Part mystery, part psychological thriller, part stalker drama, it is a fantastic read. You won’t be able to put it down and all the twists and turns will leave you guessing. 5 stars.

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

I love a good psycho thriller - anytime there is a character that is totally whacked and obsessive- that’s a book for me. This one fit that bill for sure!

Our narrator, Cassie, has many secrets (she was fired from her last job, and she is apparently internet famous for something) and those secrets follow her to her new job and life.

She becomes obsessed with a man she knows nothing about, but soon she knows everything.

It’s fun to read the super creepy, stalker POV!

Unfortunately, it felt like the story kind of just was all over the place. There were too many things mentioned that made her sound crazier, but that really didn’t have anything to do with the story. It was also extremely predictable.

Still a fun read.

Just One Look was one hell of a ride! A binge-worthy stalker thriller that had me reading just one more chapter late into the night! This book was part guilty pleasure (juicy office gossip anyone?), part dark & twisty tale of obsession.

Did I see the ending coming? Yea, pretty much. But I still enjoyed every minute of it!

If you’re looking for a fast-paced, addictive thriller with a great cast of characters, you should check this one out!

CW: suicide; drug and alcohol abuse; cancer

Wow, talk about a plot twist…I had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I read that ending!

Just One Look is an addictive page-turning thriller which follows Cassie Woodson, a recently disgraced corporate lawyer who lands a temp job monitoring emails at another law firm. When she comes across the inbox of Forest Watts, one of the firm’s big shot attorneys, Cassie becomes completely enthralled with him, his life, and his wife Annabel. As the emails keep coming due to a system glitch, Cassie decides to take her obsession to the next level by orchestrating a meeting with Forest in hopes of creating a future with him.

I couldn’t put this book down, I just had to know what Cassie was going to do next. The story is told from Cassie’s POV and we slowly learn about her past and the “incident” that got her fired from her previous cushy corporate gig. I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a heart-pulsing, unputdownable thriller!

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was the kind of creepy that I find to be very realistic even though it might not seem that way on the surface. The reality is that hacking or looking through someone’s digital footprint is very modern and possible. It definitely explored the side of modern technology that can lead to problems.

Cassie Woodson is crazycakes. I mean, is there any other description? She has a past relationship shrouded in mystery and all the reader knows is that it ended in blood and the loss of a promising law career. Now, I am all for unreliable narrators, but I found Cassie to be an unlikable narrator. Her obsession with someone based off of one email was disturbing. I'm sure it was supposed to be, but I never really rooted for her which I need in a book, even when I find it interesting. Still, I did enjoy it and it picked up about halfway through.

I confess this one had a slow start for me, and I almost gave up on it. Cassie’s obsession got repetitive in the day-to-day of her job. But after we hit roughly 40% in, the story really unfolds, and the pacing picks up. Cassie is the epitome of an unreliable narrator, and not just because we can’t trust what she says. She’s been self-medicating for so long her memory is sketchy at best. It’s exacerbated because bits of her past reveal in small doses, so we’re not exactly sure how we got here.

I wasn’t a fan of using newspaper articles late in the book to tell the story. As far as the characters, Cameron did a great job writing such an unstable character whose special brand of obsession went above and beyond. Thank you, Ballantine Books, for sending this along.

Fast paced thriller that's impossible to put down. You'll be tempted to finish it in one sitting. Dark, gripping, fantastic page turning goodness.

I plowed through this one in under 24 hours. Loved the fast pace, loved the crazy, and I loved the ending, even if it was super predictable.

Cassie Woodson, the protagonist of this story about obsession, stalking, and revenge , ended her promising law career and the relationship with her boyfriend in a workplace act of violence that went viral. Now, the friendless, mentally unstable Cassie ekes out a living as a temp reviewing correspondence for a Manhattan legal firm’s large-scale fraud suit. The claustrophobic, crowded office matches her mood, as she fixates on her mistakes. Then she reads a personal, loving email from Forest Watts, a partner at the firm, to his wife, Annabelle. The couple’s revealing emails, which suggest a perfect life and love, soon become Cassie’s lifeline and give her hope about solid relationships. Consumed with Forest, Cassie follows him and Annabelle on social media and in real life as her tenuous grip on sanity continues to slip.
Great novel, lots of twists. Cool psychological thriller. However, Cassie got on my nerves and I couldn't really feel any sympathy for her. She was too unlikeable.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc.*

I love an unreliable narrator, and the perspective of the narrator in Just One Look was exceptionally written. I also love a legal drama - so this book was right up my alley. I loved the ups and downs and twists and turns, and especially the ending (which I did not see coming). Highly recommend!

Special thanks to Random House Publishing And NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

5 stars for this one, easily. I went into this book with trepidation but was hooked because I love a good book with sneaking, conniving, envy and cleverness and this book has all of that and more.

Cassie, just got knocked down the corporate ladder, literally. Feeling crappy, embarrassed and let's face it, just plain shitty as anyone would, she gets knocked down about 20 floors in a little corner office doing boring, mindless work and trying to fix her past mistakes and where she went wrong. And then she sees it. Emails between a very high up in the company, Forest, and his wife Annabelle. Why they aren't texting, I don't know, but they email each other...and they're married! From their breakfast rendezvous to dinner parties thrown and everything between and Cassie is reading all of it, and getting to know them very well.

This is a very sneaky, deliciously juicy book and Cassie wants more, from Forst, it seems, and now, knowing about their life, she has all the weapons in her arsenal to get it! This was a page turner folks with a twist you may not see coming!

There’s never a wrong time to read a stalker story. It’s always interesting to see the insane levels some characters will go (hello girl version of Joe Goldberg) ⁣
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This was a juicy, addicting, psychological thriller. I felt simultaneously bad and creeped out by the main character, Cassie. She has a dark past, lots of pain, and an out of control delusional personality. ⁣
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Cassie takes a job as a temp after being fired from her previous job as a lawyer at a law firm. There was also the mention of a restraining order, a crazy lobby video, and lots of blood…⁣
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I HAD to know what dark secrets lurked in Cassie’s past. The majority of the novel, the reader is lead along a path of her self destruction and it’s alluded that something really bad happened at her previous place of work, but the story just keeps you hanging to find out the full scoop. ⁣
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Then, at her new job she comes across some intimate emails between a prominent lawyer and his wife…from there she starts to spiral. I honestly wish Cassie just had proper mental health support in her life to help her make better choices and heal from past traumas. She’s intelligent, and has so much potential but calming her impulses is not her strong suit. ⁣
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This does fallow the mental health issue trope that so many people have begun to dislike in thrillers. However, for me, the idea of you or someone you know losing their mind and being disconnected from reality is very scary and unsettling. So, this trope tends to work ok for me in thrillers when done right. ⁣
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Overall, this book is perfect for beach reading. It’s not deep, but it’s entertaining and will keep you consuming chapter after chapter. How far will Cassie go to keep her obsession close? Things get crazy when the story takes on a unexpected twist. ⁣
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I give this 3.5/5 stars rounded up to 4 for this review

This was EXCELLENT. I read it all in one day, and at the critical moments I'm pretty sure my house could have started on fire and I wouldn't have noticed (or at least would have had to keep reading while I ran for my life). Just One Look is here to take over from Caroline Kepnes's You, and it does a brilliant job. Cassie Woodson, a lawyer-turned-temp worker, is our Joe, and Forest Watts - or rather, Forest Watts's e-mail inbox - is her target. Thanks to an IT glitch, Forest's e-mails are Cassie's for the reading, and she devours every morsel of information she can dig up, rapidly developing an obsessive infatuation. There are also, of course, hints that Cassie has a murky, possibly violent past, and she isn't satisfied with just reading Forest's e-mails for long. I was a huge fan of the writing style - sometimes, in an effort to keep the reader guessing for as long as possible, the first-person voices in these unreliable-narrator thrillers are way too vague and bland to have any idea of the narrator's personality, and this effect can even carry over to side characters and general description. Just One Look does not suffer at all from this problem; every page is packed with personality and the various characters' voices are distinct. The pacing felt perfect to me - twists and secrets revealed at just the right rate to keep me enthralled but never frustrated.

Where Just One Look differs from You is in its lack of gore and extreme on-page violence - this is a difference that I personally appreciate a lot. I like a book that can create and maintain tension without the threat of someone being gruesomely murdered in every chapter. Without spoiling anything, I would also say Just One Look has a more optimistic, uplifting tone - You left me feeling sort of miserable, but at the end of Just One Look, I felt thrilled and excited for Cassie. It ends up feeling adjacent to empowering. Highly recommend for fans of You, The Girl on the Train, or the new movie I Care A Lot.

3.5 rounded up. As I suspected, Just One Look is a giant cup of crazy. Cassie's life is a mess and she's about to become a total stalker. She has lost her esteemed job at a high level law firm due to an "incident" that is teased throughout the book. She is now in a lawyer temp pool reviewing emails for a case at another firm. She is broke, damaged, lonely and pretty much drinks her meals with a chaser of Tylenol pm. What could possibly go wrong? She becomes obsessed with partner Forrest and his wife Annabelle after stumbling on multiple emails from Forrest's inbox in the review queue. Her imagination is electrified by her mental state and off we go.
Ultimately I liked the book, but there were parts that fell short that left it in the "like" category and not "love". First of all, my heart ached for Cassie. I wanted to pick her up out of the pages and bring her over for a cup of tea and a good home cooked meal. It is a page turner for sure, but the tension left me mostly sad for the main character. It is entertaining and will keep you up late at night flipping through but it is quite predictable. With that said, it's a good beach/vacation read that won't need too much deep thinking.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ballentine Books for my early release copy in exchange for my honest opinion. Just One Look will be released on July 27.