A story of love gone wrong. It is a psychological thriller x10. Jake Danner is the dream guy- singer/songwriter that makes all the girls swoon. At a concert one night him and Molly lock eyes and it is love at first sight. Unfortunately, he is a musician and travels all the time. Now, years later she has moved to another town and meets a new friend. This friend though is out to dig up all her secrets. It was a fast read although predictable.
Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

I feel like there wasn't anything very suspenseful or thrilling about this book. It's frustrsting to me when I start a book expecting a thriller and I don't get one (thanks Goodreads. 😂) I would classify this as a domestic drama.

Some things I actually enjoyed: the author referenced neighborhoods and actual places in Brooklyn that I actually know (many of them being in my old neighborhood!) I also visualized this book turning into a Netflix series the entire time I read it.

Now, here's where I started to take issue: because I think it'll make for a good TV series, I felt that the writing for a book was a bit contrived. You ever get that feeling where an author has a hunch that their book will be picked up for screen time? That's how I felt reading Can't Look Away.

This was an entertaining read, but that's about it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Carola Lovering for my ARC of Can't Look Away in exchange for my honest review!

Ooh time goes by and if i don't write the review right away...sigh. I'm trying to be better. The best i can do right now is give a star count...

This is an interesting domestic suspense story. It's billed as a thriller, but falls a bit short in that area. The story of Molly, Jake, and Sabrina is told through their three points of view, which worked well for me. The storyline also jumped between 2013 and 2022, which provided important context to the character development and relationships. The dual timeline kept the pace up, and set up an ending full of emotion. I enjoyed it - but as a domestic drama, not a thriller.

I'm stopping at 60%. This is a Lifetime movie, not a thriller. This is messy, crazy, rich, white people who are all painfully selfish. I cannot read any more infidelity masked as "impossible to stop" or another sentence talking about how bone-meltingly hot the male lead is. I do not like any of the characters, other than maybe Hunter and Stella, and I don't want things to work out for any of them. I skipped ahead to see if I knew the "twist" and yeah - if you've ever seen a Lifetime drama, you know how it ends. Too easy to guess, to annoying to read, I'm calling it quits.

**Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC**

3 stars because this didn’t read like a thriller. I was expecting more twists and turns and suspense but the story was very straightforward and not surprising. The characters’ actions were frustrating and there wasn’t a lot of page turning action here.

2.5 stars. Despite the description calling this book "sexy suspense" and the slightly ominous cover and title font, make no mistake: Can't Look Away is a domestic drama, not a thriller, and it is a fairly standard domestic drama at that. At the center of the story are Molly, Jake, and Sabrina. Molly and Jake were together for a few years in their early 20s, but their passionate love couldn't withstand the everyday trials that tore it apart. Years later, Molly has settled with her husband and daughter in an upscale Connecticut suburb, when she meets Sabrina during one of the yoga classes she teaches. Sabrina has recently moved to town with her husband, and Molly doesn't know it, but their meeting wasn't by chance -- and she's keeping explosive secrets that threaten to upend everything Molly holds dear.

Carola Lovering is adept at writing realistic, complicated relationships, particularly the "first love" or "twin flame" sort that ooze toxicity. She did this best, in my opinion, in her first novel Tell Me Lies, but these types of relationships are at the center of all three of her books. For me, Can't Look Away was the least successful, although there is still a lot here to appreciate. The characters are complex and authentic, if frustrating, and although this is a plot that feels recycled in an over-saturated genre, it's still a compulsively readable book. It's thoughtful and poignant in its exploration of toxic relationships and old wounds. Lovering's writing so clearly conveys the complicated, overwhelming emotion that is love.

Can't Look Away is, essentially, a soap opera in book form, and just like on TV, there are characters that behave in infuriating ways. My issues with this book mostly center around those characters: Sabrina's motives and actions don't really make a lot of sense, and Molly is frustrating because she defines herself entirely by her relationships instead of pursuing her own life goals and ambitions. And the angsty melodrama of it all wore on me after a while -- the book could have been quite a bit shorter if there wasn't so much arguing and then rehashing of those arguments later.

Here's hoping Lovering's next novel can recapture the unique, special qualities of her first. But regardless, I'll continue to read her books; even if I've been disappointed by her recent offerings, there's something so compelling in the way she writes about love.

I received an ARC of Can't Look Away by Carola Lovering from St. Martin's Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!
I give this book 5 stars! This was a well-crafted domestic drama about how far someone is willing to go in the name of love and obsession. I enjoyed how the author wove the story, the chapters going between the past and present tying into a crazy ending. This was a one-sitting read for me. A perfect summer read!

This was a great quick read. Molly and Jake met and fell in love but events led to their breakup. The story takes place in the past (2013) and now (2022). Molly is now married to someone else and has a child with him. They live in a wealthy suburb where Molly teaches yoga, which leads to her meeting Sabrina. They become fast friends but Molly doesn't know Sabrina's true agenda.
This book definitely kept the suspense coming and the ending was great. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for an ARC of this book!

This is my third Carola Levering book and will definitely not be my last. She continues to improve her writing with each book and creates memorable characters that stay with the reader long after the last page.

This book revolves primarily around Molly, the main character, and the significant relationships in her life. The book has different POVs to provide context to different events that impact Molly throughout several years. Sabrina is a married housewife who befriends Molly and Jake is a singer who was Molly's first love. The timeline of the story flips between past and present but the author does a fantastic job of allowing the reader to understand the sequence of events. All of the characters have secrets and the suspense of when these would be revealed kept me fully engaged and anxious to continue reading.

There are several aspects of this book that may cause readers to consider it more of a romance but the secrets kept by everyone leads to several surprising twists along the way.

I absolutely loved this book and fully recommend it. I am looking forward to Carola Levering's next book.

When we first meet Molly Diamond she has gone with a friend to a concert of an up and coming band. She is drawn to the handsome lead singer and his beautiful voice, Jake Danner. Their eyes lock and they are soon a young couple in love. Meanwhile the bands prospects are rising, and the band starts touring. This leads to long absences which strain the two young lovers' relationship. We jump into the future, and Molly is now married to someone named Hunter. Jake is not in her life nine years later. She has a daughter named Stella and teaches yoga. Her dreams of being a published writer seem to have died.

We have three characters giving their point of view: Molly, Jake, and Sabrina. Sabrina is Jake's former girlfriend, and she never got over him. It could be called an obsession. She inserts herself into Molly's world, but doesn't give Molly any indication of her past connection to Jake.

From this point on we switch back and forth between the past and the present. The story of what happened to Jake and Molly's romance will slowly be revealed. Meanwhile, in the present, Sabrina is up to no good and Molly is clueless about this.

When I was reading reviews on Goodreads before writing this, there are a lot of opinions with some common negative themes. I would like to give my opinion on some of these. Many stated that this was called a thriller, but it is actually more of a domestic suspense story. I would agree with this assessment, but I enjoyed the story, and there were enough twists to keep me engaged.

Others said they found the characters unsympathetic. I would diagree.. I liked Molly, the main`character, and although Jake was flawed, he wasn't a horrible person. I did find Molly's level of anger at him a little hard to sympathize with, but I guess the writer didn't want to make Jake too unsympathetic. Her husband Hunter was wonderful. The only unsympathetic character was Sabrina, and she was the villian.

A couple of people objected to IVF being such a plot line, and the fact that Molly desperately wanted a baby, as that was anti-feminist, or whatever. All I can say is they've obviously never lived through that heartbreak.

If you go into the book expecting a twisty domestic suspense novel, and not a thriller, I think you will enjoy this story. I did.

Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if maybe you had made some different choices?

Molly has a pretty good life, with a doting husband and a sweet little girl. They're struggling with fertility, and Molly isn't a huge fan of her neighbors, but at the end of the day things are still going pretty good.

That is until Molly makes a new friend who isn't what she seems, and Molly's past comes back in full force, making her wonder if maybe she made the wrong decisions way back when.

This novel is told from different timelines and different POVs, both of which I love. And like Molly, I have found myself wondering what life would be like if maybe I'd gone down different paths. I think that's human, and Molly's indecisions are a big really why I enjoyed this novel.

While the what ifs really kept me flipping pages, I sometimes struggled with a few of the out of control characters, and I wasn't quite a fan of the ending. Still this story is definitely good enough for a read and I do recommend it.

This book tries to be a lot of things. It's a thriller, sort of, mixed with a romance, sort of, mixed with a story about women's friendship (but not really, they are not friends, one of them actively hates the other). I think that in trying to do too many things, the book never fully becomes any of those things. The thriller aspect of the book I found boring, obvious and not at all shocking. The romance part was ... not that romantic? And the friendship was, as I said, not a friendship. What kept me reading was the back and forth timeline, the way that the story built itself over the course of it, and the fact that I did care, a little, about what happened to Molly. The ending fell flat and I found myself shaking my head, asking myself, "what did I just read?" I have previously really enjoyed this author's work so it was disappointing to find that Can't Look Away did not live up to her previous two novels.

This was a great take on toxic relationships in the form of a psychological/romantic suspense narrative! It was quite the page turner with lots of twists! Gripping, fast paced, and certainly binge worthy! It gave off You vibes in the sense that one character will go to great lengths to get EVERY detail about another character, entering into stalker mode, to be able to insert themselves into the situation. I hoped for something more twisty, especially for the build up, and it ultimately affected my rating. Definitely would recommend.

I read this one a while ago and forgot to rate. I enjoyed it. More romance than I usually read since I like mysteries more, but not bad.

Molly met Jake Danner when he was a rising rock star. Playing a gig in a local bar, Jake and Molly locked eyes and it was love at first sight, but as Molly soon learned life with a rock star isn’t as exciting as it appears. Eventually, Molly moved on to rock solid, down to earth Hunter. Now, several years later, Molly, Hunter, and their little girl are living in a quiet, exclusive community where Molly doesn't exactly feel comfortable. She doesn't "fit" with the other women and harbors feelings of being an outsider. However, that changes when Sabrina moves into the neighborhood and joins one of Molly's yoga classes. Soon, they're best friends but who is Sabrina? What does Molly really know about her? What's she really after?

Can't Look Away is a domestic dramatization more than a thriller. The story is told through three points of view - three people who all come across as almost stalkers or just plain crazy in my opinion. Molly gets caught up in reliving her fantasy fling with the rock star. Sabrina most definitely is working her own agenda and as she does, so goes the plot. Unfolding through past/present timelines, characters get caught up in past dreams now lost, choices and consequences. The story is very much like a soap opera in many ways - one long dramatization of the interactions of these characters lives. They're forced to take a long look at their lives both way back then and now, and some don't like what they see. Readers are privy to everything from the get-go so no big mystery to figure out. Just sit back, maybe grab some popcorn and a drink and watch the show unfold. This one is for fans who are looking for entertainment with a side of crazy.

Can't Look Away could also be called "Can't Stop Reading". Truly a story of love; love lost, love returns, love the right person, I really enjoyed this story and the characters. Sometimes life plays a game with you, you just have to beat it. Thanks to #NetGalley#StMartinsPress#CantLookAway

I requested this because I thought it was a thrillerl, but it was more along the lines of a romantic psychological drama. I really enjoyed this book and found myself lost in it quickly. The storyline was fantastic, super interesting, and it kept me flipping the pages. The character development in this book was superb! The story is about Molly, a young everyday 23-year-old New Yorker who falls head over heels in love with an up-and-coming musician, Jake Danner. Here I must pause to acknowledge something about myself. I was a music-obsessed young lady who spent some of her later teenage years as a groupie hanging with my favorite bands on the Sunset Strip. The book hops around in chronology and storytelling so we get teasers that the couple doesn’t have a happy ever after ending. And what often happens with rock stars? Obsessed fans! In Jake’s case, an old girlfriend just cannot let Jake go and she is dedicated her life to having him, no matter the cost. Years later, we know that Molly is happily married, teaching yoga, and has a precocious daughter, and we slowly learn the details of how she’s ended up in Connecticut. It’s still a struggle for her to fit in so she’s excited to make a new friend in Sabrina. With themes of the one you left behind, being famous not really making you happy, and creative muses, this one was an entertaining read, albeit an over-the-top ending.

Carla Lovering has become one of my favorite authors! I loved the dual POV and timeline, everything flowed smoothly. The characters were great and relatable.

Molly and Jake are deeply in love in their twenty's when Jake is a lead singer in a band and Molly is a struggling writer. Years later, as Molly is married to Hunter and has a young daughter, and are trying to have another child. She doesn't have any close friends and when Sabrina walks into Molly's life, they have a lot in common. More than Molly can guess.

This is a good story with an interesting plot, good characters, along with romance and suspense.