Excellent thriller read. She has a stalker. She's finally able to escape to start a new life but has he followed her? And is it someone she knows?

The end completely surprised me. I've been in a reading slump but I got through this one quickl.y. #WithMyLittleEye #NetGalley

3.5 rounded to 4
This is my second Joshilyn Jackson book and it was pretty good. The pacing of the book was a little slow in the beginning, but I definitely did not see the twists coming.. the ending however was a bit rushed to me and felt imcomplete. It was good but could have been better...

Joshilyn Jackson's "With My Little Eye" was kind of slow to get started for me. There was a lot of build=up and story building. The last quarter was very thrilling and I was on the edge of my seat. But then it ended so abruptly. I usually don't mind an ending that makes you think about what happens next, but I wanted a little more form this book.

I had a hard time liking most of the characters in this book or wanting to route for them. The book had a couple twists I enjoyed.

Overall the novel had some good thriller aspects, but I needed just a little more especially at the end!

Thank you to William Morrow and Netgalley for an advanced reader's copy of this book for my honest review.

Well...... I have to ask is that the ending? What happened after?! All that twisting, I read it in 2 days and it just fell off! I loved Honor and her POV, but I need to know she came out of it ok! I needed to read about Meribel and Cam seeing eachother after. Give me something! Part 2 where they live in Atlanta and someone else tries to get to one of them and Cam saves the day? Hopefully!

It was almost a 5 star 🥴

With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson
Reviewed by Valerie Palmer

I have read a few other books in the thriller genre by Joshilyn Jackson and truly enjoyed them. So when I saw she had come out with another book I wanted to read it. I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley. I unfortunately did not finish it before release date of April 25, 2023, but still enjoyed it and wanted to give it a good review! I would describe this book as thriller/suspense, but it has a bit of romance/relationships sprinkled in to add to the story.

Summary
HIS GAME.
HIS RULES.
HER LIFE.

It started with the letters…

For actress Meribel Mills, disturbing fan mail is part of the price of fame. So when she starts getting creepy letters written in fruit-scented marker she is mostly unphased and diligently files them along with her other messages from unhinged fans. After all, she’s a single mom approaching forty, not the kind of hot young celeb who sparks dangerous obsessions. But there’s something different about Marker Man…

He’s been in her home…

Meribel’s sheets smell of unfamiliar cologne, and objects have gone missing around the house. Plus, the letters have become more perverse, with drawings of a naked Meribel tied up or chopped into pieces. While the police insist that stalkers hardly ever escalate to violence, Meribel has played the dead girl one too many times on TV to risk becoming her in real life. She and her daughter move from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a fresh start—but no distance is great enough.

He’s watching her…

Years of being in front of a camera have given Meribel a superpower—she can feel eyes on her, a creeping sensation like bees inside her skin. And someone definitely has her in their sights. Could Marker Man have followed her all the way across the country?

Who else might be watching—her ex-husband? The lover she left behind in LA? Her new neighbor? Suddenly, every man in her life is a suspect, but she can’t keep herself and her daughter safe from a monster she can’t identify. When the paths of all of these men collide, Meribel will find herself alone in the fight of her life, desperate to protect those she loves as danger closes in from all sides.

If he can't have her, no one can.

What I Liked
I will say that I thought I had "Marker Man" figured out in certain parts of the book, but I was wrong. This book had areas of suspense and me wanting to read more. I liked the characters once I was able to keep track of them all. My favorite characters were Meribel and Cam.

What I Didn't Like
One thing I did not like was that the chapters were not labeled with the name of the person when the point of view changed. It took me awhile to get into the book because I was focusing so much on the characters and trying to determine who was speaking in the beginning. I also felt like the story moved very s-l-o-w-l-y. I also thought that it was not super believable. The ending left me with questions! "Marker Man" is definitely not what I would have pictured, but I am not going to reveal anything else about him to ruin the story. I felt like this book was kind of all over the place in the beginning, but did end up coming together a bit in the end.

Rating⭐⭐⭐
I gave this book three stars on Goodreads. I liked it, but it was not so suspenseful that I couldn't put it down or what I would consider a page-turner.

3.5 stars and I am torn between rounding up and rounding down. Pros: It was really an engaging storyline. It wasn't that I couldn't put it down, but rather that when I'd pick it up, I'd lose myself in it. I absolutely loved the autism spectrum daughter. Her honesty and simple way of looking at things is just how we all wish we could be. I also really enjoyed the mother-daughter relationship. That's another example of how things should be - accepting, cherishing our differences, and letting the other person just be!! The con side: I absolutely did not like how the ending just sort of left you hanging. There were also some pretty unrealistic or "convenient" situations. I really enjoyed the journey, but that darn destination I ended up at wasn't what I was hoping for. So, I think I'll have to round my 3.5 down instead of up,

With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson was not what I expected. I liked the plot of this book but overall it left me a little disappointed. I feel it was all over the place and I couldn't get into it like I have with previous books from this author. With that being said, I will always read everything this author writes. What may not work for me, may be the best for someone else.

Thank you NetGalley for my arc. I really wanted to like this one but I did not. I struggled to finish reading and the storyline was all over the place.

I was so happy to receive a Joshilyn Jackson book through NetGalley but I found this book alittle all over the place and it was hard to keep track of everyone. In the end I felt lost. With this being said, it will not discourage me to read Josilyn Jackson books.

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

This novel was a fast-paced one. There was stalking and kidnapping and romance drama. I liked Honor's POV and her role in the story, although at times I could not care less about her homeless friend. Her autistic mind was a delight to read, and she seemed really intelligent for someone her age. Joshilyn Jackson somehow always seems to write amazing characters, and I liked Meribel too. First person POV is my favorite, so I read this book pretty quickly. My biggest issue was the ending, though - I really wish it hadn't been so abrupt and that we had seen Meribel reunite with Honor and Cam. I dropped a half star from my rating solely because of the ending.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! I Can honestly say that I had no idea what I was getting into with this book and it had me on the edge of my seat! The story is about an actress in her late thirty’s (early forty’s) who moves with her daughter from California back to her home state of Georgia for an acting job and a fresh start. There were so many layers and main characters that things got a little mixed up in my head at the beginning but after a bit a knew who all the players were. Aside from the mysterious “marker man”. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes psychological thrillers, just make sure you lock all your doors first!

DNF @ 50%. Tried to skim the rest at that point, but even that couldn't hold my interest.

Boring, slowly paced plot, uninteresting characters

With My Little Eye
By Joshilyn Jackson

Meribel Mills, a former popular teen actor, has an obsessive fan dubbed Marker Man. He has gone from adoring, to obsessive, to very disturbed. Marker Man’s notes are escalating in the violence they portray but the police are of no help. Meribel grudgingly decides to take a project in Atlanta the home town she vowed never to return to. But what choice does she have? She is being stalked by a very creepy fan, she is quickly aging out of film, and she has an autistic daughter whose safety needs to be protected. The story takes the expected twists and turns and introduces a number of possible suspects including the ex- husband and the boyfriend she dumped and left behind in California.

With My Little Eye managed to do what most readers are looking for in a thriller. Jackson is skilled at creating an atmosphere of suspense and peril. The reader is able to feel a building sense of paranoia as Meribel feels constantly watched and grows suspicious of all the men in her life. Where the book doesn’t quite work for me is that I could never real care about the main character. Did I want her to be hacked up into little pieces? No. But I also couldn’t understand so many of her stupid decisions nor those of some other characters. The storylines also got a bit muddled and left me questioning whether the author was going for thriller or a final girl potboiler.

Nevertheless, I think this book will work for fans of Joshilyn Jackson’s more recent releases. It may also work for those looking for an entertaining escapist thriller with a dash of horror.

My thanks to @NetGalley and @WilliamMorrowBooks for the opportunity to read this digital copy.

Joshilyn Jackson is one of my favorite writers, first as an author of brilliant—and often hilarious—Southern fiction, with bestsellers such as Gods in Alabama and Almost Sisters, and now with acclaimed suspense novels. All of the latter have titles that use the names of children’s games to chilling effect. She began with Never Have I Ever, followed with Mother May I, and her current release, With My Little Eye. Jackson never disappoints.

My thanks go to Net Galley and William Morris for the review copy, though I’d have paid cold, hard cash if push came to shove. This book is for sale now.

Meribel Mills is an actor with a past and a problem. Years ago, she fled her hometown in Georgia and her marriage following a traumatic surgery, but she realized her dream of becoming a working actor. But a persistent stalker has caused her to flee Los Angeles with her adopted daughter, Honor, and now she’s back in Georgia, laying low, working locally, and stalking her ex-husband.

Wait. What?

This intrigues me, the notion that a stalker might also be stalked. Meribel’s intentions are benign, as she wistfully revisits the past, but she’s also over the line, obsessively following her ex’s social media accounts, mostly via his second wife, and at one point following them out to dinner. The heck? And so I wonder if that will be the focus of the story.

But Jackson never does anything predictable, and that’s part of what keeps me coming back.
Throughout the story, I am on the back foot, trying to ascertain which of her would-be swains is a genuinely nice guy, and which is the creepo. At one point I begin to wonder if she has multiple stalkers! And Jackson makes a strong point about the worthlessness of law enforcement when it comes to dealing with stalkers and women threatened with violence:

“Rape threats, abduction threats, death threats, and I got forms and tutting and sad jazz hands…I made copies [of the letters] and took them to the police, who filed them for just in case he killed me, later. Then it would be serious. Then someone would find his ass and get him into prison. It would make a great Lifetime movie, with a purely fictional, leggy lady cop as the necessary strong, female protagonist. And me? I’d be playing the dead girl, once again.”

But the best part of this novel isn’t Meribel or her stalker(s), it’s the children. Daughter Honor is Autistic, though very bright and relatively high functioning. Her new friend comes with baggage of her own; both of these girls is so well developed that I feel I would know them if I saw them on the street. They develop a friendship with a homeless teen who also has an important role here, and these girls are what make the story shine.

The resolution is believable and nothing comes from left field. This is an outstanding read, and I recommend it to you.

I enjoyed Jackson’s past books and was so pleased to receive a copy of her latest novel. A stalker fan sending disturbing letters to Meribel Mills, Sounded right up my alley. I enjoyed Honors parts the most. She was such an interesting and quirky character. The bond her and Meribel share was a wonderful part of the book and then Cam ( swooning over here). I overall enjoyed the read.

The first half of the book was a slow burn but the need to know who the stalker was kept me reading. The second half of the book was where things really started to happen and I was glad I continued reading. The twists were absolutely shocking and I never guessed who the stalker was. This is a new author for me and I will definitely read other books by this author. Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for sending me an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Meribel Mills is an actress who found fame on a popular sitcom in the 90s, and she’s been acting somewhat regularly ever since. She’s famous enough to have attracted a stalker who is making her life very uncomfortable. She decides to take a role in a series filming in Atlanta to get herself and her daughter out of LA. Unfortunately, it isn’t long before her stalker finds her.

This book is kind of all over the place. For the first half, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, but around the midpoint, it took a turn and I was glued to the page until I finished it. I really liked Meribel’s daughter’s character, Honor. She’s on the spectrum, and I loved looking at the world through her eyes.

Trigger warning for SA.

This novel was a thrilling read. I thought from the beginning that I knew where it was going, and I never did. It's smart with a lot of heart. I loved Meribel's smarts, her flaws and her devotion to her daughter.

I liked how the author wrote from various perspectives, including the stalker. I also appreciated how there were small clues that would lead you to suspect one person or another. I think I pretty much suspected everyone at one point, except for who the person actually ended up to be. Part of me wishes there was a little more leading us to that person earlier in the book, but the fact that it could be anyone for any reason helped with the thrill.

I had a hard time with this one, strictly because of the super slow start. It really took a lot for me to get through this one, not because it didn't end up being good, but because it didn't grab me at the start.