When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole (Book #3)

Title: When No One is Watching

Author: Alyssa Cole

Dates Read: Jan. 6 - Jan. 8

Format: Audiobook

Rating: ★★★1/2

Description: Life-long Brooklyn resident Sydney Green must determine whether the rapid gentrification of her neighborhood is just the natural progression of change or whether something more sinister is going on.

Review: I don't know what to think of this book. I don't even know if I agree with my giving it 3.5 stars. Should it get more or less? I honestly don't know. I think this book suffers from both imposter syndrome and trying-to-do-to-much syndrome. The first 70% of this book reads like contemporary social commentary fiction akin to Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. Sydney is seeing her neighborhood change before her very eyes as black families are pushed out overnight and rich white families move in the next day. After experiencing one too many inaccurate historical tours of Brooklyn, she enlists her well-meaning white neighbor Theo's help in researching the distinctly black history of her neighborhood in order to develop her own walking tour. In fact, the majority of the first half of this book focuses on this walking tour.

The story Cole is telling is important - gentrification of black neighborhoods into trendy white spaces is a huge problem. But Cole takes this social issue to the absolute extreme at the ninth hour. The last quarter of this book really takes off and goes from 0 to 600 in a way that is both unbelievable and confusing.

Final Note: Bottom line, the first 75% of this book is NOT a thriller. The subtitle "A Thriller" on the front cover is misbranding at best. I think this book's strength is its social commentary. It almost feels like Cole wanted to write a nonfiction book about gentrification and separately wanted to write a thriller and then decided to smash them together and came up with this book. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it.