A review by spellboundchapters
When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

challenging dark informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This gave me huge Lock Every Door meets Get Out vibes. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it. I learned a ton of stuff about gentrification, redlining, black people being kept from owning land/pass it on to their children, and that creepy amusement park??? Still horrified that such a thing existed.
I really liked Sydney's character (Theo was alright too - not a fan of the romance though but I didn't mind it), and the first 2/3 of the book overall got me really engaged (although there were some parts I found were a bit too slow paced). There were some really good twists and the atmosphere was very creepy and got my heart racing quite a few times.
But I found the pacing weird : one moment it's super slow, then something creepy is going on and then it's back to being slow and sometimes it's like that scary situation never happened ? And the ending was way over the top for me and felt too easy.
You wanna make me believe a facility owned by a multi-million company doesn't have any security guarding it and that everyone can just come in by a secret door?
The villains were super caricatural and we know from the beginning who they are.
This one is a personal preference but I just don't like when characters are being made unreliable with substance abuse - imo Sydney's paranoia/anxiety was already enough to make her unreliable.
And lastly, I would've liked for the epilogue to be another chapter, and have an epilogue set a few months later to see what happened to the neighbourhood. There were just too many plot holes and unanswered questions. They're all quite spoiler-y so I'm gonna hide them, except for this one : why is no one on social media?? The protagonists are in their 20s/early 30s and yet none of them uses social media to alert about the shady stuff happening and people disappearing? I don't buy it.
What was that whole bed bugs story line about? Were they real or was it just Sydney's anxiety/lack of sleep making her have hallucinations? Who was on the phone when Sydney called her mum/writing on the shared doc to Theo? Where is Sydney's mum's body? Who took it? How did they hack Sydney's phone during the Uber ride? Was Theo drugged the night Mr. Perkins disappeared and why? Who killed Drea and how? What happens to the kidnapped people at the end? Do they just go back to regular life? Do all the white people move out from the neighbourhood after the fire? Is Sydney keeping her house? How does she get away with everything?
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