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A review by vacantbones
When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole
3.0
I really, really wanted to love When No One is Watching. I bought a copy soon after it was published and kept bumping it down to the bottom of my TBR list in order to read books that I was much less excited about. Unfortunately, this read just fell really flat for me.
The core messages regarding race in America are important, and When No One is Watching serves as a great, brief history lesson in gentrification and the cyclical nature of racist action in this country. The author does a superb job at drawing comparisons between the thriller aspects of the story and the historical context.
Something that really distracted me as a reader, however, was the way in which the "bad guys" of the book are portrayed as being almost cartoonishly racist. I believe that this book could've benefitted greatly from subtlety in this aspect. At points, the racist characters are very explicit in their hateful views, and it just felt like a caricature. The more subtle jabs in the novel were great - one of the racists has a Michelle Obama portrait in her living room, perfectly portraying the ways in which white people convince themselves that they *can't* be racist if they're not throwing out slurs. I wish this was the rule in this read rather than the exception.
I also did not care for the moments when the book started to read like a romance novel. I understand that the author has previously written romance novels, and it was definitely clear from certain scenes in this book that she's a pro at it! However, the parts where the book began to read like a romance novel felt at odds with the thriller tone, like I was reading an entirely different book.
I don't want this review to serve as me trying to detract from the importance of this book. The things being said in these pages are things that we need to hear. It's worth a read, but at times feels like it is one step behind what was achieved in Get Out.
The core messages regarding race in America are important, and When No One is Watching serves as a great, brief history lesson in gentrification and the cyclical nature of racist action in this country. The author does a superb job at drawing comparisons between the thriller aspects of the story and the historical context.
Something that really distracted me as a reader, however, was the way in which the "bad guys" of the book are portrayed as being almost cartoonishly racist. I believe that this book could've benefitted greatly from subtlety in this aspect. At points, the racist characters are very explicit in their hateful views, and it just felt like a caricature. The more subtle jabs in the novel were great - one of the racists has a Michelle Obama portrait in her living room, perfectly portraying the ways in which white people convince themselves that they *can't* be racist if they're not throwing out slurs. I wish this was the rule in this read rather than the exception.
I also did not care for the moments when the book started to read like a romance novel. I understand that the author has previously written romance novels, and it was definitely clear from certain scenes in this book that she's a pro at it! However, the parts where the book began to read like a romance novel felt at odds with the thriller tone, like I was reading an entirely different book.
I don't want this review to serve as me trying to detract from the importance of this book. The things being said in these pages are things that we need to hear. It's worth a read, but at times feels like it is one step behind what was achieved in Get Out.