When No One Is Watching: An Edgar Award Winner

The use of Gothic space in the middle of Brooklyn was spot on. The characters were well drawn. The ending was a little over the top and threw the book into another subgenre, but that's not necessarily a detraction. Who doesn't love an angry black woman with a Smith and Wesson?

Loved it! On my list to read again.

Wow.
Wow Wow Wow.

Perfect book for this time of year...Halloween & Election Day. It's informative AND terrifying. It's a Must Read!!!

Content warning for violence, medical experimentation, racism, manipulation, graphic descriptions, and related topics. I liked this book, I thought it was really successful in incorporating real issues like gentrification into a fiction. The main characters were interesting, but I felt like there was no dimension to the bad guys. The setting was incredible, and it felt like the neighborhood was it's own character. I liked the psychological elements to the first half of the novel, but by the end it felt unrealistic. By the last quarter of the novel, I wasn't sure how it would end, and it felt a tad unbelievable when it did end.

3.5 rounded up. I'm so conflicted about the rating on this one. On one hand, it was an incredible idea with great potential but the execution was disappointing. The pacing was off, the beginning was so slow I forgot what genre I was reading, and then the action at the end came and ended so suddenly it was jarring rather than a compelling conclusion. The fact the characters went so suddenly to just.... shooting everyone they came across, and then somehow this whole centuries-long conspiracy that openly brags about its connections with the police just.... let them get away with it?... didn't make any sense and really undercut the scope of the terror. I would've also liked a little more of the rest of the community - that section of the community elders talking about handling shit like this behind the scenes for decades was WAY more compelling than whatever Theo and Sydney had going on, and they get reduced to a convenient deus ex machina There's so much interesting history and characters in the community that fades into a plot point. Honestly every character was more interesting than the main ones.