de Alyssa Cole
""I was knocked over by the momentum of an intense psychological thriller that doesn't let go until the final page. This is a terrific read."" – Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author
Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning...
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo's deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
""I was knocked over by the momentum of an intense psychological thriller that doesn't let go until the final page. This is a terrific read."" – Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author
Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning...
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo's deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
Critiques-
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Susan Dalian's and Jay Aaseng's skilled vocal ranges complement witty prose and a plot that cleverly dramatizes racial injustices. Sydney creates a walking tour to retain her Brooklyn neighborhood's history during an unsettlingly fast gentrification. When new neighbor Theo joins the effort, and the pair uncover horrors that are more than historical, they're catapulted into a state of fear. Dalian seamlessly switches between opposing personalities: the entitled new residents and the salt-of-the-earth characters who have lived in the neighborhood for decades. In one scene, newly settled Kim screeches her threat to call the cops when longtime resident Sydney calmly asserts her place in a bodega line. The other narrator, Aaseng, cheerily shouts, "I've got beer!" to diffuse a confrontation, delivers a Caribbean accent, and voices female characters realistically. Listeners will be gripped by the performance and the story. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from July 20, 2020
At the start of this outstanding thriller from Cole (A Prince on Paper), Sydney Green decides, as a distraction from her elderly mother’s illness and other personal woes, to take a walking tour of Gifford Place, her historically Black Brooklyn neighborhood, which is becoming increasingly gentrified and considered as the home for a pharmaceutical firm’s massive new headquarters. Angered by the white tour guide’s detailing “the lives of the rich white people who’d lived there a hundred years ago,” but saying nothing about the area’s current African American residents, Sydney plans to set up her own neighborhood tour. As Sydney researches Gifford Place’s complicated history and racial background, she notices that longtime neighbors and friends are starting to disappear. Theo, a new white neighbor she met on the tour, lends some unwanted assistance in trying to figure out what’s going on. Sydney’s paranoia and fear, coupled with her guilt at placing her mother in a nursing home, fuel the tense plot, which builds to a credible finale. This stellar and unflinching look at racism and greed will have readers hooked til the end. Agent: Lucienne Diver, Knight Agency. -
August 7, 2020
Sudden disappearances and thinly veiled threats coincide in this first outing into the thriller genre from best-selling romance author Cole ("Reluctant Royals" series). The story sees an influx of white buyers of the Black-owned brownstones in the tree-lined Brooklyn neighborhood, where Sydney Green and her ailing mother own a home, begin to seem not so coincidental. Told in two voices--Sydney's, shaken but strong, and her brooding white neighbor, Theo's--this twisty tale tackles with a somber wit ongoing issues of race, class inequity, social injustice, and predatory housing practices. Why is Sydney, whose interest in local history makes her suspect it's repeating itself, paranoid the more she learns about the mysterious corporation moving in, buying up properties, and pricing longtime residents out of their homes? As Sydney's and Theo's interest in each other grows and danger mounts, can they really trust each other? VERDICT This sizzling summer thriller starts on low and heats up fast. Smart, sexy, and surprising, this suspenseful novel revealing the underbelly of urban gentrification will keep readers reading late into the night. [See "Turn the Page: Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 8/20.]--Laurie Cavanaugh, Thayer P.L., Braintree, MA
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from July 1, 2020
Cole's (A Prince on Paper, 2019) latest is a searing indictment of the inseparable evils of racism and gentrification wrapped in an anxiety-inducing thriller with elements of romance and horror. Sydney Green returns home to a changed Gifford Place, where longtime Black residents having been replaced by white families who snatch up the historic brownstones. Theo bought one with his now ex-girlfriend Kim, and she exiles him to the attic, from which he can watch the street and see into Sydney's living room. Sydney reluctantly accepts Theo's help with research for a community tour, and as they visit with residents, both note that strangeness in the neighborhood is intensifying. Sydney is getting creepy phone calls and hearing noises in the walls, and because Theo believes her, she begins to trust him as they get drawn further into a fight with mysterious forces vying for control of Gifford Place. Sydney is a troubled narrator, and Theo's perspective does not immediately make his intentions clear. Cole expertly layers plot twists, raising the stakes until the dramatic finale, and readers will cheer when the real heroes are revealed. Cole is a sure-bet suggestion for romance readers, and When No One Is Watching will expand her already enthusiastic audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
