I really enjoyed this book, the characters were well developed. It had an interesting plot. I would be interested in reading more

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Lily represents artists and suffers a horrifically humiliating betrayal from the man she loved and a client whom she considered a friend. She returns to her mother's home to recover and meets Clara, a young psychic, who, despite her gift, is manipulated by her aunt. Together, they forge an unlikely friendship and uncover the homicides of five women.

Thanks netgalley.
Lily has just started working at a casino spa with Emily. Clara and her aunt Des come to the spa to try and see if they can give tarot card readings to the spas clients. Emily tries to worn Lily about Clara and Des. Lily discovers later that Clara has stolen here good luck bracelet.
In an attempt to recover the brace Lily and Clara become friends. Together will they be able to figure out what is happening to the women in the now defunct Atlantic city?

I read comparisons to Laura Lippman about this book so I was intrigued. I also like the Atlantic City setting, I have been to the shore many times so it seemed familiar. It was quite strong for a debut mystery. It was atmospheric and moody. I feel like it was more on the serious/depressing side--many of the victims were women-- but not too gratuitous.

I enjoyed reading this book. It had a good story to it. I liked the variety of characters in it. It was a well written book. It is my first book read by this author. It is my first book read by this author. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

"Please See Us" takes place in struggling Atlantic City. It alters between viewpoints, but all of them are down on their luck, trying to overcome their own struggles. Main characters Lilly and Clara both want to leave the city, and every dollar they make goes towards that goal. Louis is deaf and not able to communicate via writing either. As a result, others regard him as an oddity to mostly be avoided....except the men on the street who routinely attack him on his way home.
The story also gives us a unique viewpoint of Jane #1-6, the women who fall victim to the man stalking the prostitutes in the city, and how they came into that lifestyle. On a few occasions, the story also follows the killers point of view.
From my description you can see there are a lot of altering viewpoints. Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy any of them and the story was so slow moving I kept putting it down and reading something else. I just had a really difficult time finishing this one, though I finally did. I think the author did a great job humanizing the murdered women and I might have enjoyed this more if the story focused more on their viewpoints.

This book was super eerie, spooky, and atmospheric. It was a good creepy read. I couldn't put it down!

It took me a little while to get into as the point-of-view (POV) keeps changing between characters, but I did enjoy this book and think it's going to be a good seller

This reads like a muggy summer day — you have to really motivate to push through and read it. There are a lot of POVs to keep straight so it was a bit of a struggle to keep everything straight. It’s one of those stories where you feel like you’ve been reading it forever and are torn between wanting to put it down and finding out what happens. Yet when one of the characters noted that the heat had broken in AC it really picked up and had me hooked. I do wish the ending wasn’t so rushed to wrap everything up in a perfect bow.

I do love me a good thriller. For Mullens debut novel, it was pretty good. I loved the story and the writing. The only downfall to me was that there were way too many characters to keep up with. But all in all the story itself is worth the read.

Thank you Netgalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Jane Doe #2 is newer- she's only been in the marsh for two days. If you got close enough you might still be able to smell the traces of her perfume on her skin or the scent of the last cigarette she smoked lingering in her hair. She is still that close to life, like a door she could almost walk back through. Jane Doe #1 has been here for two weeks now"...…..

Atlantic City. Once a haven for casinos and nightlife, it’s bright lights fading into the seedier side of the city. A tale told from the living and the dead.

There are dead bodies in the marsh behind the motel. They lay there waiting to be seen, begging to be seen. Needing to be found so that they may find their eternal peace.

Clara is a psychic, operating along the boardwalk. Clara is barely hanging on, and not overly gifted. Lily is back in her hometown, dissatisfied with her life and herself. She’s come home to start over. When Clara and Lily form a odd friendship, it could take them to dark places.

When a relative of one of the dead girls asks Clara for a reading, things take a turn for her. Her inner sight begins to strengthen, and gives her some unsettling pictures in her head. If she can just sort them out and make sense of them.

The story was riveting from the start. A resemblance to true crime made the story more eerie. The characters felt real, surrounded by the whispers of the dead. The women are there and you can feel them pleading to "Please See Us."

Thank you Caitlin Mullen, Netgalley, Gallery, Pocket Books.

A really unique take on what might otherwise seem like a standard dead girls thriller. I really liked the interstitial sections told from the POV of the victims, it added depth.

“There is a sisterhood among them, these women in the marsh.” --Janes 1, 2, 3 & 4

Clara Voyant is a skinny high-school dropout who reads tarot for a living and isn't above snatching the occasional trinket, thanks to her aunt Des's instruction in shoplifting. She longs to leave Atlantic City and set out for California, where she hopes she can reunite with the mother who abandoned her as a child. Lily Louten isn't any more enamored with the city than Clara but she has no plans to leave the town she grew up in anytime soon. In fact, after quitting a prestigious gallery job in New York and ditching her famous sculptor boyfriend, she has no plans at all. Working at a dead-end job as a receptionist at a struggling spa suits her just fine. But when Clara's visions begin to seem like they might be more than just her imagination, the two women find themselves unlikely allies. As they work together to find the truth, Clara and Lily become targets themselves.

Please See Us is Caitlin Mullen's first novel and I may have never come across a more fitting title. Unlike some thrillers, where the victims appear and disappear almost as quickly, the women who fall prey to the Atlantic City serial killer call out to us to witness their stories. They're not props to ratchet up the suspense, not victims to be pitied or fallen angels whose sole purpose is to serve as a warning. Though Clara's gift is the conduit that brings these women's lives into focus, it's actually Mullen whose talent is at work. Thus her Jane Does show us their struggles and hopes, their weaknesses and disappointments, even after death. They are addicts and whores, flawed mothers, flawed daughters, lost women who never gave up on the idea of escape until the very end. As they lie joined in a submerged circle in the marshes on the outskirts of the city, they almost take on the role of a Greek chorus. In their sections of the novel, they are watchers who observe tragedy but can do nothing to change it, nothing to avert the seemingly inevitable outcome.

Mullen also sees Atlantic City remarkably well. It is impossible to read this novel and come away without a strong sense of the place's own history, its descent into cheap glamour and money-grubbing tawdriness, its unsuccessful battle against Hurricane Sandy. “The empty buildings hulk against the shoreline, mammoth and spectral as shipwrecked cruise liners.” There is something oddly momentous about the city's fall, something reminiscent of The Titantic's fateful voyage and the death of all gilded things. Though I'm still struggling with the novel's ending, which will not work for all readers, it is in keeping with the novel as a whole. Ironically, despite the shimmering paranormal trappings and gorgeous writing style, this is a violently realistic story. I started out thinking the book would proceed along the lines of a traditional thriller like The Death of Mrs. Westaway (which also features an abandoned psychic teenager as protagonist) but it is much darker. The slower pacing and lack of typical plot twists reflect that, but Please See Us is definitely worth reading. And Mullen doesn't abandon the shimmer—she gives readers a bit of hope at the end, a vision to counter the darker side of the city. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with next.

Much thanks to Gallery Press and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars

I'm with the minority vote on this one : a surprisingly slow thriller with characters I just couldn't find myself caring about enough to keep reading. I'm a huge thriller fan and was intrigued by the setting (I've been to AC a number of times) and psychic angle, but ultimately found this one a flat read that just never grabbed me...

What a incredible read! Please See Us grabbed me from the very first page. I found this thriller to be haunting and intriguing. I loved the authors writing style and I felt the pace and flow were right on the money. The story is told from alternating points of view which works exceptionally well with the plot and added to the suspense. I knew after reading the description that this book would keep my attention, but I had no idea it would be so absorbing. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of this book.

I had no idea what to expect when delving into this thrilling novel. What a fabulous ride. Not only was Mullen a great storyteller, but she developed the atmosphere as thoughtfully and insightfully as she did her characters. Her compassion for even the most problematic character was so powerfully moving and the violence was never seen as exploitive to these characters. Rather, the author made it a point to avoid victim blaming at all costs. Well done!

This was kind of a twisted little story. There seemed to be too many characters talking in this book. At times I had a hard time following and keeping them straight. I did enjoy the story and it kept my interest. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy

In her debut novel, Caitlin Mullen offers a stunningly beautiful novel that is at once a crime thriller and a poetic expose on the throwaway women who are at the end if their rope. Set at the faded decaying eastern edge of the continent in the shadows of the once-glittering majestic casinos of Atlantic City, Please See Us peeks back the layers if glitz and glamour to reveal a rotten decaying core that no one wants to see. The victims of a sadistic serial killer are mounted in the stinky marshland behind the Sunset Motel, a monument to broken dreams and faded hopes.

With a nod to Springsteen’s iconic imagery from “Jersey Girl, Mullen’s Atlantic City isn’t filled with one last chance at the slots, but a one-way ticket with no hope of ever leaving. The women who arrive are teenage runaways and refugees from broken and battered relationships. Too proud to turn back, their descent is swift into drugs, prostitution, petty theft. And when they disappear, no one seems to care.

There are two primary characters. One, Clara, is a fortune teller and petty grifter. But, she’s got a special talent when it comes to visions. She wants a ticket to California, but that seems like an impossible dream. The other, Lily, once had it all in Manhattan, but after betrayal, plants herself in her childhood world of Atlantic City, where her father worked before being crushed to death by a collapsing parking garage. The third mJor character, Luis, is a deaf-mute custodian, trapped in his own silent world.

This is a well-written, meticulously crafted story filled with evocative prose. Although the backdrop is the women in the marsh, it’s not do much a serial killer book as one about these women and how they ended up falling off the edge of the continent, all alone.

Loved this book, but I love dark, disturbing books and felt this was truly one I could add to that pile! I thought it was well written in a spine tingling, unnerving, suspenseful manner, which really had me yearning to learn more. I highly recommend to those who enjoy the thrillers on the darker side, because I know you will definitely love this one! Be prepared for a slow burn, but shocking book!
I will make sure I buzz it up!

Thank you to Netgalley and Gallery Books for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest and impartial review.
What a great thriller, a well written and character cohesive read.
I loved the way the author voiced all the characters, whom were both interesting and colorful and could be in modern day Atlantic City NJ.
Awesome debut from Caitlin Mullen and I like her writing style. I will definitely be following and watching for more from her.