Wow! What a fantastic thriller! I am glad I started it early in the morning - I could not put it down! You Are Not Alone kept me on the edge of my seat right up to the end! I think this is their best collaboration yet.

I have not read this author duo's first two books, although I have An Anonymous Girl in my TBR stack. I think I need to move it up the stack based on how much I enjoyed this one. I love a good psychological thriller, dark and twisty, that keeps me turning the pages and not wanting to put it down. You Are Not Alone had me tense as I tried to guess what was going to happen next. I had some of it right, but not all.

Shay, the main character is not the usual unreliable narrator, but she's a quirky one. She keeps a data book full of little facts she picks up, which makes her perfect as a market researcher. Unfortunately when we meet her, she's been downsized and is looking to find a job, her best friend is busy with a new baby, and her best male friend and roommate (who she is secretly in love with) is getting very serious about his new girlfriend. Shay is feeling vulnerable already when she witnesses a suicide on the subway and she finds herself caught up in learning about the woman--who looked somewhat like Shay herself. She meets the Moore sisters, the dead woman's friends, and the suns that a tight-knit group of friends orbit about. They take Shay under their wing but she soon finds her new friends have some dark secrets.

It's made clear to the reader that these women aren't the friends Shay thinks they are and it's just a matter of Shay figuring out and finding out what the end game was. This was more suspenseful than it sounds and made the book a nail biter. I admit to yelling at Shay quite a bit for some of her choices and the things she missed, but I found myself rooting for her too. There are some potential trigger warnings for suicide, violence and sexual assault, but if you like domestic thrillers centered around the darker side of women's friendships, you'll like You Are Not Alone.

You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen is a tale about loneliness, broken trust and the vulnerability of someone who needs desperately to belong. It is also about murder and revenge and the dark hearts of those who have been hurt before.

"...For a split second she seems frozen, suspended in the air, her arms thrown overhead like a dancer.
The train shoots past, its wheels grinding frantically against the tracks, the high-pitched shriek louder than I've ever heard it.
My stomach heaves and I bend over and throw up. My body begins to shake uncontrollably, reacting to the horror as my mind frantically tries to process.
Someone is yelling over and over, 'Call 911!'
The train stops. I force myself to look. There is no sign of the woman at all.
One second she existed, and the next, she'd been erased..."

SUMMARY

Shay Miller is living a lonely life in the city. She has very few friends and her job prospects are dwindling. She is quietly in love with her roommate but he has a girlfriend who is about as perfect as a girl can be. As bad as it all seems, it is still better than the home she left behind.

Then comes the day that changes everything. The day Shay witnesses a woman throw herself in front of a subway train. Shay becomes obsessed with the suicide and tries to find out everything about the woman. Her name was Amanda and she was a nurse and it seemed as if there was no reason for Amanda to take her own life. Shay cannot stop thinking about Amanda. She ends up at a small memorial for Amanda and meets Amanda's friends. The are unlike anyone Shay has ever known. Shay soon befriends them and little by little, it seems, begins to live Amanda's life.

Cassandra and Jane Moore are the most glamourous women Shay has ever met. Under their tutelage, Shay begins to change her life. She finds the perfect job, changes her wardrobe and even moves out to a place of her own. It seems as if everything is finally working out for Shay.

Cassandra and Jane can't quite figure Shay out. What is the tie between Amanda and Shay? How did they know each other? Why is Shay so obsessed with Amanda? More importantly, is Shay a threat?

Shay thinks that the Moore sisters are a godsend. Her life has become so much better since meeting them. But the Moore sisters are something very different. They have gathered a group of women around them and together, they make the people who have hurt them pay. Amanda had been one of the group and Shay's obsession with her has the Moore sisters on edge. They know they will have to do something about Shay. But what they don't know is that Shay has resources of her own.

REVIEW

You Are Not Alone is a terrific, intricate and well crafted thriller. The characters drive the story and the story is very much a multi layered tale, unraveling little by little until the truth of each character is revealed. At the heart of the story is Shay's loneliness and isolation and the desire for justice the Moore sisters crave. Only the lines between revenge and justice are too often blurred.

The tale also reveals the dark side of vigilante justice. How the mob mentality acts on little facts and hearsay and the damage and injury this type of justice creates, too often outweighs the offense that is initially done. We see this daily on social media.

Shay Miller is a terrific character, both sad and quirky, but filled with a resolve she and the reader never really knew she had. She had fallen into a life unfulfilled and desperate that like a slow cancer, was eating away at her. When the Moore sisters come into her life, she feels reborn. Which makes their betrayal all the more painful.

The characters in this novel are unique from any I have read in sometime. Female lead and female driven, yet universal in scope and emotion. They will be hard to forget.

A terrific tale and a hell of a good read!

I loved the characters and the storyline development of this book. It was absolutely one of my favorites so far and I can't wait to delve in to the next one that this author writes. The storyline was simple, enjoyable, and entertaining.

Hendricks and Pekkanen have done it again!!
I read this book in 2 days because I had to put it down to get a coupled of hours of sleep before work.. otherwise, it would have been an all-nighter. It grabbed me from the beginning and kept my attention throughout. I will say there is no major plot twist as there was in The Wife Between Us, however, it was still very much engaging and unputdownable.

In You Are Not Alone, the protagonist, Shay, witnesses a horrific life-altering event that she just cannot shake. It haunts her to the point of obsession. And her severe loneliness leads her to embrace a friendship with the Moore sisters who may or may not have her best interest at heart. Could this friendship cost her, her life?

The Wife Between Us was one of my favorite Books of 2018, so I really looked forward to the release of You Are Not Alone. The main character is Shay Miller, a data wiz that looks at life through the complexities of data and statistics. After witnessing a woman commit suicide by jumping in front of a subway train, Shays own life begins to unravel at the seams. She begins an obsession to find out more about the dead woman and goes as far as inserting herself into the deceased woman’s life. Soon she meets her “friend circle” led by the mysterious and impossibly perfect sisters Cassondra and Jane Moore. They lead a group of women that think plotting, and enacting revenge is an everyday thing. Due to the fact that Shay is in low point in her life and wants to be a part of something, she dives in headfirst and soon finds herself embroiled in a murder case. The story is told by multiple POV’s, and as times seemed as though I was reading two separate books. Shay is not as strong of a character as I’d hoped she’d be. There were instances when I thought she was either naive or just plain clueless. As the line goes “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” I kept thinking through the book “She should have known better!” All in all, it was a good read, not my favorite by this author duo but pleasing none the less.

I love Greer and Sarah! Love them! The Wife Between Us is one of my favorite books by them and this is a close second.

I loved Shay. Her character was relatable in so many ways. I can’t go into much detail about the book as any little clue could spoil it for you. Go in blind like I did. It was one hell of a ride and you won’t be disappointed.

4 stars. This one was weird, but strangely addictive. Not my favorite, but still enjoyable. Review to come.

Due to being a high school teacher, I have been falling behind on reviews. Here are my initial thoughts.

In true Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen fashion, they’ve written a good thriller that you didn’t want to put down. I didn’t guess the big twist until the very end and it definitely kept me guessing. I enjoyed how the book was told from different perspectives of the characters and went back in time to explain why the characters did some of the things that they did.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE - Greer Hendricks

SUSPENSEFUL BUT CONFUSING - 3 Stars

Plot - 3.5 stars - The mysterious blurb about the book is what attracted me to it. We only know that Shay is a lonely single woman who meets a sisterhood of women who want...something from her.

Writing - 2.5 stars - The suspense is well-built, keeping me guessing right from the beginning. There is a slow and steady build-up, and the reader is kept disconcerted because we don't understand what we're missing. However, I kept confusing the several women (besides Cassandra and Jane) since they were quite involved in the action, but their stories were interchangeable.

Characters - 3 stars - Shay is a very well-done character, and she is what helped moved this story along for me. She started out lonely and totally not confident, but as Cassandra and Jane took her under their wings, she grew and matured and became the best she could be. Then, when the sh** hit the fan, she grew even more and used her intelligence and persistence to solve the mystery.

Format - 3.5 stars - I liked that each chapter began with a statistic in Shay's data book, which related to what we could expect in the chapter. Interesting bits of information that sent our thinking in the right direction.

Title - 3 stars - The title makes sense, but it doesn't really tell you anything about what to expect from the story.

Cover - 3 stars - Nice color, but nothing to draw the eye.

Overall - 3 stars - This was just OK for me. The main character of Shay was very frustrating at first because of her constant self-deprecation and inability to move forward. But when her confidence grew (with the support of Cassandra and Jane), she became much more appealing. And when she had to defend herself, she really came in to her own, and I was rooting for her success. I could feel the underlying suspense and felt that it built slowly and steadily. But I was often confused about who was doing what. Yes, the reader was meant to be kept in the dark through much of the story, but I didn't quite "get" what was going on, so that made it quite put-downable.

This has been the lowest rating I’ve given to this author duo. I absolutely loved their first book The Wife Between Us and was very excited when they came out with their next book, An Anonymous Girl, which wasn’t as good as their first book in my opinion. Then they came out with this book and I had really high hopes that it would redeem my feelings about their writing, sadly it didn’t.

One thing that bothered me was how far fetched everything was. I was actually laughing at a couple of parts that were supposed to be suspenseful and twisty because they seemed so out there and not realistic at all. I skimmed the ending of the book and I’m glad I did because the huge plot twist was terrible and the ending actually had me rolling my eyes.

Another big complaint I have about this book is how many characters were thrown in and how almost every chapter was a different one, and they were told in different time periods. I kept getting confused on who was who and when we were in present tense and when it was past tense. I had to constantly go back to figure out what character was being talked about and I really didn’t enjoy that.

I also didn’t care for any of the characters especially Shay. Normally I like characters that are a little mousy and are trying so hard to fit into a group but her being thirty one years old and acting how she did drove me insane. I feel like her character was written as more how a seventeen year old girl would act, not someone in their thirties.

I’m going to stop ranting about this book even though there’s a lot more I could say. I really hoped this book would redeem these two authors for me but sadly I think I’m done reading their books.

*Thank so much to St. Martins Press and NetGalley for the complimentary copy of this book for my honest review!*

Another captivating book by this team of authors! Shay finds herself at a spot in life where she is unfulfilled and frustrated with her lack of career, friends, boyfriend/husband, and housing. She crosses with path with Cassandra and Jane who seem to have everything and connections to help Shay get what she wants. It doesn't turn out exactly how Shay is hoping and she finds her life in danger. This book pulled me in and I couldn't put it down until I knew how it ended.

Enjoyable read about a woman who witnesses a woman commit suicide and the impact that has on her own sad and lonely life. Many twists and not everyone is who you think they are. Good page-turner.

Oh, I loved this book. It kept me intrigued with every page and I read it withing three days because I couldn't put it down. I have recommended to others since I finished it and it's now a favorite of mine.

This book pulled me in and kept me reading late at night. I have loved every book I've read by these authors. The suspense and psychological manipulation that takes place in this book is just amazing. I would definitely recommend this for anyone who loves psychological thrillers or anyone who hasn't read one of their books yet.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for providing an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review and opinions.

I have long been a fan of Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, so it is no surprise that I devoured this book. The suspense levels were off the charts which only made the twist and turns that much better.

This was fantastic! I was completely glued to the pages and on the edge of my seat. The twists were great and kept me guessing.
I highly recommend this for any fan of good psychological reads

You Are Not Alone is a thrilling mystery novel set in the fast-paced city of New York. It is told from multiple perspectives which only adds to the suspense of the story. Readers can expect to feel intrigued and frightened all while anxiously awaiting the conclusion.

Shay Miller is a young thirty-something woman living in New York. She isn't satisfied with the life she is living from her personal to professional life. Things just don't seem to be going her way and in fact, get worse when she witnesses a horrifying accident on a subway platform.

Shay is left traumatized and wants to understand the victim of the accident. She becomes close to Amanda's. the victim, circle of friends, and finally feels like she belongs. Shay likes the new her and her life feels like it's turning around for the better especially with a new apartment and new job on the horizon.

The authors provide readers with mystery and suspense with their terrific writing style. They do tell the stories from multiple perspectives but I think it works well with the story and adds the perfect amount of intrigue.

I give You Are Not Alone 4 stars. This was my first time reading these authors and I enjoyed their writing style. This mystery thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time. I think Shay is such a relatable character and that will suck readers in.

This was such a great psychological thriller. I loved the two previous books by these authors, I loved both of them as well. It was very fast-paced, you'll enjoy it.

This is the first book I have read by these two authors and I was impressed by their ability to weave suspense among several believable characters. I normally read historical fiction and wondered at first if this book would hold my interest. I was pleased that it did. The book keeps you cheering for the underdog and has a satisfying ending. I appreciated Berkley Publishing for offering me the opportunity to read and review this galley.