You are Not Alone is a very enjoyable, fast-paced, twisted psychological thriller. I was hooked from start to finish.

Rating: 3.5/5

*Thank you to Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for this ARC!

This book is intense! I'm a fan of Hendricks and Pekkanen's other books, and this ranks right up there too. I found myself first torn between loving and hating the characters of this book and second in awe of the way the story progresses in ways you don't realize are important until the end. This is one of those books that you won't be able to put down until you're done!

I enjoyed this one as much as I have enjoyed the other books written by them. A quick read that keeps you moving to the end.

I'm really liking these authors together. Twisted, captivating and a real page turner. Fast paced story telling right from the beginning and keeps on going right to the terrific ending! Thank you so much!

3 stars

This book was just okay for me. It dragged on for a good while and some of the story just seemed unnecessary. And while one surprise was shocking, I knew most of what was happening very soon in the book. It does show how much women really need each other. I loved ‘The Other Wife’ but this one just missed the mark with me.

This is my first book by this duo of authors and it did not disappoint. This was a great psychological thriller that kept my attention to the very end. Shay leads a boring life. She has a boring job as a temp, shares her apartment with her friend Sean who is getting close to the next step with his girlfriend Jody, leaving Shay on her own. Then Shay witnesses the suicide of a young woman who jumps in front of a subway train. Shay begins to obsess over the woman and what would cause her to take her own life, to the point where she attends the woman's wake. There she meets the Moore sisters, who appear to be everything Shay wishes she could be. And so begins her downward spiral into a life in which she will have no control. Many twists and sinister turns that have you wondering what is really true and what is perceived as truth. An excellent psychological thriller for fans of The Woman on the Train and A Simple Favour.
Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t read many thrillers. This one captivated me from the beginning. I figured out just enough to make me feel smart, while still having a few surprising twists and turns. I would recommend to thriller fans.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are two of my favorite Authors. I have read their other books and loved them. This one is just as good.

Each Chapter goes between characters and has just the right about of mystery to keep you questioning.

I would highly recommend this book

The duo has done it again! I read part of this and listened to part of this and enjoyed both experiences. Hendricks and Greer make such bingeable, dare I say, fun to read thrillers. I didn't have a clue when it came to the end and I distinctly remember being in the car when I finished. I remember my eyes just about popping out of my head, eyebrows up and a chuckle for how clever I felt it was. These two will always be auto buys for me, I look forward to their future together!

I have read both of Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen's previous books, The Wife Between Us (which I did not really like) and An Anonymous Girl (which I really enjoyed), so I went into this book with middle-of the road expectations. Unfortunately this book just didn't work for me. I definitely found the whole plot a to be pretty far-fetched, and there really weren't many surprises or twists along the way. I read a lot of thrillers and this book just underwhelmed me. But if you are someone who does not read a lot of these thriller-type books, you will probably find this one more enjoyable than I did.

Some people contend there are two primal fears. The first and most basic is the end of our existence. The second is isolation; we all have a deep need to belong to something greater than ourselves.” •

This book made me want to drink all the Moscow Mules while hearing all about the schemes and lies that were happening throughout this book. I want to say a lot about this book, but I do not want to give any of it away. So, the short and sweet version goes a little something like this. We have Shay the main character who is a bit of a loner. She has feelings for her roommate/friend that are unrequited and she loves stats. She witnesses a tragedy and its something she cannot shake. Through this tragedy she finds or I should say a they find her; two sisters who have created this woman group of women who have different stories. Shay finds herself longing to be apart of the group, wanting their lives….but what she doesn’t know is that it may be her very own life that they want. •

Honey, baby, and a sweetie. Every time I read something and I am like, it can’t get any creepier than this…I am proven wrong. I was looking over my shoulder while walking the dog at night, for fear that there were these women following me. Whew….and if you were wondering…yes I still have my edges but my nerves are bad as hell. •

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 3, 2020

Initially, You Are Not Alone seems to be the story of a revenge club, a group of women who are dedicated to avenging atrocities — or, at least, events that in their overwrought imaginations they define as atrocities. We are introduced to two sisters, Cassandra and Jane Moore, and four other women who are apparently dedicated to inflicted harm on the men who have done them a perceived injustice. But three of the six women quickly drop out of the story, leaving the Moore sisters and a woman named Valerie as the primary agents of vengeance. The story is not actually about their efforts to obtain what they view as justice, but to cover their rears when they think they are about to be caught.

The novel’s protagonist is Shay Miller, a woman with no job, no boyfriend, and no self-esteem. Shay is keeping a notebook filled with depressing facts that she calls her Data Book. Every chapter she narrates opens with a (usually depressing) fact from the Data Book. Maybe if she abandoned her gloomy book, she would feel better about life.

Early in the novel, Shay watches a woman named Amanda jump in front of a subway train. Shay spots and keeps Amanda’s necklace, the first in a string of improbable occurrences. For reasons apparently related to her general battiness, Shay leaves some flowers at Amanda’s apartment and then attends her funeral, where she meets the Moore sisters. For no obvious reason, Shay invents a story about how she knew Amanda.

The Moore sisters pretend to befriend Shay because they are worried that Shay might have learned something incriminating about Amanda that might link to the sisters. They only believe this because Shay is bizarrely behaving as if she had a connection to Amanda. All of that seems like a contrivance to set a plot in motion.

Shay is so needy that she gleefully accepts the sisters' friendship. The Moores are PR specialists who know artists and celebrities. They might be clones of Samantha Jones on Sex and the City. Since they are glamorous and Shay is not, Shay feels unworthy of their attention.

The sisters soon hatch a wildly improbable scheme to set up Shay for a crime committed by another revenge club member. The scheme depends on the happy coincidence that when Shay cleans herself up, she bears a strong resemblance to Amanda.

What is it in the psychological makeup of Cassandra, Jane, Valerie, and the other revenge-obsessed women that allows them to feel justified when they do awful things to the men who wronged them? The authors do little to make them credible characters. Cassandra and Jane are portrayed as having a sense of entitlement which, combined with their evil natures, might be a plausible reason to believe that they would seek revenge for wrongs that affect them personally. People with that psychological makeup don’t tend to care about wrongs done to others, so their motivation to encourage others to seek revenge struck me as thin.

You Are Not Alone lacks the energy that should flow through an engaging thriller. The story generates little suspense because, for all the rushing around and looking over her shoulder that Shay does, there is never a sense that she is in real danger. The novel’s other problem is that Shay isn’t terribly bright. When, near the novel’s end, it appears that someone is about to murder her, the reader will be wondering why she doesn’t understand what is about to happen and move away from the danger. Or the reader might not care because, as thriller characters go, Shay is screamingly dull. In any event, the reader will understand that Shay is in no danger at all, as the outcome of that scene is entirely predictable.

The plot encourages the reader to guess why and how Shay is being set up. The story was sufficiently effective to hold my interest. The novel earns a weak recommendation on that basis. Unfortunately, the novel’s merits are largely offset by its implausibility, its one-dimensional and unexciting characters, and its predictable climax.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

This is definitely Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s best book yet! I was totally engrossed in Shay’s story from page 1.

I loved the idea of this “revenge cult” that Shay gets mixed up in just because she witnesses a traumatic event at a subway station. The pacing was really well done and the characters were very interesting/intriguing. It wasn’t quite a 5 star read for me, but I still would recommend it. I can’t wait to see what they come out with next!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing in e-arc in exchange of an honest review!

I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

I have read other books by Sarah and Greer in the past and have really enjoyed them. And this book too was an interesting story but I couldn’t 100% get into it for some reason – I think mostly personal likes/dislikes reasons. The plot line itself was great and it has dome good plot twists at the end. But some parts of the story line were a little bit slow for me, and overall it was so sad. I felt so bad for Shay, she was so vulnerable and really just wanted to make friends. And she struggled so much with what to do. She was weirdly obsessed with the whole thing but I can understand that she identified with Amanda. Plus she saw her commit suicide, I can empathize with her wanting to understand why she had done it. Overall I liked the book but it wasn’t my favorite thriller I’ve read lately. I’d still recommend checking it out, it was a good read.

After reading the two previous books by the Hendricks Pekkanen author team, I have no doubt when choosing their books. This one absorbed me right away with the subway suicide that becomes Shay's obsession and the mysterious and creepy friend group. The quotes at the beginning of each chapter set the mood and the tone well. I would recommend reading this one when you're in a place to be immersed in a read, otherwise the twists and the amount of characters to follow may be more overwhelming that entertaining.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Hendricks and Pekkanen bring us another unique and twisted story!

You Are Not Alone starts with Shay witnessing a woman's apparent suicide by subway. Shay is absolutely traumatized by this moment. When she speaks to the police, she learns that the woman who's suicide she witnessed was named Amanda. Shay decides to attend Amanda's funeral service in an attempt to find closure. At Amanda's service she meets several of Amanda's friends. When they ask how she knew Amanda, she lies because she is doesn't think she'll be welcome as a stranger. Amanda's friends, the Moore sisters, are intrigued by Shay and decide to get to know her. Shay is lonely and rattled by the death of Amanda, so she welcomes the new friends.
The Moore sisters are full of secrets. They have cultivated a group of friends that seem to have dark pasts.
Hendricks and Pekkanen kept me guessing until the end on how these lives all interchange and what the intentions of these women are.

Thank you to St. Martin's press for an early copy of this book.


This one was a tough one to get into from the get go. The writing style, along with the all the over the place plot, make it pretty hard to follow.
There are multiple characters and multiple alternating POV throughout the book, and nothing really makes sense until 75% through, and that's when things start picking up and coming together. Even so, it was just pretty odd and took too long to start linking things and characters in place. By the time there was a "twist" I felt really disengaged from the story and just wanted to know what going on already.
None of the characters were really likeable, and Shay always came off too desperate and naive. For it to end the way it did seemed too clean, and the set up moving toward it was very odd.
After reading An Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us, I had high expectations for this book, but it was a pretty big let down. It wasn't nearly as good as their other two books.

The premise of this book was very relatable to me. There is always a fear of whether or not the new friends you make are really your friends. Building off of that to create this thriller made for an enjoyable read.

It’s hard changing your life when you have a routine down but that is exactly what Shay has to do. After witnessing a young woman committing suicide, she decided she could no longer catch the subway and changed her whole daily routine. She then became obsessed with finding out everything about the girl who committed suicide. The first two parts of this story kept me on my toe, I loved all the twist and turns, the plot twist and couldn’t stop reading. The third part did slow down a little but I still couldn’t wait to finish the story. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book had an interesting premise but its execution fell flat for me. I wish there had been more of a deep-dive into the characterisations; it all felt too shallow for me to really enjoy. Overall, a bit of a disappointment.