I wasn’t really into it, though I think it’s just me. I would recommend this to anyone who likes Cole’s other work.

When No One Is Watching highlights the gentrification happening in many neighborhoods. I enjoyed Sydney’s humor but also the dedication she had for her neighborhood. A lot of strange things has started to happen in the neighborhood and Sydney works to figure out what is happening. I would definitely recommend it. Thank you for my gifted copy Netgalley and William Morrow.

I was absolutely THRILLED to get my hands on an ARC of this book given all of the amazing praise. And let me tell you, the praise was spot on!

Sydney Green is a Brooklyn lifer -- born and raised and current resident. Unfortunately, her neighborhood seems to change overnight. There are condos going up on every block, and Sydney's neighbors are disappearing. As Sydney dives into her neighborhood's history, she makes the grizzly discovery that her neighbors may have not moved to the suburbs after all. Is this just Sydney being paranoid? When does coincidence become conspiracy?

Wow, I cannot say enough about this book. Alyssa Cole's writing was excellent. A MUST read!

I just reviewed When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole. #WhenNoOneIsWatching #NetGalley

The gentrification of Brooklyn was at the core of the book. Race contentions and conspiracy theories were also at play. I listened to this book on audio, so that might have made a difference in my opinion. However, the writing and the tone didn’t sit well with me on this book. The twist at the end was somewhat predictable, yet it delivered a much greater punch...but still left things flat.

Sydney Green is living in her hometown of Brooklyn, but something about her cozy neighborhood has her a little on edge. Instead of the quaint houses surrounding her from her childhood, imposing condos are popping up everywhere. The neighbors she's know since her birth are selling their homes like wildfire. To save the neighborhood Sydney decides to start a historic walking tour.

She meets her neighbor Theo, and together them embark on this new adventure. Is the neighborhood really all that it seems? Sydney and Theo discover that things aren't always how they appear to me. No matter how dear we hold them to our heart.

Sadly this book just wasn't for me, but the author's writing is exceptional, so it certainly wouldn't stop me from picking another of her books up again in the future.

I dd not care for the writing and was not able to finish. The characters seemed flat and uninteresting. Sorry.

I found the plot confusing and the majority of the characters irritating. It played into all kinds of mainstream stereotypes.

This book takes a familiar experience, the changes make our nostalgic places feel foreign, and adds a sinister twist. The thing that makes this book so creepy, is that you can imagine it happening in real life. The idea that some people are seen as more valuable and worthy of consideration than others is pushed to its limits, even as we are witnesses to the intangible things that make a place special and turn it into a home. The well-executed mystery unleashes a race to save the neighborhood from the gentrification project that is covering up something much more sinister.

As I read this book, I kept thinking how close to reality it was. Start with the current times of racially charged events, mixing in the big money developers, and stir it all together with manipulative love relationships, and you have the perfect thriller twisty thriller. I really wasn't sure how this one was going to end until I read the last word.

This book was so so good! Mixed with history and mystery it makes for a fascinating and fast read. You won’t want to put it down once you being. Alyssa has a way of capturing the reader so much so that you’re plunged into the story as if you’re with the characters themselves.

I found myself wanting to tag along on the investigation, searching for the truth.

This book is SO good. It takes place in a too-rapidly gentrifying historically black neighborhood in Brooklyn where weird things start happening to the black residents. The protagonist has been studying the history of the neighborhood, and she's beginning to see that something terribly wrong is going on, but she doubts herself too much at first to share what she suspects. It's only slowly that the horror becomes impossible to ignore. The whole narrative is really well done and threaded with a critique of casual and structural racism.

This is a really smart, propulsive book that I got caught up in immediately. The novel is gothic in lots of ways because the ghosts of black and brown residents who've been the victims of white aggression haunt the story.

I didn't love the ending -it's over the top and problematic - but it also fits with the rest of the story.

Overall, though, I highly recommend this book.

This book had me hooked until about the 85% mark and then I feel like it went downhill from there. I don't want to give too much away, but I felt the ending was just really unbelievable and could have been handled in such a more realistic way. It was almost like the author realized they only had so many more pages allotted and just had to hurry and wrap everything up. To me the ending was not a realistic representation for everything that went down at the end of this book. Thank you Net Galley for this advanced reader copy.

Loved this! Great dialogue, creepy moments, and timely themes. This book was hailed as GET OUT meets REAR WINDOW. As a lover of both of those titles, I expected a lot and wasn’t disappointed. I can’t say REAR WINDOW is what I’d compare to, but that’s okay.

FULL REVIEW ON FRESH FICTION
The first thriller from bestselling romance author Alyssa Cole, WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING is an intriguing thriller with poignant social commentary on gentrification. Sydney is dealing with a breakup, her sick mother, and the place she used to find solace is changing, and not for the better. Theo is a nice white guy who is in over his head with his wealthy girlfriend, who moves in circles he isn’t sure he wants to be a part of, and wonders if he made a huge mistake buying a home with her. The pacing begins slowly and uneven but builds over the course of the novel with a foreboding sense of dread, and the ending is a page-turning, over-the-top spectacle. While much of the later action is surprising, the most shocking realization is that something like this could easily happen, and more than likely is taking place right now. Reading this novel felt like watching Get Out, Do the Right Thing, and Rear Window all at the same time. Well-written, engrossing, and thought-provoking, WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING is the start of a hopefully long thriller/mystery career for Alyssa Cole.

This a powerhouse of a novel. The elements of reality (gentrification, manipulation of the marginalized, etc.) are masterfully woven throughout this hold-your-breath thriller. I grew up in the rural South; poor as a could be. This book brought back memories of "outsiders" moving in, building huge houses, and turning our small town into something unrecognizable. They looked at us poor folks like we were something to be studied--unhuman--or examined under a microscope. How Ms. Cole turned those feelings into a story is amazing. She truly captured the essence of what it is like to be considered "the other." I have never read a book by Ms. Cole before, but she been placed on my list of "to read" fiction authors.

I really enjoyed this! I read the first two chapters before bed, and then polished off the rest in a non-stop session the next morning/afternoon. It does go a bit off the rails at the end, but otherwise a very enjoyable read.

When No One is Watching is an un-put-downable psychological thriller that had the hairs of my neck standing up the whole time. Sydney is a lifelong resident of a Black neighborhood in Brooklyn that is slowly being gentrified -- until things speed up and neighbors are leaving town without a warning or goodbye and somehow the same development company and real estate business seem to be behind these sudden departures. Told between two perspectives, Sydney and Theo, a new white man in the neighborhood who is equally unsettled by goings on, this novel will have non-BIPOC readers examining your own involvement in systemic racism while maybe looking a bit closer at weird happenings in your neighborhood.

Not only can Alyssa Cole write a mean romance, she can write a kickass thriller too. The horrors of gentrification are made manifest in this book about a Brooklynite growing increasingly suspicious as her longtime neighbors disappear, only to be replaced by white people. Only one of her new neighbors seems to notice or case, but can she really trust him to have her back in a neighborhood that is barely his when the Us vs. Them mentality has become so strong?

I couldn't put this book down. The story is deeply disturbing and thought provoking, mostly because the premise doesn't seem nearly as far fetched as one would hope, given the horrors its describing. Highly, highly recommend.

This thriller does NOT stop until you have stayed up way too late to finish this book! If you love thrillers and reading past your bedtime, pick up this book!