When No One is Watching
By: Alyssa Cole
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When No One is Watching is a very nontraditional thriller but it worked for me. I would describe the first 3/4 of the book as suspense with a lot of history but the end of the book really flew, I was frantically turning pages and couldn’t stop reading.

Alyssa Cole gives the reader an up close and personal look at the problems people of color face everyday: gentrification, racism, white privilege, mental health stigmas, violence, and micro-aggressions.

The book is told from 2 points of view, Sydney and Theo. Both Sydney and Theo are hiding things from each other.

Sydney Green is a 30 year old black woman who has recently returned to her childhood home following the end of her marriage. Sydney escaped an abusive husband. He used gas lighting and emotional abuse to control her. The abuse left Sydney questioning her own sanity. The trauma of that alone is heavy but she also returned home to care for her ailing mother. Sydney is under a great deal of stress emotionally and financially. She takes a historic tour of the neighborhood just to pass the time and realizes how white washed the history shared on the tour was. Sydney found herself interrupting the guide and correcting him. Afterwards, Sydney decides to do her own historical tour and begins researching and planning the tour in hopes of sharing it with her neighbors at the block party in a few weeks.


Sydney enjoyed her growing up in Gifford Place, her neighborhood in Brooklyn. The neighbors were all close and looked our for one another. As she is researching the history of the area Sydney starts to notice that her neighbors are going missing at an alarming rate. Neighbors she was close to are moving without telling anyone and their houses are being sold specifically to white people.

Theo is new to the neighborhood. He and his girlfriend are part of the group of white people buying up all the properties. Shortly after the move Theo finds himself without a job and things aren’t working out with his current girlfriend Kim. With nothing but time to kill he tries to get involved in the community by attending a historical tour and attending a meeting to plan a block party. He offers to assist Sydney in researching the history of the neighborhood. Sydney reluctantly agrees and the two begin spending time together interviewing people, comparing notes, and preparing for the tour.


As Sydney and Theo begin spending their days researching the history of the neighborhood and the company that’s heavily involved in buying up the properties they form a friendship. After Sydney is tricked out of her mother’s ownership of the community garden space by a white developer with a fake deed to the land, this book really takes off.

The end of the book was so fast paced it flew. Tension was high and Sydney and Theo take on vigilante personas as they uncover what’s really going on in their neighborhood.

I liked this book but I was disappointed in how slow the first part of the book was. It didn’t feel like a thriller until the end. I really prefer the pacing to be faster or spread throughout the book.

I rated this ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 rounded to 4 for goodreads. Thank you to @williammorrow for an advanced copy of the book for my review.

The premise of this book really intrigued me! As I was reading I did wonder where the thriller/mystery part was but slowly started to see that weaved in but most of it happened in the last 25% or so of the book. .The novel was not what I was expecting, but in a good way. Through two dynamic characters, Theo and Sydney, the author demonstrates social injustices that are very prevalent in our society. It is a very timely novel. Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like the book but it tried to be too many things all at once--a thriller, a romance, a social commentary. Every reader will be able to plot the trajectory of the relationship between the two main characters. Gentrification is a problem without having to enlist a cadre of nefarious villains.

I loved the combination of suspense, romance, and Black history in this. It also scared the bejeesus out of me - but the ending was kinda abrupt. I had a lot of unanswered questions.

When No One is Watching is a book about gentrification, white privledge and racism in a Brooklyn neighborhood. This is the first book I’ve read by Alyssa Cole so I was excited to read the book and become acquainted with a new author. The main characters are Sydney and Theo. Theo has volunteered to help Sydney put together a Black History tour for those new to the neighborhood. Sydney and Theo begin to notice old neighbors are moving out of the neighborhood without saying goodbye. They have no idea what is happening to their friends. The mystery is solved the last of the book when everything happens all at once and finally Sydney and Theo find out the mystery to their neighbors' disappearances.. The pacing of the story was slow until the middle of the book and then it sped up at the end. The last of the book is the “thriller” part and I felt like the ending was rushed. I would have liked more information about Sydney’s character in order to identify more with her but I never felt very connected to her. I did like the fact that this book deals with the problem that is happening in our county now with the BLM movement.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.

I read Rear Window meets Get Out and I was hooked.

Alyssa always writes amazing romances, but this is the first thriller of hers I've read and I was not disappointed.
She twists and turns the characters with quite a few surprises along the way.
Get ready for a wild ride of a book and brew the coffee, because you're gonna be up late reading this one.

I featured the book on San Antonio Living's book picks: https://news4sanantonio.com/sa-living/spooky-reads-to-get-in-the-halloween-spirit

*I received a copy of this book for an honest review

Oh man. The last 2-3 chapters of this book really blew me away. I liked that this book was both suspenseful and a lesson in gentrification.

This was a fascinating read. Sydney has moved back home to find drastic changes in her neighborhood and starts to realize how suspicious things are getting with every change that is made. Black and brown neighbors are disappearing or have quickly moved away without telling others and new white people are moving in. Sydney tries to cope with her own issues as well as investigating what is going on but is she just being paranoid or is there more to it?

This book wouldn't been 4 stars if the ending would've fit in a little more with the rest of the story. Don't get me wrong, it was a good ending but it all happened at once, then it was over and it felt extremely rushed! The character build was great and the historical information was an eye opener.

This book is about a young, black woman who moves back into her childhood home only to realize that changes are underfoot in her neighborhood. The book had a slow start that never quite figured out what kind of book it would be. Is it a mystery, crime fiction, a romance, about racial tensions and social injustice? The plot was far-flung, totally unbelievable and left many unresolved issues.

This was a wild ride! It was not what I expected. I thought there were ghosts, monsters or zombies but the reality was even more scary. Very suspenseful and well written, this had me guessing until the end. I did feel that a lot of the action too place at the very end and the buildup took a little long coming. But a really great thriller.
Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this great read.

Alyssa Cole’s first thriller is a winner! Sydney Green is working on a walking tour that honors the Black history of her Brooklyn neighborhood. But the deeper she digs into the past, the more she sees parallels in the present—communities gentrified, families forced out, racial profiling used by the police and government. It all hits too close to home when she starts to wonder about the sudden disappearances of her neighbors. The atmosphere is eerie, every scene laced with an insidious undertone that keeps the reader from ever feeling fully comfortable. There is no single villain here, instead the horror comes from the real ways communities like Sydney’s are targeted. This was one of my most-anticipated books of the year, and Cole absolutely delivered—blowing me away once again with her craft, plotting, and character work.

From the point of view from Sydney and Theo this book is a slow build, setting the tone of a slight romantic interest which starts to change to an uncomfortable awareness of each other and then totally crazy storyline that they are both caught up into!! This neighborhood is the process of rapid change and doesn’t leave the residents any choices but to acquiesce or else. Lots of twists and facts to try to follow and characters to figure out. The story has a rush to the end feel with a slight unsettling revelation! #WHENNOONEISWATCHING#NETGALLEY

3 1/2 stars

I can’t say that this book was a favorite. I understand the premise, but I had a difficult time getting through it. It’s not that the situation was uncomfortable, which it was; it’s more that the whole thing isn’t very believable. The book tries to bring together romance, urban renewal, a web of conspiracy, a white knight rescuing the black damsel, and an ending that’s straight out of a sci-fi novel, which this isn’t meant to be.

That ending really took an unbelievable turn which would have worked much better had this been a science fiction book. Still, after the situation in the US with George Floyd and other police overreach incidents, maybe it’s not quite such a stretch. It’s definitely timely.

In this book, if you are white, you are bad. If you are black, you are good. Police, media, the government are exclusively on the side of white people. Whites are willing to destroy and bribe, even to kidnap people to use as subjects for testing a drug addiction cure.

While the basic theme of the book was good, I thought the execution was overdone and heavy handed. The language was frequently crude, in a way that didn’t always fit the situations. This was definitely an attempt to pit blacks against whites in a less than productive way. I honestly believe that there are better books out there to reflect what the author attempted. I don’t recommend this book.

I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book from the publisher. I thank them for their generosity, but it had no effect on this review. All opinions in this review reflect my true and honest reactions to reading this book.

The book was interesting and very relatable to current events involving racism in our country. The gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood and the impact on it's formerly black/minority community is eye-opening and reflects the systemic racism occurring in today's society. The story line moves slowly through most of the book in spite of numerous odd situations happening in the neighborhood and to the main character. Much of the focus is on the simmering romance between the main character and one of the new white neighbors. The last part of the book provides the "thriller" element but I found this to be quite far-fetched and the violence on both sides was not believable. There is surely corruption as well as unfair practices in many of our minority communities but the story goes beyond reasonableness. In site of this critique, the historical aspects of early Brooklyn and NYC were quite interesting.

When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole is brilliant. Readers will love it. I featured it as Book of the Day on my social media platforms and included it in a roundup of new releases. blog

I have conflicting feeling on When No One Is Watching. I loved the author's writing style and finished this one in just one day. Alyssa Cole has a knack for getting you into the headspace of each character. That combined with a slow-burn pacing helped readers get familiar with each character's surroundings. It was a tough novel to read at times. It's blood-boiling, upsetting, and an incredibly important read.


In terms of a mystery novel, I think it lacked just a bit plot wise. It wasn't clear what they mystery would be and what our main character Sydney would be working to uncover. It didn't get clarified until about halfway through. But once it did, I couldn't help but flip through pages to figure out where this would all go. The ending reminded me of Jordan Peele's work and I think this novel would be an incredible film.

Unfortunately I think the marketing hurt this book. It wasn't necessarily a thriller but more a literary suspense novel. Had the main mystery of the novel been established earlier, I think I would have enjoyed this one even more. I would still recommend this as a book that should be on your to be read pile.

Upon finishing <u>When No One is Watching</u>, I can completely understand the parallels to <i>Get Out</i>. But those vibes didn't really appear until the last 25% of the book or so.

Overall, as others have said, I felt this was more of a contemporary fiction/drama with all of the thriller moments mixed in at the conclusion. Almost all the action happened in the climax of the novel and had me furiously reading the last 25%! That being said, the first 75% was a bit slower. While I really enjoyed both Sydney's and Theo's perspectives and think they balanced each other out perfectly, I wish the first 3/4 of the novel had been a little faster paced.

3.5 Stars / 1 Steam Fans

Before I get to deep into this review, I must say that I am NOT a fan of this book! However, that is a 'Me' issue, not a content issue. With that said, if you like the movie "Get Out," then you will probably enjoy this book.

Sydney is a divorced woman that moves home with her mother, dodges bill collectors, is the stereotypical angry Black woman because her mother's neighborhood is being taken over by "the white people." Sydney's actions and feelings are very apparent after she takes a historical tour of her community only to have the tour guide whitewash the history of the neighborhood. Oh, I forgot to mention that Sydney lives in Historically Black Brooklyn, New York. Theo and his stereotypical 'Karen' fiancee purchases the brownstone across the street from Sydney. Theo is jobless, and the fiancee is rich, so he feels like the inadequate boyfriend, but wants to get to know his neighbors. As the story moves along things, start to happen to Sydney that are strange and out of place, in many ways downright creepy.

When No One is Watching is a full-on creepy, weird story that I was not comfortable reading. There is an audience for this type of book, and Alyssa Cole shows off her writing chops with this one. In the end, I cannot give this book a bad rating. After all, it was written beautifully for a thriller, just not my type of book. As a side note, anyone that tells you it is more romantic suspense than thriller does not understand what romantic suspense should contain. This book is a THRILLER!

Video review available in Week 38: Sep 13 – Sep 19 weekly book reviews.

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RATING: 2 STARS
2020; William Morrow Paperbacks

I have been excited to start Alyssa Cole's debut suspense thriller When No One is Watching as I have seen so much promotion on it. I was approved for an eARC by Netgalley and was excited to get to it. Alyssa Cole is known for her romance novels (which I have on my list to try, but have not read anything by Cole). I was pleased when my hold of the audiobook came in right before vacation began. Unfortunately, this novel did not work for me. It took me 5 days to finish this audiobook, and the only reason I did is that I pushed myself. I think the message of the novel and what the author was trying to convey was great, but the execution fell apart 20% in (at least for me). I just could not feel any investment in the characters and I started to get a bit bored with the plot. Anytime I could find something else to do and not listen to this story, I ran towards it. I had high expectations for this book based on all the promotions, and I feel a bit let down. I think if they hadn't built it up so much, and compared it to Get Out, I may have had read it as a debut novel in a new genre (for the author). I started to feel a bit better after reading Roxanne Gay's review, as I didn't feel like I was the sole outlier on this one. Although, I usually am the one going against the tide, so you think I would get used to it. I would read the high and low reviews to get a better consensus on the novel. If this is a book you are interested in, I say go for it, but if it's not working for you, bail.