When No One Is Watching in DMPL Book Chat

Dec 20, 2021 Becky rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, social-justice, history, romance, science-fiction

The flyleaf describes Alyssa Cole as an award-winning Black author of historical, contemporary, and sci-fi romance. Quite an unusual combination of genres. In this book she combines all four genres in a horrifying thriller. It starts out as a Brooklyn New York historic brownstone Black neighborhood undergoing gentrification by wealthier white people moving in and driving prices way way up. Sydney, a black female long-time resident HATES that the neighbors she has known and loved forever are bein ...more

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Feb 25, 2021 Danielle rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks-read, contemporary, adult, mystery-thriller

"In all the times I'd moved in New York, I'd only thought about how safe the area was for me, not what my present meant for people in the neighborhood. Not about what advantages I had that they didn't. I was poor, too, after all, even though I had figured out how not to be, for a little while at least."

I've only read one other book by Alyssa Cole which was a delightful little romance book (A Princess in Theory). I actually really enjoy thriller books but I don't read them too often because I get "In all the times I'd moved in New York, I'd only thought about how safe the area was for me, not what my present meant for people in the neighborhood. Not about what advantages I had that they didn't. I was poor, too, after all, even though I had figured out how not to be, for a little while at least."

I've only read one other book by Alyssa Cole which was a delightful little romance book (A Princess in Theory). I actually really enjoy thriller books but I don't read them too often because I get freaked out pretty easily (see my experience reading Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre). This book started off at a speed where I wasn't concerned at all - nothing scary here, folks! Then I got about 2/3 of the way through and all of a sudden I was completely investing in the book. I had to know what happened next and one thing after another had my heart beating in my throat and I thought I'd never reach the end. Oof. I enjoyed the fact this book had a slow burn and then all of a sudden I was thrust into this mad dash of trying to figure out all of the twists and turns. (Spoiler: I didn't figure anything out on my own, not really. We can cross future detective off the career list for me). I don't know that I loved all of the plot twists at the end, but I definitely enjoyed the process of having the characters figure everything out.

This book covered a lot of topics that we need to be talking about: gentrification and medical debt take center stage in this book but we also see forced medical experimentation pop up. Is this something everyone knows has happened in this country, especially to people of color? If not, why not? Take the time to educate yourself on the Tuskegee Study; you need to know medical experimentation on humans is a part of American history. Gentrification is a topic I only recently came to fully understand (teaching topics like this to middle schoolers forces me to really know the details of a topic) and I'm not sure community members think enough about the people that are displaced when a revitalized portion of town opens up. Where do these people go? Why is it always people of color who seem to be displaced at far higher rates than white people? Why is no one talking about this?

I definitely thought long and hard about some topics I haven't been forced to reckon with while reading this novel. However, the twists at the end seemed a little far fetched to believe, in my opinion. I enjoyed the book, but I think I would have enjoyed it a little more had the ending been a bit more believable.

TW: racism, microaggressions, police brutality, loss of a loved one, depression, anxiety, panic attack, murder, forced medical experimentation ...more

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