Freelance reviewer Oline Cogdill recently reviewed Alison Gaylin’s We Are Watching. There are signed copies of the book available in The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore. https://bit.ly/4jHWhV4
A mere whisper that something evil is afoot can blow up into nasty rumors spread by conspiracy theorists, as Edgar winner Alison Gaylin explores in the explosive We Are Watching. Gaylin creates an unpredictable plot in which the gullible are convinced to believe outlandish ideas that infiltrate ordinary lives.
Meg Russo and her husband, Justin, are driving their 18-year-old daughter, Lily, to college in Ithaca, N.Y., when skinheads in a pursuing car harass them. It leads to a horrific crash in which Justin is killed. Months later, Meg, who was driving, is still wracked with guilt, and Lily is living at home, withdrawn into her music, wanting to emulate her rock musician grandfather who lives off the grid. Meg and Lily become targets of a cult that believes a fantasy novel Meg wrote back when she was 15 is a harbinger of doom. The bookstore Meg owns in Elizabethville, N.Y., is vandalized and the intimidation escalates, as do Meg’s suspicions that the car crash that took Justin’s life is somehow connected.
Briskly paced, We Are Watching demonstrates how ordinary people can overcome outrageous circumstances. Gaylin superbly shows how close relationships in a small town can be both an asset and a detriment, and how the relationship between a parent and child can undergo changes, with Meg acknowledging she must recover from her own grief to save her family from the violent cultists. In the end, Gaylin delivers a terrifying story about the most innocuous situation being taken out of context and twisted into a weapon. —Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer
Alison Gaylin is the USA Today and international bestselling author of thirteen books, including the stand-alones The Collective and If I Die Tonight (winner of the Edgar Award) and the Brenna Spector series: And She Was (winner of the Shamus Award), Into the Dark, and Stay With Me. Nominated for the Edgar four times, she has also been a finalist for numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Strand Book Award and the ITW Thriller, Macavity and Anthony Awards. She lives with her husband in Woodstock, New York.
You can watch guest host Talia Lavin discuss We Are Watching with Alison Gaylin.