When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole

 

Whoa. This was great. There seems to be a challenge to compare every Black horror and Black thriller novel to Get Out but this is one of the few cases where the comparison is totally on point. Sydney lives in a small Brooklyn neighborhood filled with beautiful brownstones that is slowly becoming gentrified. Her newer white neighbors are the yuppies you love to hate, and a biotech company is buying up property, ostensibly to be used as campuses for their employees.

Sydney, who grew up in this neighborhood, is suspicious of this so-called progress. Especially when long-time residents of the area begin to sell their homes in a panic and/or disappear. Theo, a white man in a tempestuous relationship with his not-quite wife, is one of the new buyers. However the house and his girlfriend are both proving to be unexpected nightmares, especially when he learns that Kim is a little too comfortable wearing her privilege like it's a new Anthropologie sweater. He's way more interested in Sydney, who is down to earth and real in a way that his girlfriend never was. When she asks for his help on a Black tourism project, it seems innocent.

But something dark is lurking in their small, idyllic neighborhood.

I don't want to say too much else, but I REALLY enjoyed WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING a lot. The plotting is tight, the suspense is amazing, and it tells you so much about Black American history and redlining that really aren't taught in schools. Also, while not explicitly stated, there are certain events in this book that seem to be a direct reference to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. I know I saw some critics saying that the white people seemed too evil but honestly, I didn't think so. History says otherwise.

Get Out examined the literal commodification of Black bodies for coolness and clout. The Other Black Girl examined tokenism in the workplace and the weaponization of white guilt and "diversity" hires. NO ONE IS WATCHING, meanwhile, is an intense, no-holds barred call-out of gentrification and the literal erasure of Black people in history, both recent and distant.

I've been reading Cole's books since she was doing indie stuff and I just knew she was going to be big. She might actually be even better at thrillers than she is at romance, and when I saw that she had a gothic murder mystery as her up and coming effort, I nearly screamed.

This was so, so good.

4 out of 5 stars