Someone’s Watching Me follows the life of Becky who is living a fairly perfect life – she has a job she enjoys, a good-looking and kind-hearted husband, she’s in good health and everything seems to be going well for her. However, when a neighbour moves in and everything starts to go wrong, she struggles to see how she’ll ever get her life back on track again.
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Please note that I was sent this book by Zoe in return for an honest review.
Someone’s Watching Me is the debut thriller from Zoe Rosi. It’ll have you lightly flipping the pages to see what’s next but also unfortunately it never really reaches the heights of some of the very best thrillers out there.
Someone’s Watching Me plot – 3.5/5
There’s nothing mind-blowing about the plot of Someone’s Watching Me. Becky is an estate agent selling posh homes and when her neighbour moves in across the road she gets a bad vibe from him and when bad things start happening in her great life, she suspects it could well be him. On top of this, her relationship with her partner starts to crumble due to her paranoia.
Considering this is Rosi’s debut novel, there were some strong elements here. The book doesn’t jump from scene to scene too quickly, Becky does moments of internal monologue where she explains her feelings and how everything that’s happening is affecting her and could affect her future. I found these moments well done.
However, other than maybe one moment, none of the scary moments really had me on my toes. I would have liked the tense moments to have me feeling a lot more on edge, wanting to flip words and lines to find out what lurks there or why something has happened – like the very best thrillers achieve.
Now, there is a moment towards the end that peaked my interest and possibly saved Someone’s Watching Me’s plot for me but I won’t spoil it as I want to see if you guess it (you won’t).
Someone’s Watching Me characters – 4/5
Someone’s Watching Me’s characters are slightly stronger than its plot. Becky is your typical 30-something woman really – she’s focused on her career, her partner and the possibility of having a child soon. She enjoys her job and has friends at work but also has enemies at work. She doesn’t strike me as particularly funny or intelligent – she seems to panic quite a lot (though I suppose you would if these odd things started randomly happening in your life and they seemed too often to be a coincidence.) She was OK but, like a lot of first-person books, falls into the trap of not being overly exciting as it’s from her point-of-view that we need to view the story.
One person that did get on my nerves was her partner. Becky is clearly worried that the neighbour is trying to ruin her life but rather than stick up for her, because the neighbour is his client in the gym, he is on his side. There’s a point about two thirds of the way through where I really thought how pathetic he was being. Whether he was written to be intentionally pathetic or to try and add drama and a sense of loss for Becky or not, I don’t know. But either way, I couldn’t care less if he disappeared from Becky’s life to be honest.
Someone’s Watching Me overall rating – 4/5
Someone’s Watching Me is a solid debut from Zoe Rosi. I feel like Rosi has the potential to write a really good thriller in the future if she can find the winning formula. This debut of hers has all the right elements to be a good thriller but just falls short of some real tense moments and more likeable characters. I look forward to reading Rosi’s next outing and seeing how she improves.
