You Are Not Alone
Author: Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
Publication Date: 03 March 2020
Genre: Adult Fiction – Thriller
Pages: 344
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
The thrilling new novel from the #1 New York Timesbestselling authors of An Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us.
Shay Miller has three strikes against her: no job, no apartment, no love in her life. But when she witnesses a perfectly normal looking young woman about her age make the chilling decision to leap in front of an ongoing subway train, Shay realizes she could end up in the same spiral. She is intrigued by a group of women who seem to have it all together, and they invite her with the promise: “You are not alone.” Why not align herself with the glamorous and seductive Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane? They seem to have beaten back their demons, and made a life on their own terms—a life most people can only ever envy. They are everything Shay aspires to be, and they seem to have the keys to getting exactly what they want.
As Shay is pulled deeper and deeper under the spell of the Moore sisters, she finds her life getting better and better. But what price does she have to pay? What do Cassandra and Jane want from her? And what secrets do they, and Shay, have that will come to a deadly confrontation?
You are not alone: Is it a promise? Or a threat?
I’ve been trying to formulate my opinions on this book ever since I finished, and I am still just struggling.
I am a huge fan of the writing duo that is Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. I think that they seamlessly execute words on a page as if they were a single author versus a team. That being said, You Are Not Alone is not one of my favorites by them.
Right from the beginning, you are catapulted into a scene where Shay Miller witnesses a woman commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. Shay’s life quickly changes when she seeks more information about the dead women and ends up crossing paths with the Moore sisters.
I struggled with Shay as a character. I found her to be weak-willed, overly trusting, and ultimately gullible. Her desperation to please the Moore sisters was exhausting at times. What I did like about her was her obsession with statistics.
In terms of the plot, a lot of belief had to be suspended with this one, and there were so many moments where I found myself asking “Is this really happening?”. The plot pacing felt off to me since it started off fast-paced but lagged in the middle when we got bogged down on Shay’s relationship with the sisters. The plot does pick back up in the last 75 pages or so, which is when I found the story more engrossing.
Overall, I’m not giving up on this dream team, but I definitely want more out of their next book.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Libro.fm for the advanced listening copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.
The Reading Chemist 