Someone Is Watching

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Author:Joy Fielding
Format: eBook, Paperback, Hardcover, Audio
Pages: 386
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: 03-24-15
http://www.amazon.com/Someone-Watching

As a special investigator for a hotshot Miami law firm, Bailey Carpenter is smart, savvy, and fearless. When she’s assigned to spy on a deadbeat dad in the middle of the night, Bailey thinks nothing of the potential dangers, only that she needs to gather evidence. Then she is blindsided—attacked and nearly killed.

Now the firm grip Bailey once had on her life is shaken. Her nightmares merge into her waking hours and she’s unable to venture beyond her front door without panicking. A veritable prisoner in her own home, Bailey is uncertain whom she can trust. But old habits die hard, and soon Bailey finds a new use for her idle binoculars: casually observing from her window neighboring buildings and other people’s lives. This seemingly harmless diversion becomes a guilty pleasure when Bailey fixates on the handsome guy across the street—until she realizes that he is also watching her. Suddenly she must confront the terrifying possibility that he may be the man who shattered her life.

Though crippled by fear, Bailey knows she can’t ignore her suspicions and risk leaving a predator at large. With the police making no headway in solving her case, she’s determined to overcome her terror and reclaim the power she lost by unmasking her attacker and taking him down herself. But it’s a harrowing battle that threatens to wreck Bailey’s credibility, compromise an investigation, and maybe even claim her sanity

My So-Called Review:

Bailey Carpenter is a smart, strong, independent woman who works as a private investigator for a large law firm. Right from the beginning I really liked her character! One night, while on a routine stakeout Bailey is jumped from behind and brutally attacked and injured. Despite all of her years of training and experience she was powerless to fight back & could only give the police the slightest of information to go on regarding her attacker.

Overcome by a constant state of fear and anxiety, Bailey is now unable to leave her apartment and spends most of her nights in a sleepless panic. Her only solace comes in the form of Claire, her older half-sister, and Claire’s teenage daughter, Jade. They show up several times a week to offer support and a reprieve from Bailey’s constant loneliness. To pass the time, and in some ways to keep her sanity, Bailey begins observing the lives of other people through her binoculars. Her attention becomes drawn to a peculiar yet handsome man living in the apartment building across from her bedroom window. She begins watching him, immersing herself into his sordid life, she’s disgusted & terrified by what she’s sees and yet she can’t seem to stop. The more she watches him, the more she begins to wonder…… is he watching her too?

When Bailey sees this enigmatic man do something suspiciously violent, she calls the police. They pay him a visit, search around a bit, yet they report back that nothing happened; they couldn’t find a single shred of evidence to back up Bailey’s story of what she saw. Since Bailey’s the narrator of this story you become lost in her perceptions of what is or isn’t happening, you start wondering right along with her if she’s going crazy and losing touch with reality, or is there truly something or someone to truly be afraid of. I absolutely loved the whole Rear Window vibe to this book, it’s what drew me in and kept me reading!

Someone Is Watching was such a hard book for me to rate and review. There were so many aspects to this story that I absolutely loved, other aspects left me scratching my head. I don’t mind a story that’s paced slowly, especially in a psychological thriller but there were too many pages here dealing with Bailey wandering around, blaming every man she saw on the street as her attacker. The scenes that worked best were the ones in which she was watching her neighbor; trying to figure out if what she saw was reality, some sort of PTSD or herself slowly going crazy. I wish the book was more focused around this storyline and cut out a bunch of the rest. When I noticed myself getting bored with what she was doing outside her apartment I kept wishing she’d go home and watch her neighbor to see if he was doing anything creepy or suspicious!! There are several mysteries to figure out here; who is Bailey’s attacker, what’s really going on with the mystery man she’s watching, whether or not these two things are connected and if so, why? I felt this story could have been way creepier if it was told entirely from the inside of Bailey’s apartment with her sister, niece and mystery man her only links to the outside world. In the end there were too many missed opportunities for this book to have been great and I was a little let down.

Overall I liked this book; only felt it could have been better. I would recommend this to people who like slower paced mysteries or haven’t read other books with a similar plot before. I really enjoyed Joy Fielding’s writing style and would absolutely read another book by her!

Thank you to the publisher, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for the complimentary advance reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!