Review: You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Shay Miller’s life isn’t exactly coming up roses at the moment. Laid off from her data analyst role, she’s temping while looking for a new job. Lonely and struggling to find connections, she lives with her best friend Sean, who she secretly harbors a crush on. Sean’s girlfriend Jody isn’t thrilled with the living arrangements and is making noises that it might be time for Shay to find somewhere else to live.

But Shay’s world is upended one morning during her commute when she witnesses Amanda throwing herself in front of a subway train. Reeling from the event, Shay finds herself drawn into figuring out what would lead Amanda to end her life — and that investigation leads her right into the orbit of the Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane.

Cassandra and Jane are everything Shay wants to be with a close circle of friends, a self-assuredness, and the world seemingly their oyster. But Cassandra and Jane harbor dark secrets and their motives in taking Shay under their wing may not be as altruistic as they appear on the surface.

To say much more would be to give away some of the reveals in Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s latest thriller, You Are Not Alone. Hendricks and Pekkanen keep the plot propelling forward by doling out clues and alternating perspectives between the first-person narration by Shay, third-person check-ins on the Moore sisters and flashbacks to other people who have come into the sisters’ orbits. The story gives you just enough to keep the pages turning, curious to see what will happen next to Shay and what the Moore sisters’ overall end game could be. It certainly kept me guessing at times.

That isn’t to say this is a perfect thriller. It’s a great popcorn novel — and one that doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny, especially as the end game Cassandra and Jane have in mind comes to light. The less you examine the details, the happier you’ll probably be with the story overall.

Watching as Hendricks and Pekkanen ratchet up the suspense, dread, and paranoia over the middle third of the novel is a lot of fun and really kept the pages turning. But it’s one the story reaches the third portion that things begin to slowly unravel.

If you’re looking for something fun to take your mind off things, this one is a great distraction.