You Are Not Alone, by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (REVIEW) — Be Careful What You Wish For

For female singletons—especially those who’ve moved from elsewhere—life is about more than mundane matters of work and chores... it’s about surviving, and often feeling very alone while doing so.

 

Writing duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen explore how that might look and feel in their latest, You Are Not Alone.

 

 

 

For Shay Miller, her new life is... not ideal.

 

She’s sharing an apartment with someone she has feelings for... who’s engaged to someone else. She gets the occasional job temping... but no permanent gigs have come her way. And her prospects for anything resembling “fun” are… well, she can barely remember what that even is.

 

Until, that is, the day she meets two women, Cassandra and Jane—sisters of similar age to her, who are vibrant, beautiful, captivating, and (what??) apparently utterly charmed by her—and everything changes. 

 

If these fabulous, successful women could really like nice, mild-mannered her, then she must be kind of okay. 

 

Suddenly, she feels positive about herself and life in general. The days seem brighter, people she passes on the street friendlier, and her outlook on the future is definitely tinted some warm shade of rosy-gold. 

 

The key, Shay knows, is her friendship with Cassandra and Jane. She would do almost anything to impress and keep her magnetic new friends, so she becomes obsessed with doing whatever they want.

 

From making changes to her appearance, getting a different job, finding a new place to live, and trying online dating, she does it all, at the sisters’ urging.

 

But, as with most highs, once that first crazy intensity starts to wear off, Shay begins to feel niggling doubts nudging their way into her bliss. 

 

Something doesn’t feel right… and when she wakes up one morning to find herself wanted by the police—regarding a murder(!)—she’s determined to figure out if it’s all part of a horrible misunderstanding… or if some of the odd coincidences she’s been noticing might actually be much more sinister in nature.

 

 

 

With a narrative that goes back and forth between different POVs and different time periods, You Are Not Alone requires you to pay attention rather than speeding right through it. 

 

(I mean, you could, but you’d be way more apt to miss those little details that come back later, which wouldn’t be nearly so much fun.) 

 

Some people don’t enjoy disjointed storytelling, but if, like me, you appreciate having to do a little work keeping up, then You Are Not Alone will definitely be your jam.

 

Hendricks and Pekkanen also do a bang-up job of ramping up the suspense. There’s never a dull chapter, no “why-on-earth-did-they-write-that?” passages to endure. Instead, it’s a tight, finely-crafted, “OMG-this-could-all-totally-happen-to-me-or-someone-I-know” tale, racing like a train toward its final destination… and oh, how you’re gonna want to get there. 

 

You Are Not Alone gets my enthusiastic recommendation.

~GlamKitty