#BookReview: Watching You by Lisa Jewell @lisajewelluk #MysteryThriller #Mystery #Suspense #Fiction #GoodReads #Kindle

Hi everyone. Today I have a book review for you by an author new to me but well known (just not to me! 😂),  Lisa Jewel. Here’s my review >>>

About the Book:

Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Bristol, England; home to doctors and lawyers and old-money academics. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens. But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.

As the headmaster credited with turning around the local school, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by one and all—including Joey Mullen, his new neighbor, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming yet unavailable man. Joey thinks her crush is a secret, but Tom’s teenaged son Freddie—a prodigy with aspirations of becoming a spy for MI5—excels in observing people and has witnessed Joey behaving strangely around his father.

One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she’s not convinced her teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate, and Jenna’s mother—whose mental health has admittedly been deteriorating in recent years—is convinced that Mr. Fitzwilliam is stalking her.

Meanwhile, twenty years earlier, a schoolgirl writes in her diary, charting her doomed obsession with a handsome young English teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam…

My Review:

🌟🌟🌟🌟

‘I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to feel. Is this normal?’ …  From this highly relatable opening line, the author pulls the reader into a world of what ifs, maybes, rumours, suspicion, and–eventually–unravels the twisted threads to reveal the unexpected truth.

This novel has some wonderful one liners and phrases, and is certainly attention grabbing, yet it lets itself down time and again with the massive overuse of ‘literally’, which LITERALLY drove me nuts! Along with that, we also get treated to lots of ‘very’ usage and every speaker over uses ‘just’ in their dialogue. If this were one character, it would be a quirk, but ALL OF THEM? … Give me a break. Due to this and clumsy sentences, such as: ‘The manager was a big, butch woman with a crew cut called Dawn.’ … I’m certain the manager is called Dawn and not the crew cut! Likewise with: ‘She was necking wine in a floaty top.’ Once again, I’m certain the woman wore the floaty top rather than the wine being in the floaty top! And this is to show but two of such sentence formations. A few spelling errors have slipped in as well. All of which lost a lot of points for me. Together with passive writing, much of this ripped me right out of the make-believe, and quite violently at times.

However, with all of that said, the story premise, plot, pacing, characters, and world building are all done so well you feel as though you are right there next to the many characters from whose point of view the tale is told. The narrative delivers multiple POVs, each with their own clear sections, and written in past tense. Here are some lines I loved …

‘… she said, her heart not reaching her words.’ 

And … 

‘He thought of the smell of old beer coming off him this morning, the sour smell of secrets and lies.’ 

And … 

‘Jenna ached to say, Me Too, and draw the line and make things good. But she couldn’t do it. The words were too deeply buried under piles of other stuff for her to quite reach them.’ 

Despite the passive writing and often clumsy clause arrangements, I loved this read. I never saw the culprit coming. Great penultimate twist and a wholly believable motive. Watching You by Lisa Jewel gets a soft 4 stars from me. With extra polishing, I’d give a resounding 5 stars. If you love a suspenseful mystery thriller with plenty of twists and an ending you don’t see coming, then go and read this book!

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NOTE ON RATINGS: I consider a 3-star rating a positive review. Picky about which books I give 5 stars to, I reserve this highest rating for the stories I find stunning and which moved me.

5 STARS: IT WAS AMAZING! I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN! — Highly Recommended.
4 STARS: I WOULD PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER — Go read this book.
3 STARS: IT WAS GOOD! — An okay read. Didn’t love it. Didn’t hate it.
2 STARS: I MAY HAVE LIKED A FEW THINGS —Lacking in some areas: writing, characterisation, and/or problematic plot lines.
1 STAR: NOT MY CUP OF TEA —Lots of issues with this book.

For anyone interested, here is the universal Amazon link …

 a-fwd.com/asin=B076VWBYGZ

I’d love to hear what you think of this review. Thanks for stopping by 🙂

***Due to limited energy and time, I will be taking a break from publishing review posts for the foreseeable future. Thank you for following my reviews all this time! Now and then, I will post a review for any authors in my online circle, but won’t be reviewing traditionally published books. I’ll pop in from time to time with updates and teasers on my planned projects. Hugs, Harmony 🤗💕😊