We’ve had exceptionally hot, humid days recently, with little relief in sight, so to pair with my delicious Date Bar, this morning I’m drinking a steaming cup of Manitoba Pumpkin Spice tea and dreaming of cool fall days… *sigh*
Because of the weather, I’ve been staying inside in the air-conditioned house a lot recently and have been spending much of my time reading. I just finished a new novel by a team of writers, Greer Hendricks' and Sarah Pekkanen’s thriller, You Are Not Alone. I listened to an audiobook by this team not too long ago, An Anonymous Girl, which I guess I never wrote about in this blog, but I remember that it was quite good, a real “page-turner” (if I was actually turning pages). Well, this book proved to be just as compelling. Shay Miller is a single thirty-one-year-old woman in New York who has no real job, no real friends and is in love with her already-taken roommate; in short, she is lonely and unhappy. When she is on a subway platform one Sunday morning, she witnesses a woman jump to her death. She picks up the woman’s broken necklace from the platform and leaves the subway without completing the errand she set out to do, thus beginning her obsession to learn about this woman’s life. She is clearly traumatized by the event and feels a strange connection to the dead woman, particularly to the loneliness and utter despair she assumes the woman felt in her final moments, feelings she herself often experiences. At the memorial for the dead woman, she meets Cassandra and Jane Moore, two sisters who are stunningly beautiful, polished, and seemingly gentle and kind. They take her under their collective wing and offer solutions to help her out of her various desperate situations. But as in all good thrillers, all is not what it seems, and if it appears too good to be true, it usually is. This novel twists and turns, offering stories from a number of different women in Cassandra’s and Jane’s circle of friends, and shifts in time to offer backstories for these characters as well as present-day activities. It was over-the-top, but in a good way, the kind of compelling read that made me almost glad for the hot, forbidding weather that kept me from feeling guilty for staying inside. I would recommend this book if you’re in the mood for a gripping read that is not too realistic or depressing - and let’s face it, while our challenging days persist, that’s exactly the type of book many of us need!
That’s all for today. Stay cool, stay happy, and keep reading!
Bye for now…Julie
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