Holly B / Dressedtoread

BookReview: Watching You by Lisa Jewell @AtriaBooks @lisajewelluk #suspense #WatchingYou #4.5 STARS

38355282

My Review:

I always feel like somebody’s watching me…

A picturesque street in a nice neighborhood in England. Painted pastel houses with cozy surroundings. Behind closed doors, someone is watching…

Tom Fitzwilliam, the headmaster at a local school is a husband, a father, and a rather flirty guy who knows he has a way with the women.

Joey Mullen and her husband Alfie, have just moved in with her brother so they can get their lives sorted.  Joey is going through a bit of a crisis in her marriage, when she meets Tom and is suddenly and unexpectedly obsessed with him.  Timing is everything, if it hadn’t been him, maybe it would have been someone else?

When someone is found murdered, everyone has an opinion about who is responsible and past secrets are starting to come to light.

One of my favorite parts of the story is the recorded police interviews that are dispersed throughout the book, giving clues to who is suspected and where the investigation is focusing.  I kept trying to figure out Tom and figure out if he was misunderstood or just another cagey predator.

I was able to figure out the first twist, but that was due to the clever hints that Jewell laid out in the previous chapters. This was an intriguing character driven mystery that had me diagnosing all the characters at every turn.

The last twist comes in the last paragraph and was quite a stunner!

4.5 STARS

Book Description:

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…

33 comments

  12. So I have a weird thing with this book. The version I had marked to read on GoodReads had an incorrect synopsis. It said who died and where and neither were true. It made me kind of infuriated and then I realized that one version is the only place I could find that synopsis, but I was still too mad to be that objectionable about the story. However, I’m glad that you enjoyed it! Great review.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment