#when no one is watching

InAlyssa Cole’s psychological thriller When No One is Watching, Sydney Green is adrift in a Brooklyn changing faster than she can keep up with. Lifelong neighbors are disappearing, white, paranoid, disdainful people are moving in, vulture real estate agents are trying to get her to part with her mother’s home. She teams up (reluctantly) with new white neighbor Theo to put together a more accurate and inclusive tour of the neighborhood and try to preserve some of its real history. 

But as they dive deeper, weird things continue to happen in the community. Things get darker, stranger, the treats get bigger. And soon, they’re embroiled in a conspiracy that no one will believe. 

 I read this book in one day. I started it on the edge of the lake and finished it while eating dinner later that night—I could literally not put it down. Cole brings white woman tears, the slow prowl of a cop car, the microaggressions of neighbors, the frustrating bullshit spouted on a NextDoor page, rising rent, impossible binds, and more into a Get Out–like tale of psychological horror—surveillance, shadows, doubles, threats, set-ups, intruders. 

And most of all, Cole infuses her book with an overwhelming dread that is based more in reality than in any conspiracy: the dread of what will go next, which neighborhood institution will fall overnight, which neighbor will disappear without saying goodbye. Cole’s thriller left me buzzing with anxiety and anger in all the right ways. 

Content warnings for medical bias and neglect, gentrification, racism, depression, panic attacks, forced institutionalization, gaslighting, deportation threat, land theft.