Greer Hendricks

This Audible Orginal is only 144 minutes long but I quit after the first hour, at the end of the first chapter because the set up was transparent, the tone was exploitative and, instead of being concerned with the welfare of the main character, I found myself moving from being impatient with her to angry at her. I decided life was too short to spend more time on this.

I picked up 'The Getaway' because it was free from Audible and because I'd heard good things about "The Wife Between Us" from show more these two writers and thought I could use this novella to sample their work.

When I was a third of the way in to the novella, I was unimpressed but still ready to listen. the storytelling was competent, the tone was creepy and laced with latent threat but I was struggling to believe in or care about the main character.

She was too conveniently tragic. She was also incredibly trusting. She was supposed to bright (straight-A-student, political activist) but she proved remarkably open to psychobabble of the be-the-best-teapot-you-can-be kind and saw a charismatic man where I saw a predatory charmer.

By the end of the first chapter, a second woman was in danger and asks our heroine for help. Her first instinctive response? To assume the second woman is lying to want to run to the predatory male to discuss what could have happened to this woman to make her exhibit this behaviour.

At that point, I was done. I didn't care what happened to this woman and my disbelief could no longer be suspended.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe I should be treating this a sort of literary fairground ride, something I'm supposed to enjoy even though I know the terror is manufactured?

Maybe.

Except, I hate fairground rides. show less

It's 6am. I just stayed up all night to finish a book I started at about 1am.
I was skeptical.
I told myself I would give it 60 pages to capture my attention.
I realized it had done that around page 120 when I remembered to check.
I tried to go to sleep.
I couldn't. I had to finish the book.
I'm still rattled. This book was not my normal fare, and it was so worth the change.
Wow.

Oh whoa! Everything I’d thought…Well, there was a part toward the end I thought didn’t quite work but the end worked perfectly and took me by surprise but it should not have, and I realized right away that yes it did make sense. It all made sense. It was very smartly done!

So, I flew through this book. It was the right book for me at this time. When I find the right book I can read easily and (for me) quickly. Of course, tomorrow I’ll be playing catch up with IRL things I neglected to show more do the last few days.

This novel was written by two women authors and as I was starting to read I wondered how that would work out. I noticed that these two women had also collaborated on a previous book. I was curious if the alternate voices are written by the two authors separately. In the end, the entire narrative story & characters were well and seamlessly written and I couldn’t tell there was more than one author. That is a compliment.

I was instantly absorbed and wanted to keep reading; it was hard to spend time away from the book. From start to finish!

I found every character fascinating. There was a certain way I wanted it to go and it sort of did, but there was a final twist. I loved it!

As I’d feared it got creepy and weird but it never went over the top. The suspense was great, particularly because it wasn’t intense too much of the time.

When I read the book’s description I was particularly interested in reading the book because when I was an undergrad psychology student I knew a lot of undergrad and graduate psychology students and I participated in many experiments, both as a subject and as an accomplice, and I studied many more studies. So I had particular interest in the subject.

I do have one main gripe that doesn’t really influence my rating of the book: It’s about Jess and her dog Leo. She spends virtually no time with her dog, popping in and out to occasionally walk with or cuddle. I love dogs and I love dogs in books, and while the dog’s presence served some purpose in this story, the way the dog was treated made me wish there was no dog character.

But this is a fabulous story, brilliantly done, and I can see why there is buzz. I got a library copy two days after publication and there were already thousands of reviews/ratings. Recommended for any reader who enjoys psychological thrillers sans violence that have fascinating, developed characters. show less

While their second collaboration (An Anonymous Girl) was good, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen totally knock the ball out of the park with their third effort, You Are Not Alone. This intense, edge-of-your-seat thriller kept me in a state of nervous anticipation and dread for the entirety of the story. (When you read a lot of books, any novel that does is even more impressive.)

Shay is an easy heroine with whom to empathize. There is an every person element to her that we recognize in show more ourselves. Plus, there is a good chance that we have all been Shay at some point in time. Conversely, the Moore sisters are the perfect symbols of queen bees - those women we want to be like and from whom we want attention, the ones who appear in every element of our lives from elementary school all the way up to our adult acquaintances.

There is definitely more than meets the eye when it comes to the sisters, however, hence that feeling of dread that never quite leaves you every time Shay interacts with them. The careful way in which Ms. Hendricks and Ms. Pekkanen reveal the sisters' true intentions and the reasons why create an uncomfortable and yet compelling story that keeps your attention even when not reading.

The morally gray areas that surround the sisters and their actions make You Are Not Alone a fantastic book club selection with many readily-available topics begging for discussion. (I am not a member of a book club, but I would join one for the opportunity to discuss some of those ideas.)

Ms. Hendricks' and Ms. Pekkanen's ability to create sympathetic characters along with their use of sleight of hand and various other plot twists to create stories I cannot anticipate nor expect are among the best in the business. Even better, their stories feel new and fresh - a rare experience in the world of thrillers. With three strong collaborations under their belt, they firmly entrench themselves onto my must-read list. show less