I'll Be Watching You

Every time Rachel Sorensen starts a new job or moves into a new apartment, her abusive ex-husband finds her and she has to escape all over again. But one night, as he waits for her, someone else is watching Rachel at the same time. When the stranger saves Rachel once and for all, she doesn’t realize that she’s in more danger than ever.

Abuse is a difficult subject. The issues of power and control are complicated and hard to translate for outsiders. In [I’ll Be Watching You], Charles DeLint steps out of his typical urban fantasy genre and tells a frighteningly real story of abuse and obsession. DeLint takes great care in reflecting the mindset of an abused woman trying to break free. But his take on the internal workings of the show more abuser’s mind sets the story apart from most writers who confront the subject. The typical composition of such books is built around the singular perspective of the victim, with the abuser as a dark and incomprehensible force who keeps coming until he is destroyed in some way. And while DeLint’s abuser is eventually destroyed, the writer doesn’t only feature him as seen by the victim or by other outsiders. DeLint steps into his fractured mind and displays his warped sense of the world. When Rachel’s abusive husband is dealt with, DeLint expands his exploration of the abusive mind with Rachel’s new tormentor.

Fans of DeLint’s more popular urban fantasy may not enjoy this diversion into the world of the real, but it shows his diversity and flexibility.

The only quibble I had with the book was the superhuman capabilities DeLint endowed his villain with. It was hard to believe someone with such obsessive qualities would be able to so completely compartmentalize their life and function successfully while decompensating at the same time. The effect is to back the hard won realism out of the story.

Bottom Line: DeLint shows off a rare understanding of the abuse and succeeds well outside his genre of urban fantasy.

4 bones!!!! show less

Rachel Sorenson has just escaped an abusive marriage, but she's still not free of her ex-husband. Frank comes along every few nights, talks his way past the security guard at her apartment building, and goes upstairs to beat on her door and demand that she take him back. Police say they just don't have the manpower to guard her around the clock, so she's dealing with this largely on her own.

Little does she know that someone is watching her.

Harry Landon is a photographer obsessed with Beauty. Not subjective beauty in its many forms, but perfect, unblemished, divine Beauty. He thinks he's found his goddess in Rachel. He watches her through his telescope at all hours of the day and night. He takes pictures of her. He knows that the goddess show more resides within Rachel, and when he cuts her, Beauty will burst forth in a blaze of light.

This is one of Charles de Lint's pseudonym books--the books he wrote openly as Samuel Key as a signal that this book is darker than his normal fare. I didn't care for From a Whisper to a Scream, so I've never been too interested in picking this one up. I finally gave in and read it in my attempt to read the Newford books in order.

I was pleasantly surprised for the most part. This was a straight-up thriller that was rocketing along and ratcheting up the tension. It seems a little unlikely that one woman would have two stalkers at the same time, but once you let go of that, this was a genuine page-turner. Frank is a textbook study of the abusive husband. Harry is terrifying in his convoluted, violent logic. Events just keep snowballing until the tension is almost unbearable.

And then.

Oh, and then.

It fell apart for me.

I almost threw my book across the room, I was so frustrated. I don't want to say anything about why, but it almost ruined the book for me. It had everything to do with some choices that were made, but it also had a little bit of what I like to call the Speed effect.

Have you ever seen that Keanu Reeves movie, Speed? You know how it should have ended at least 30 minutes before it actually did? That's what I'm talking about. If de Lint had just cut it a little shorter, this would have been a perfectly respectable thriller. But he didn't. And between the frustrating choices I mentioned above, and the cheat of an ending, I had to knock this back a full star.

Harry's meditations on Beauty got a little repetitive as well. I reasoned it away, thinking that the guy is obviously psychotic, so it makes sense that his thoughts would follow those well-worn paths, but it did get a little boring to read.

I like that de Lint chose to mention that Frank has a medical condition that causes him to act the way he does, but he never gave it a name. There's enough of a stigma attached to psychiatric disorders without authors inadvertently making it worse by seeming to imply that everyone with a particular mental illness is also a wife-beater.

I enjoyed watching Rachel get more confident and comfortable in her own skin. I always feel like de Lint does a great job portraying his female characters and Rachel is generally not an exception. Generally. She might not be my favorite, but she feels real and I understand where she's coming from.

I liked the way that de Lint worked so many women's issues into a book that really is a good thriller. Not only is there the abuse and the stalking, but there's the way that society views Rachel, as a victim who probably brought this on herself. Several characters talk about feminine beauty and the impossible ideal we are asked to live up to everyday, and the devastating consequences on our bodies and self-confidence. There are discussions about how women just have to be more careful in their day-to-day lives. A stroll home in the dark for a man can be a heart-pounding exercise in survival for a woman. There are even some career issues worked in, with some women being treated differently by their male bosses based on their looks. None of this took away from the action of the story, but it enriched it in a way that is reminiscent of de Lint's overall body of work. There's the story, and there's what you take away from the story. They both add to each other.

I don't regret reading this, I just wish that I could have read a version with an alternate ending. If you think you can overlook that, go ahead and give it a try. It really is a good book. show less

4.5 stars

Rachel has just gotten out of an abusive relationship, but her husband doesn’t want to let go. She has a job and only a couple of good friends to help her out. Little does she know, she also has an “admirer” (a peeping tom, really) who will come to her “rescue” when she needs it. But, from his perspective, the perfectly beautiful Rachel will need to be “tested” herself.

Ok, I tried to keep that somewhat vague, as the blurb on the book doesn’t say a whole lot, so I didn’t want to give anything away. This is one of the books de Lint wrote as Samuel Key, a pseudonym he took to distinguish his darker works from his fantasy. It was told in the third person, but the reader got to know more about what was going on, show more as we did follow a few different characters, than the characters knew, themselves. Certainly by the end of the book, it was a page-turner, keeping me on the edge of my seat, wanting to keep reading to know what would happen! I really really liked this one! show less

Of all Charles De Lint's works, I think I prefer the books published under Samuel M. Key. They're darker, more raw. The fear is palpable, which I find delicious. Definitely good for a day when you have nothing to do, because you won’t want to put it down or sleep alone.

I was unsure, well into this book, whether I was going to like it. That is not a comment on the quality of the writing, merely on how it fit with my reading tastes. I didn't think I liked where it was going, and so I moved forward a bit reluctantly in my reading of it.

Well, somewhere along the line it drew me in and didn't let me go. This was a really clever tale of suspense, full of dark twists. It is a violent story, that's the nature of the tale, but I didn't think that the descriptions of the violence were overdone -- though the crimes were quite unpleasant. (But, then, is murder ever pleasant?)

I thought the characters got a little soap-boxy about women's issues -- abuse, society's pressures upon women to be beautiful -- and some of show more that dialogue didn't feel quite natural to me, but de Lint put his money where their mouths were, so to speak, and SHOWED us the damage and the issues his characters were talking about.

This was not my typical kind of Halloween read, but it certainly had its own kind of horror. show less

I'll Be Watching You is not a typical Charles de Lint book. For a couple of months last year, Charles de Lint's name kept popping up all over the book blogs I regularly read, so I ordered what was available over at Paperbackswap.com. I'll give just about anyone a try if enough people recommend him. Charles de Lint typically writes urban fantasy, stories set in realistic, modern settings with magical or fantastic elements. He also writes more straightforward high fantasy fiction usually with a Celtic background. He's written over 60 books under his own name and under various psyudonymns.

I'll Be Watching You is a departure for Mr. de Lint. It's a crime/thriller. The heroine, Rachel Sorenson is on her own after leaving her abusive show more husband. She is trying to make a new life for herself in the city working as a framer in a small gallery and renewing her interest in becoming an artist. She does not know that she is being stalked by two men: her ex-husband and by a reclusive photographer who lives in the apartment building across from hers watching her through the telescopic lens of his camera.

I'll Be Watching You works as an entertaining thriller. Mr. de Lint brings his characters to life enough for the reader to care about what happens to them and creates a plot full of twists that keep the pages turning. But as I read, I began to develop this nagging suspicion that he was making it all up as he went along. Too many things just didn't ring true. In one scene, a friend of Rachel's takes her to a bike shop to purchase a new bike. She cannot decide between the three speed, five speed and ten speed bicycles. I've not ridden a bike in ages, but three speeds? Is there an adult anywhere in North America riding a three speed bicycle? When I last bought a bike to get around town 25 years ago, the major decision I had to make was mountain bike vs. street bike, not how many speeds the bike would have. Just about every bike in the shop had 20 as I recall. (Were I putting this information in a novel, I'd do more research.)

A writer of fantasy really can make it all up as he goes along. That's one reason why people who love fantasy love it--it creates its own rules for its own world. To depict reality, one must do research. In I'll Be Watching You Rachel has a difficult relationship with her best friend's boyfriend, an artist with a grudge against gallery owners. He dispises gallery owners as leeches who skim fifty percent off every sale, depriving artists of what should rightfully be theirs. It's true that gallery owners take fifty percent of every sale, some even take sixty percent, but every artist I know would happily give up half their sales to have a gallery represent them. Galleries often buy works of art outright if nothing in a particular show sells just to keep a promising artist going long enough to develop a following. I currently have several pieces in a gallery which has actually sold one and did take fifty percent of the sale. Why shouldn't they? They had to keep it on display for several months before it sold. They earned their share.

I think its important to get all of the details right, because the reader must trust the author at some point. If the details about things the reader knows are correct, then the reader can believe the details about things he does not know. Like police work for instance. Since I have no real experience with police work, I've no way of knowing if I'll Be Seeing You accurately depicts it. I do know that the book isn't exactly accurate when it comes to art galleries or to purchasing bicyles. This did not make the depiction of police work any easier to believe.

I do have another Charles de Lint book in my TBR stack and I still intend to read it. It's a piece of high fantasy--the cover features a monster, an man with a glowing sword and a woman in a white dress. I'm looking forward to it. It looks like fun. I'll Be Seeing You was fun, I just found it a little hard to believe show less

Rachel Sorenson feared she would never escape her ex-husband's abuse. Then a passing stranger came to her rescue - a stranger who had watched her from afar.

He was a photographer, and Rachel was his perfect subject. He lived only to make her happy - and eliminate those who didn't.

Now he wants more than her beauty. She owes him her life - and he means to collect. ~Back Cover

Artist Rachel Sorenson's ex-husband Frank is an abuser. They are divorced, and Rachel keeps moving from apartment to apartment to try to escape Frank's wrath. Frank keeps finding her no matter where she moves. He has caused her to be frightened all of the time, and not to trust anyone. He is her living nightmare.

Psycho Harry Landon lives in an apartment building that show more is directly across from Rachels. He keeps a telescope trained on Rachel's apartment at all times, so that he may watch her, study her, waiting for the perfect opportunity to introduce himself to her. He must have her - she is the perfect woman. When he catches sight of Frank planning to harm Rachel, Harry steps in.

Frank ambushes Rachel outside of her workplace and Harry is there. He kills Frank, then disappears. Rachel only gets a glimpse of her "hero", and she paints a picture of him, naming him as her "guardian angel". In order for Harry to get closer to Rachel, he decides to make friends with one of her friends, a gay man named Rob Carter. He does this by dressing incognito and posing as different people. He completely changes himself with wigs and colored contact lenses. He becomes "Peter Orlick" a "gay" man who introduces himself to Rob. Rob introduces Rachel to Peter. Peter will become a man that Rachel begins to trust. She lets her guard down, and begins to trust him...a mistake that she will forever regret.

I'll Be Watching You keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the story. You never know what Harry is going to try next, just to get closer to Rachel. There is a surprise ending to this novel...I never saw it coming. This is a fast-paced read. Highly recommended. show less