Title: Girl Watching You
Published: 27th June 2019
Author: J.A. Schneider
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JASchneiderAuthor
Twitter: @JoyceSchneider1
Blurb:
Out of work actress Ava Beck, reduced to working in a West Village flower shop, starts to watch handsome, womanizing hedge funder Peter Greer, who lives near. He likes to romance his girlfriends with flowers.
Ava notices bruises on his troubled-looking date named Chloe. Concerned, she follows them after work to Chloe’s studio, second floor in the rear of a brownstone. She hears them arguing, climbs up the fire escape just as Greer angrily sees her…. and plunges into a world of stunning twists, murder and madness worse than any she could have imagined…
Review:
Goes down as another off my 2019 Bookworm Bingo Challenge – A mystery or thriller. What a thriller ride you are taken on.
Joyce sure knows how to write a great thriller book. A few red herrings thrown in for good measure – some too obvious to be true and others subtle – but you will still be thinking ‘what the hell!’ when the big reveal takes place.
Ava is an out of work actress working in a florist until she can get back into the business. Her career has got a roadblock preventing people from hiring her. The roadblock in question is the man she thinks killed her sister – no accident as far as she is concerned. Confronting him in a rage wasn’t the best move after he was found innocent and now all she can do is hope for a win in her civil case suit against him. She just needs to find some more evidence or someone who has been prevented from speaking perhaps? With all this going on you can imagine that sleep has been hard to come by. Her way of coping is a little strange, the whole climbing fire escapes and looking out for people kind of strange. Once was enough to make her feel something other than numbness when she helped someone she knew but this next time she wished she had done something more than just look in and run away. Given that the person who’s flat it was ended up murdered that very night.
The only reason she went to look through the window was fear that the woman was in some kind of danger. She spotted her earlier at the flower shop with her partner, along with bruises on her wrists. She viewed the man as a predator and wanted to make sure she was ok after seeing them leave. A quick look later that night was all she wanted to do to satisfy her curiosity. After spotting a row in the making, and also getting spotted by the man himself, she got out of there fast. It’s not until the next day where she finds out the women was murdered. Thinking she witnessed the murder, or the lead up to it, she makes it her mission to get to the truth. She couldn’t save her sister but she wants to give justice to someone. After meeting the man, Peter, though and finding out more about him she starts to question everything she first thought. Could she be wrong by missing a link between this and another murder? If so then the real killer is out there watching. If it’s not him then she needs to keep looking before she ends up being a new target.
Red herrings time right from the start. One minute you think it could be one person then get a vibe from someone else until the final reveal. Can you guess the correct killer? They may have done this more than once and be linked closer than you first thought.
5 out of 5 stars
I received a copy of this book from the author for my honest review.
