Book Review

“Look” beyond the genre classification, and you will find a brilliant character study of a woman slowly losing her mind!

Looker (Release Date: January 8th, 2019)

I’ve never crossed their little fenced-in garden, of course. I stand on the sidewalk in front of the fern-and-ivy-filled planter that hangs from the fence—placed there as a sort of screen, I’m sure—and have a direct line of view into the kitchen at night. I’m grateful they’ve never thought to install blinds. That’s how confident they are. No one would dare stand in front of our house and watch us, they think. And they’re probably right: except for me. 

In this taut and thrilling debut, an unraveling woman, unhappily childless and recently separated, becomes fixated on her neighbor—the actress. The unnamed narrator can’t help noticing with wry irony that, though she and the actress live just a few doors apart, a chasm of professional success and personal fulfillment lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with her face on the side of every bus, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and their three adorable children, while the narrator, working in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband’s cat.

When an interaction with the actress at the annual block party takes a disastrous turn, what began as an innocent preoccupation spirals quickly, and lethally, into a frightening and irretrievable madness. Searing and darkly witty, Looker is enormously entertaining—at once a propulsive Hitchcockian thriller and a fearlessly original portrait of the perils of envy.

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My Thoughts…

Whoever is marketing Looker as a thriller, is doing it a disservice. Looker is more of a character study of a woman slowly unravelling. It’s fascinating and riveting, but it’s not a thriller. Readers looking for your typical Psychological Thriller will likely not enjoy it, expecting it to be something they’re used to instead of what it actually is. And that’s a shame because it’s excellent.

This is the author’s debut novel. Her background is poetry, and the style of the story reflects that. It is like a stream of consciousness from the protagonist, highlighting her frame of mind brilliantly, showing us how unhinged she is becoming. I can see how that might be off-putting for some, but I really enjoyed it.

This book packs quite the punch for such a short story, and if you go into it knowing what you are getting into, I think many of you will enjoy it too.

Rating… A

Available on Amazon

Laura Sims