My Review:

Intriguing and fast paced, You Are Not Alone will have you questioning who you trust!  Shay Miller is an average, shy woman with simple requirements for a decent life.  A decent job, a secure place to live and finding love would make this young, vulnerable woman happy enough.  She is not quite at her goals, she has a boring job and lives a pretty isolated life.  She is the third wheel when her guy roommate’s girlfriend, Jody is around and most of the time she feels invisible.  Things change dramatically when Shay witnesses a suicide on the NYC subway tracks; she becomes obsessed with learning more about the woman who ended her life.

Sisters Cassandra and Jane Moore have tons of friends.  They are popular and fun and fashion forward…just the kind of people Shay would die to be friends with.   Shay meets the Moore sisters and they seem to welcome her into their glamorous, hand picked friend group.  They are slowly changing her life, with a make-over, a new apartment, and showering her with more attention than she is used to.  Her life feels different, better in many ways, yet there is an underlying feeling of dread.  Why are they taking her into their circle?  Psychological thrilling, You Are Not Alone gives you just enough each chapter to keep you on your toes!

As Shay strives to learn more about the woman who died in the subway tragedy, things get complicated with her new friends.  White lies she has told them in order to hide her motives and her insecurities are becoming more difficult to sustain, and then Shay is suspected of murder.  Feeling like she has nobody to turn toward, she is on the run and suffering from lack of food and sleep.  It seems everyone is out to get her, including a detective and her roommate.   Are her new friends, the Moore sisters helping her, or are they up to no good?

Hints and clues and twists and turns kept me guessing as I tried to unravel the mysterious web of women and lies.  Sarah Pekkanen and Greer Hendricks have the psychological thriller down pat and in You Are Not Alone they make us look into how far people will go to fit in and how far they will take things for revenge.  Addictive and so much fun to read!

Other psychological thrillers by this stellar team can be found here.

Book Club Discussion

I attended author Amy Impellizzeri‘s zoom book interview with Sarah Pekkanen and this is what I learned…

The Author Team

Sarah Pekkanen has written 8 novels on her own, and You Are Not Alone is the third book she co-authored with Greer Hendricks.  When Sarah and Greer first met they found they had a  lot in common.  They both studied psychology, are not the best cooks and have brothers named Robert.  Funny enough, I was a psych major, I am not a fan of the kitchen, and my brother Bob is officially Robert.  Anyway….Greer was Sarah’s editor at Simon and Schuster and they enjoyed working together so Sarah suggested they co-author a book and the rest is history.

Great Success

The two authors egg each other on to dip in to their alter egos and come up with dark and twisted ideas for their characters.  Every line of their books is written together and this method has been extremely successful for them.  The Wife Between Us has been optioned by Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s company, and Pekkanen and Hendricks have been hired to write the screenplay.  An Anonymous Girl is being adapted into a TV series for eOne where the author duo will be executive producers.

Fun Fact

In You Are Not Alone, their latest psychological thriller, Shay Miller carries around a data book.  She is number focused, and this notebook is filled with facts and figures which she relies on to help her figure out the world.  One of the facts she mentions is that a person will walk by 16 killers in a lifetime.  Sarah confirmed that based on her research, this scary fact has proven to be true.

Up Next

Pekkanen and Hendricks are now working on their fourth book due out in 2021, about a maverick psychologist.  In the meantime, available in May on audible, is a 20,000 word short thriller they co-wrote called The Getaway.

Goodreads Summary

Booktrib Review

About the Authors

GREER HENDRICKS is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of An Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us. The Wife Between Us has been optioned for film by Amblin Entertainment, with Greer and her co-author, Sarah Pekkanen, hired to write the screenplay. An Anonymous Girl has been optioned for television, with Greer and Sarah tapped to executive produce. Prior to becoming a novelist, Greer served as Vice President and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Allure, and Publishers Weekly. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

More about Sarah Pekkanen HERE