A Woman Alone
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF POPSUGAR'S BEST NEW BOOKS TO DIVE INTO THIS SUMMER
ONE OF CRIME READS' MOST ANTICIPATED SUMMER CRIME BOOKS OF 2020
A house with the darkest of secrets.
A woman who is the only one who knows.
It's another bright, sunny day in Venture, Illinois, the sort of place where dreams come true and families can get a fresh start. Cecelia Holmes deserves it after the home invasion that shattered her previous life. Now everything seems perfect - her high-security SmartHome, her doting husband, her sweet daughter.
Until she begins to feel spied on. Her husband doesn't believe her. Her neighbors ignore her. So when she discovers a shocking secret about the prior occupant of their house, she feels that she has no one to turn to. And now Cecelia must face her fears alone...
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A house that makes a great cup of coffee, toasts your bagel the way you like it, and does the dishes afterward sounds divine. Cecelia’s new home in an experimental suburban Illinois neighbourhood is designed to be secure and technologically advanced—it’s the perfect place to start over after a brutal home invasion traumatizes her family. But is IntelTech’s SmartHome a safe haven or the house from hell? And who is this “Lydia” that Cecelia’s house keeps talking about? Nina Laurin—who specializes in gripping domestic suspense thrillers like Girl Last Seen and The Starter Wife—channels her inner Michael Crichton in this believably futuristic techno-thriller. Filled with mysterious “well-vetted” residents and all-smiles staff, Cecelia’s new neighbourhood is a great backdrop for Laurin’s revelations about her heroine’s troubled past. A Woman Alone is such twisty, creepy fun that it’ll be a minute before we fully trust our home appliances again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cecelia Holmes, the narrator of this chilling novel of psychological suspense from Laurin (The Starter Wife), her husband, and their three-year-old daughter have moved to Venture, Ill., a gated community built by IntelTech. Each SmartHome is fully connected and controlled by a computer system that offers exceptional security, which Cecelia and her husband welcome after a traumatic break-in at their old house. When Saya, the new house's computerized system, starts to malfunction, the problems are small at first: the wrong bathwater temperature, the wrong coffee order. After Saya calls Cecelia "Lydia," the name of the previous occupant, the mishaps become more disturbing and dangerous. At one point, one of IntelTech's pleasant, if creepily robotic, agents asks Cecelia, "Do you have a secret? One that will send your entire carefully built life tumbling down? Because you can be sure. The house knows about it. And soon, so will everyone else." Cecelia does indeed have a potentially damaging secret, but so do others, including Lydia. Readers will keep turning the pages as the secrets of Venture's residents come out, along with potential motives for murder. Laurin is an accomplished storyteller.
