



We Are Watching
A Novel
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3.7 • 11 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Gaylin’s clean prose and controlled narrative voice bring an all-too-realistic chill …. The book shows how social media can disseminate crazy ideas that tip into real-life violence…. it might also bring to mind the paranoiac claustrophobia of Rosemary’s Baby.”—New York Times
From USA Today bestselling and Edgar and Shamus Award–winning author Alison Gaylin comes a riveting tale of psychological suspense and family bonds, in which a mother and daughter are desperate to protect one another as they become targets of a group of violent conspiracy theorists.
Sometimes the world is out to get you.
Meg Russo was behind the wheel when it happened. She and her husband Justin were driving their daughter Lily to Ithaca College, the family celebrating the eighteen-year-old music prodigy’s future. Then a car swerved up beside them, the young men inside it behaving bizarrely—and Meg lost control of her own vehicle. The family road trip turned into a tragedy. Justin didn’t survive the accident.
Four months later, Meg works to distract herself from her grief and guilt, reopening her small local bookstore. But soon after she returns to work, bizarre messages and visitors begin to arrive, with strangers threatening Meg and Lily in increasingly terrifying ways. They are obsessed with a young adult novel titled The Prophesy, which was published thirty years earlier. An online group of believers are convinced that it heralds the apocalypse, and social media posts link the book—and Meg’s reclusive musician father—to Satanism. These conspiracy theorists vow to seek revenge on The Prophesy’s author...Meg.
As the threats turn violent, Meg begins to suspect that Justin’s death may not have been an accident. To find answers and save her daughter, her father, and herself, Meg must get to the root of these dangerous lies—and find a way to face the believers head-on … before it’s too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Edgar winner Gaylin (The Collective) delivers a timely thriller about the nefarious workings of cults and conspiracy theorists. Meg Russo and her husband, Justin, own a bookstore in the small town of Elizabethville, N.Y. The couple lives a quiet life with their 18-year-old daughter, Lily, a musician intent on following in the footsteps of her off-the-grid grandfather, who achieved minor rock stardom years earlier. While driving to Ithaca, N.Y., to move Lily into college, the family gets in a nasty car crash; Justin dies, and Meg, who was behind the wheel, blames herself. Back in Elizabethville, she finds the bookshop vandalized and videos across the internet accusing her and her family of practicing satanism. Quickly realizing that she, Justin, and Lily have become the targets of a doomsday cult, Meg wrestles with revealing secrets she's been hiding from her daughter for decades, including the story behind a book Meg published when she was a teenager, and details about Lily's grandfather. Gaylin matches her lucid, propulsive prose with crackerjack plotting. This will grip readers from start to finish.