I have been a reader my whole life, but in recent years, the second golden age of TV (and streaming, and whatever it is we call original series on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon) has very much cut into the time I’ve spent on books. However, as stated in a previous post just two days ago, 2021 is the year this prodigal reader returns home to the warm embrace of literature.

Since the New Year, I have finished two- 2!!- whole books. To be fair, the first one I finished, Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea, I started sometime in December, and after many nights of blearily reading only a handful of paragraphs at a time, I seized the opportunity of Winter break and ample free time to push gamely through. I am glad I did, despite the story’s heavy reliance on trippy, fever-dreamish fairy tale tropes and mind-bending, circuitous plot devices. Clever author, beautifully written, but I did find myself becoming somewhat frustrated at times, as I became lost in the overlapping stories and timelines. A satisfying ending and full marks for creativity places this book firmly in my “Would Recommend” column, but this isn’t the book for which I have a glorious review.

The glorious review is for the second book I finished- this one in probably about 36 hours or so. I can’t remember the last time I devoured a book like When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole. I had heard about this book on some podcast or other, and it caught my attention enough to capture a place on my trusty yellow Post-It (a highly advanced reminder system, appropriate for book reviews, media recs, and password reminders). When it made the top 10 list of books recommended by another podcaster I follow on Twitter, I added it to my purchase list when I splurged at the local bookstore over the weekend. And I was not disappointed.

The story is told from the perspective of the two main characters, and each chapter, more or less, shifts back and forth between their voices. It is a story about gentrification, rooted in the history of Brooklyn from before there was a Brooklyn. It is a story about Black neighborhoods, and the richness and dignity of the community bonds within them. It’s a beautifully rendered story of two people who find themselves with lives that have not turned out as planned, and who struggle to square who they are with what outward measures of success have been placed on them (who among us grownups cannot relate to this?). And it’s a fucking exciting thriller of a read. Not my typical genre of choice, but man. I found myself ruining some of the reveals because my eyes were too excited to see what would happen next, and they would stray down the page. This book is absorbing and addictive, but all the while, you sense the underlying drumbeat at the core of this story- Black and Brown communities have always been, and still are, under assault every day, in ways that those of us who are not Black and Brown cannot even comprehend. It is a book that springs from the backstory of systemic racism, and follows that throughline to the moment we find ourselves in currently. A brilliant work of social commentary and historical context, wrapped around two characters you root for until the very end. 

When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole- Would Highly Recommend 🙂