I am back with another review, this time it is of Clare Mackintosh's newest novel, I See You. Thanks so much to Penguin Random House for sending me a copy of this book for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own.
Oh. My. Gosh. Mackintosh has done it again folks. Just when you thought you figured out who was behind everything, she turns the world upside down.
This story follows two characters, Zoe Walker and Kelly Swift. Zoe is your average forty-something. She has two kids, a son who's 22 and a daughter who's nineteen. She's been divorced for 7 years after finding out about her husband's affair, and fairly shortly thereafter met Simon, who moved into the family home. Life is pretty normal, she works Monday through Friday as a secretary/bookkeeper at a real estate firm in London, taking the train in every day and back home again at night. Except one day, while flipping through the paper on the train, Zoe finds a picture of herself in an advertisement for FindTheOne.com, what appears to be some sort of dating site.
Zoe is obviously freaked out, but brushes it off as someone who looks like her. However, a few days later, Zoe finds the picture of another woman in the same ad, except this time she recognizes her as the woman she just saw in the headlines as brutally murdered just outside her apartment. Terrified, Zoe contacts the police where no one really takes her too seriously, and ends up talking with PC Kelly Swift, in the Dip Squad - the division dealing with pickpocketing and theft, who's just had a woman come forward about someone stealing her keys while on the train.
Kelly is having troubles of her own, she was moved to the theft unit after assaulting a prisoner. He had sexually assaulted a young girl, and after years of anger brewing from her own sister's unsolved sexual assault while in school, she snapped. Determined not to brush Zoe's concerns off, she works with the Murder Investigations to help figure out if the cases are linked, and if Zoe is in danger.
Obviously I'm not going to get into specifics, but I will say that this book was phenomenal. If you are familiar with Mackintosh's writing, you know that she likes to give you a million red herrings, make you think you have it all figured out, and then right at the verylastsecond completely blow you away.
The book itself touches on some very real issues, not only within assault, theft, more common crimes, but also those that are newer, that nobody really talks about, cyber crime. Zoe quickly finds out that the picture used in the ad is taken directly from her Facebook page, which as her daughter's boyfriend is quick to point out, is wide open on the privacy settings. The fact that no matter how secure you think your online presence is, it may very well be extremely public, is terrifying.
I also really loved having a book with a female police officer who wasn't making a big deal out of being a female police officer. There have been many crime novels I've read that are half about the crime and half complaints about how no one takes them seriously. It was refreshing to focus on the main crime plot.
If you've read Caroline Kepnes' book YOU, this book is like that but even more terrifying. In this book, you don't know who is doing the stalking, you don't know who is setting up these profiles, and for what purposes. Maybe they started out as a way to help people meet someone, but things have turned much more nefarious. Between Zoe and Kelly's alternative perspectives, you get snippet's of the creator's thoughts, what they have to say. And I feel like, mentally, they don't see anything wrong with what they are doing.
I won't say anything else, because you really do need to read this book. If I could, I would give it all the stars!
Overall, highly, highly recommend!