This page-turning psycho thriller kept me up way too late on a Sunday night and continued to distract me until I finished it a few hours after I got home from work on Monday. All told: about 8 hours of reading over 3 days, squeezing it in whenever I could–ignoring laundry, dishes, cleaning, and grading.  But my cat was digging it since he flopped on the couch with me for hours while I immersed myself in the life of child psychologist Anna Fox, a pill-popping, three wine-bottle-a-day agorophobic who hasn’t left her 4 story NY brownstone in 10 months. She watches black & white movies for hours and spies on her neighbors, and she sees things: maybe they’re there and maybe they aren’t.

I was caught off guard at every plot twist—but then again, I’m a psycho-thriller novice.  This is not my genre. Lots of reviewers found the plot turns predictable and too much like other books with unreliable narrators who witness crazy stuff (apparently this is a popular genre these days), but as a novice, I had nothing to compare it to and no experience with predictions, so I was just reading along, startled at each revelation along this twisty road of a story—and shocked at the end. So in that sense, it was a five-star read.  If I were a more astute critic of this genre, I’d perhaps rate it lower. Mostly, it wasn’t too creepy (I hate creepy), but when it becomes a movie—film rights have already been sold—I definitely won’t see it.  Psycho-thrillers on screen are a definite no for me.  That said, I bet it will make a really good film.