You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen | Audiobook Review

You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
Narrators: Barrie Kreinik and Dylan Moore
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan Audio)
Release Date: March 3, 2020
Length: 352 pages (11 hrs. 1 min.)
Amazon

{A Bit of Backstory}

Single Sentence Summary

After witnessing a woman’s startling suicide, Shay Miller’s life seems to begin taking a turn for the better… until it doesn’t.

From the Publisher

“Shay Miller wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is increasingly lonely.

Until Shay meets the Moore sisters. Cassandra and Jane live a life of glamorous perfection, and always get what they desire. When they invite Shay into their circle, everything seems to get better.

Shay would die for them to like her.
She may have to.”

The Draw

• My winter reading has been a little rough and a good suspense novel can often help me with that.
• I really liked this writing duo’s last novel, An Anonymous Girl.
• I tend to gravitate toward books with NYC settings.

{My Thoughts}

I listened to You Are Not Alone at exactly the right time. I’d been in something of a mid-winter reading slump, what I’d come to think of as the winter doldrums. The right audiobook can often break a bad reading cycle for me and I just had a good feeling about You Are Not Alone and happily, I was right. In this little thriller a young woman’s life is turned inside out after she witness another woman jump in the path of a subway. Shay Miller’s life was already a bit of a mess and watching another woman jump to her death only added another layer to her growing despair.

As Shay, a statistician, begins to track down what might have caused Amanda to jump, she comes across a pair of sisters, Cassandra and Jane who were close friends with Amanda. From there, Shay’s life finally begins taking an upturn as Cassandra and Jane seem to adopt Shay into their inner circle. Life starts looking better and better for Shay, until it’s almost too good to be true. Hendricks and Pekkanen brought a lot of life and back story to Shay, Cassandra and Jane and did a great job slowly building the story from alternating perspectives, keeping me engaged and always eager to get back to it.

There were however a few minor flaws. The biggest for me was the story’s structure. It was just a little too similar to that of An Anonymous Girl, leaving me hoping this writing duo isn’t going to drift into formulaic writing. Also, Cassandra and Jane, at only 30 & 32 had built a remarkably successful PR business and throughout I couldn’t help questioning how. And finally, two major characters just sort of went missing in the story’s resolution, while a more minor character took center stage. This was the twist, but I still felt like it could have been handled with a little more finesse. Still, as I said, these were all minor flaws and I enjoyed You Are Not Alone very much as will many others. Grade: B

 Narration: Barrie Kreinik was one of the narrators of An Anonymous Girl, but Dylan Moore was new to me. Both women did a wonderful job with Kreinik narrating the chapters told from Cassandra’s and Jane’s perspectives and Dylan Moore those from Shay’s. This back and forth gave the audiobook an added layer of structure that really worked. Both were wonderful! Grade: A

If you liked this book you might also enjoy:

• All is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker – This story features a psychologist who, like Cassandra and Jane, may not be all he first appears to be. (my review)
• An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen – If you like the writing style of this duo, and somehow you’ve missed it, you’ll definitely want to read this one. (my review)

Note: I received a copy of this book from Macmillan Audio and Libro.fm in exchange for my honest review.