I See You

By: Clare Mackintosh
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: February 2017
ISBN: 978-1101988299
Review By: Jennifer Rearick
Review Date: March 7, 2017

Zoe Walker tries to live a normal life living and working in London. After divorcing her ex-husband Matt several years prior, Zoe moved her two children, Justin and Katie, to South London. Here she met neighbors Melissa and her husband Neil. As Zoe struggled to be a single mother, Melissa and Neil started helping Zoe with the children. They soon became an extended family. Although now all grown up, Justin and Katie still live with Zoe and her current boyfriend Simon.

One day as she is taking her normal commute home from work on the train, Zoe decides to pass the time looking through the newspaper. She skims through many articles and advertisements, but settles on an article about recent thefts on the train. After reading the article, she looks at the advertisements. While she is looking, she comes across an advertisement for a dating website, findtheone.com. Here above details of the website and a phone number, Zoe realizes that the person being advertised is herself.

When Zoe returns home, although she is adamant that it is her picture, she listens to her family tell her it isn’t her. Still not convinced, she continues to look through previous ads. While looking through the ads, she finds a picture that she knows she has seen before. This ad is of a woman named Cathy. Cathy was recently mentioned in the article about thefts. Zoe learns that the ad ran a couple days before Cathy’s theft took place. Zoe brings this information to British Transport Police officer Kelly Swift. Zoe also tells Kelly that although nothing has happened to her, Zoe’s picture ran in an ad a couple days ago. Kelly informs Zoe that she will look into it and get back to her.

One morning while Zoe is waiting to hear from Kelly, she sees a picture on the news of a woman who has been murdered and realizes that she has seen this woman before. Both pictures are of a woman named Tania, whose ad ran a couple days before she was murdered. Zoe decides that she has waited long enough and brings the information to the division investigating Tania’s murder. When Kelly follows up with Zoe, Zoe tells her that she has taken the information to the murder division. Kelly, knowing the cases are connected, through much coaxing, temporarily gets transferred to the murder division.

While police are investigating, they find out that the website, findtheone.com, allows users to download detailed information about the women. More specifically, it gives details of the commutes to and from work. Although she was warned about giving this information to Zoe, Kelly decides to tell her about the website.

Zoe soon starts to get paranoid that people are always watching and following her. While she is trying to let the police do their job, she runs into someone who downloaded her information. After having a close call with this man, Zoe knows that she is in danger. Since she cannot focus on anything, her boss gives her some time off. With her time off, she starts to notice things in her own life that cannot be a coincidence to this investigation. Zoe soon wonders who she can trust and how far one person would go.

I See You will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat as it is a real page-turner. Just when you think that the police are closing in on the person behind the website, the story takes another turn. As the reader learns more about the website and the characteristics of the creator, you can start to get an idea as to who the suspect could be. It isn’t until the very end that you learn who it is and why. This story will blow you away and take a twist you are not expecting.

Quill says: If you like to solve investigations, then this is the one for you. It will definitely test your problem-solving skills.