Watching You by Joseph O'Loughlin

★ ★ ★ ★ 

Marnie Logan’s husband has vanished into thin air and she’s running out of hope that he’ll be found alive. A gambling addict, he has left behind more debt than unemployed Marnie is capable of paying off. Now some very serious guys are doing their best to get the money they’re owed from Daniel through Marnie by proxy. Marnie is struggling to keep her children fed and her lights on while she attempts vainly to prove that Daniel is dead so she can have access to his bank account and the life insurance money. Her therapist, Joe O’Loughlin, contacts his friend Vincent, a former detective to help find Daniel, alive or dead. Suddenly, a man’s body is pulled out of the river and the evidence points to Marnie as the killer. After all, her kitchen knife is missing and those marks on his body certainly look like stab wounds. More information comes to light as a recently discovered present of Daniel’s shows a suspicious trend. For some strange reason, every person who has hurt Marnie has come to regret having ever met her. Is Marnie more vengeful than she seems? Or is someone laying down their own brand of justice on behalf of poor Marnie? Only time and Marnie’s forgotten memories will tell.

I should start by saying that Watching You is not the sort of book I usually read. For starters, the #7 after its name really made me pause before starting. I hate starting a series in the middle and was worried that I’d have no idea what was going on or that I’d feel I was really missing out. For anyone with the same concerns, there aren’t any plot holes that you’re going to trip on by not reading the first six. The character of Joseph O’Loughlin does reference events that I assume happened in the past books, but the references are done in a way that you understand enough about what happened and how he feels to be able to understand the situation. They come off as more of a nod for the past readers but they don’t have much of a bearing on the current story. Second, I’m not a huge “detective stories” kind of reader. I picked this up because it was on a list about stalking books and the title seemed to keep that theme. It was surprising delight to find that this book had both. All in all, I really enjoy this book. It was one of the few books that I was genuinely sad to put down when I had to go to work or force myself to sleep at night. The twists at the end really caught me off-guard, as I assumed early on that I knew exactly what was going on. Michael Robotham does a great job of letting the reader know enough of what’s going on to assume they know everything, which is not the case until the last couple of chapters. I’m tempted to even try out the rest of the series now.