Watch Me by Jody Gehrman #bookreview #thriller

Title: Watch Me

Author: Jody Gehrman

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Publication Date: January 23, 2018

Page Count: 320

My rating: 2 1/2 stars

About the book:

For fans of You by Caroline Kepnes and Her by Harriet Lane comes a riveting novel of psychological suspense about how far obsession can go.

Kate Youngblood is disappearing. Muddling through her late 30s as a creative writing professor at Blackwood college, she’s dangerously close to never being noticed again. The follow-up novel to her successful debut tanked. Her husband left her for a woman ten years younger. She’s always been bright, beautiful, independent and a little wild, but now her glow is starting to vanish. She’s heading into an age where her eyes are less blue, her charm worn out, and soon no one will ever truly look at her, want to know her, again.

Except one.

Sam Grist is Kate’s most promising student. An unflinching writer with razor-sharp clarity who gravitates towards dark themes and twisted plots, his raw talent is something Kate wants to nurture into literary success. But he’s not there solely to be the best writer. He’s been watching her. Wanting her. Working his way to her for years.

As Sam slowly makes his way into Kate’s life, they enter a deadly web of dangerous lies and forbidden desire. But how far will his fixation go? And how far will she allow it?

A gripping novel exploring intense obsession and illicit attraction, Jody Gehrman introduces a world where what you desire most may be the most dangerous thing of all.

My review:

Watch Me by Jody Gehrman is a book being sold as a psychological suspense for the fans of You by Caroline Kepnes and Her by Harriet Lane. Now I’ve never read Her but I have read You and was a huge fan so of course I must have read that line and immediately grabbed this book to read. By the time I’d gotten around to this one though I quite honestly forgot what the synopsis had held since I’d have my copy a few months waiting until closer to publication to read. Immediately though when starting this one I thought to myself well this reminds me a lot of You so hopefully I’m going to love it.

Now I’m sure when seeing my rating of 2.5 stars one would begin wondering just where this went wrong for me. Well, I’m honestly partly not sure as again I seem to be in the minority with my rating but having been a fan of You this one to me just seemed to be a poor imitation that didn’t hold the spark of the original. People have told me that they even started rooting for Joe while reading You and while I wouldn’t go that far myself I did think he held a sort of comical charm to his rants that made that story what it was. While being completely creepy and disturbing having Joe learn so much off of so little and go about his stalking it also turned the tides and brought laughter into the read. With Watch Me I just found myself disliking both of the main characters in here and instead of the unlikable likable Joe they both remained simply unlikable to me through the whole book.

Also, as the story went on with this one and I never found myself warming up to Sam or Kate as it switched the point of view between them I just kept waiting for that moment when the story broke out of the shadow of another book and took on a life of it’s own and unfortunately for me that moment never came. To me this one remained somewhat mediocre or dull when all I kept thinking of was another book that I had loved no matter what was going on in the story. It’s one thing to remind me of another book to gain my interest but quite another to seemingly just stay in it’s shadow and do nothing to break free and wow me with it’s own uniqueness and creativity. So sadly I have to say this one just wasn’t for me although others seem to be enjoying it.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

Jody Gehrman is a native of Northern California, where she can be found writing, teaching, reading, or obsessing over her three cats most days. She is also the author of eleven novels and numerous award-winning plays. Her debut suspense novel, Watch Me, is due out in 2018 with St. Martin’s Griffin. Her adult novels are Bombshell, Notes from the Backseat, Tart, and Summer in the Land of Skin. Her Young Adult novels include The Truth About Jack, Audrey’s Guide to Black Magic, Audrey’s Guide to Witchcraft, Babe in Boyland, Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty, and Triple Shot Bettys in Love. Babe in Boyland was optioned by the Disney Channel and won the International Reading Association’s Teen Choice Award. Her plays have been produced or had readings in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She is a professor of Communication at Mendocino College.