Just One Look by Lindsay Cameron

Release: July 27th 2021
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Source: Jean book nerd Tours
Find it at: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, TBD

Eyes aren’t the windows to the soul. Emails are.

Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking–love, friends, stability–and she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point.

While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. Cassie knows she shouldn’t read them. But it’s just one look. And once that door opens, she finds she can’t look away.

Every day, twenty floors below Forest’s corner office, Cassie dissects their emails from her dingy workstation. A few clicks of her mouse and she can see every adoring word they write to each other. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness, reveling in their penchant for vintage wines and lavish dinner parties thrown in their stately Westchester home. There are no secrets from her so she thinks.

Her admiration quickly escalates into all-out mimicry, because she wants this life more than anything. Maybe if she plays make-believe to become real for her. But when Cassie orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something of his marriage questionable, the fantasy she’s been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn’t simply admire Annabelle–she wants to take her place.

About the Author:

Lindsay Cameron worked as a corporate lawyer for many years in Vancouver and New York City before leaving the law behind to write books. Her first novel, Biglaw, was published in 2015. Just One Look is her suspense debut.

She lives in New York City where she is currently at work on her next book.

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Just One Look Review:

“Just One Look” is a gripping mystery thriller that made me want to read just one more page. Before I realized it, I have finished the book in one sitting.

Cassie is creepy and scary with her stalkerish tendencies. Yet, once you read of her background, you tend to emphasize her. But, she is the story’s highlight because you don’t know how far she will go on her obsession with Forest. I was engrossed and shocked at some of the things she did, like going to see Annabelle in the gym or checking his calendar. It was interesting to see the various emotions Cassie goes through.

Moreover, the author also executes the story creatively, where we see the story progress through email conversations and news articles. Furthermore, I enjoyed reading about Cassie’s background with her father and grandmother. The author also writes the supporting characters like Ricky and Dalton nicely. Ricky is one of those people who initially got on my nerves, but I liked him later.

However, probably my only criticism of the tale is nothing much happens in the first half. The story is still exciting, but I had hoped the story would be more thrilling. The plot gets extremely exciting only in the second half, which focuses more on Dalton. It would have been nice if the author added more shocking twists at the beginning of the tale.

Nevertheless, “Just One Look” is a gripping suspense thriller. If you are a fan of the TV series “You,” you will enjoy reading this book with the female stalker in the lead.