In the dark I see you. Narayanan, Mallika. New York: Union Square & Co., 2023.
A blind woman stumbles (literally) over a body in her neighbor’s condo, and becomes a suspect in this great psychological thriller.
Audrey is blind, and lives in a lovely condo development in Sleepy Point, a suburb of NYC. Her next-door neighbor is Sarah. Sarah has a baby, Nicole, whom Audrey sometimes babysits, while Sarah goes to the gym or to a class. It’s not immediately clear what Sarah does (or will do after maternity leave), but Audrey works from home as an accountant.
What comes apparent fairly quickly is that Audrey has some secrets and is living in Sleepy Point for a specific reason – to investigate Sarah. When Sarah is found dead in her apartment, and Audrey is the one who finds the body, she becomes a suspect. The police believe that she’s keeping information from them, but would never guess what (and neither will you!).
This story goes back and forth in time and tells the past from both Sarah and Audrey’s points of view. When the twist came, I had just figured it out a few chapters before, but some reviewers say it caught them completely by surprise.
This is Narayanan’s fiction debut, and in some ways, it shows. There are a few characters that don’t get enough “page time,” and I would have liked to known more about them. But overall, I loved the character development and how she wrote a complex story that slowly unfurls. It is the type of story that after you know the twist, you want to go back and reread the story with the knowledge you now have.
If you like psychological thrillers and slow burn stories, then you’ll love In The Dark I See You.
Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at madams@alamancelibraries.org.