About the Book:
The gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
My Review:
I was SO excited to read my first Alyssa Cole book and this blurb sounded fantastic! While I loved the dual narration, and the narrators were wonderful, I just was not grabbed at all by the story.
I loved the plot of this book. Sydney is concerned by the gentrification process happening in her beloved Brooklyn neighborhood. She volunteers to lead walking tours of the neighborhood and enlists her neighbor Theo. The pacing in the first half of the book was very slow, and there were also elements of an enemies-to-lovers romance thrown into the mix.
Although Sydney is supposed to be a strong heroine, I was very put off by her constant references to her “Mommy”. This is a woman who is in her thirties and has gone through a divorce. She is constantly hiding from people, feelings and her past and I think I would have liked her to have a little more backbone.
The plot develops into a story very much like the movie “Get Out” which felt fresh at the time but seems a little heavy-handed here. The story also rockets to a jaw-dropping conclusion which then made the book feel like science-fiction. I love a good sci-fi book but those elements just didn’t work for me here.
I enjoyed the aspects of the story that discussed the the history of Brooklyn, and would have loved a more organic integration of that history into the book. All in all, this one was not for me, but many readers raved about it, so definitely pick it up if the blurb intrigues you!
