S. F. Prescott

Intriguing premise and filled with suspense.

Armando Lucas Correa is an award-winning journalist, editor, author, and the recipient of several awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications and the Society of Professional Journalism. He is the author of the international bestseller The German Girl, which is now being published in seventeen languages and has sold more than one million copies; The Daughter’s Tale; and The Night Traveler, for which he was awarded the Cintas Foundation Creative Writing Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his husband and their three children.

Published January 16th, 2024.

I was hooked from the beginning of this book! Correa’s voice was strong throughout, keeping me turning the pages until the very end. The protagonist, Leah, lives with a form of visual impairment called akinetopsia, or motion blindness. Something I’d never heard of before but which created an intriguing premise. A clever detail which heightened her other senses, and an interesting angle to use in order to when describing her altered perceptions of her environment and people around her. However it also confused me, and I felt disoriented at times (which may have been the point). I love reading stories set in NYC, and this one was of personal interest to me since it took place in an apartment building a few blocks from where I used to live. The short chapters quickened the pace up and the characters felt very real. Leah’s motion blindness left me feeling suspicious of everyone around her, since it was difficult to pick up on their reactions, making Leah the perfect unreliable narrator.

After the midpoint, I found the story confusing at times, unable to tell what was real due to Leah’s state of panic. The reasoning behind the murder felt odd as did the relationship between Alice and Mark, and their reasons for befriending Leah. Leah was an intriguing protagonist but the reveal of her true nature at the end came as a shock considering the lack of references to suggest otherwise (apart from the midpoint). I would have liked to read a different POV from someone who observed Leah, instead of it all coming directly from her. Her impaired perceptions definitely created suspense, but it also left a lot of the side characters feeling flat.

For readers who enjoy complex female characters, psychological suspense, and twisty reveals.

Synopsis:

Leah has been living with akinetopsia, or motion blindness, since she was a child. For the last twenty years, she hasn’t been able to see movement. As she walks around her upper Manhattan neighborhood with her white stick tapping in front, most people assume she’s blind. But the truth is Leah sees a good deal, and with her acute senses of smell and hearing, very little escapes her notice.

She has a quiet, orderly life, with little human contact beyond her longtime housekeeper, her doctor, and her elderly neighbor. That all changes when Alice moves into the apartment next door and Leah can immediately smell the anxiety wafting off her. Worse, Leah can’t help but hear Alice and a late-night visitor engage in a violent fight. Worried, she befriends her neighbor and discovers that Alice is in the middle of a messy divorce from an abusive husband.

Then one night, Leah wakes up to someone in her apartment. She blacks out and in the morning is left wondering if she dreamt the episode. And yet the scent of the intruder follows her everywhere. And when she hears Alice through the wall pleading for her help, Leah makes a decision that will test her courage, her strength, and ultimately her sanity.