The Book:
With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson
Published April 25, 2023 by William Morrow
Date read: May 20, 2023
The Characters:
Meribel
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
It started with the letters…
For actress Meribel Mills, disturbing fan mail is part of the price of fame. So when she starts getting creepy letters written in fruit-scented marker she is mostly unphased and diligently files them along with her other messages from unhinged fans. After all, she’s a single mom approaching forty, not the kind of hot young celeb who sparks dangerous obsessions. But there’s something different about Marker Man…
He’s been in her home…
Meribel’s sheets smell of unfamiliar cologne, and objects have gone missing around the house. Plus, the letters have become more perverse, with drawings of a naked Meribel tied up or chopped into pieces. While the police insist that stalkers hardly ever escalate to violence, Meribel has played the dead girl one too many times on TV to risk becoming her in real life. She and her daughter move from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a fresh start—but no distance is great enough.
He’s watching her…
Years of being in front of a camera have given Meribel a superpower—she can feel eyes on her, a creeping sensation like bees inside her skin. And someone definitely has her in their sights. Could Marker Man have followed her all the way across the country?
Who else might be watching—her ex-husband? The lover she left behind in LA? Her new neighbor? Suddenly, every man in her life is a suspect, but she can’t keep herself and her daughter safe from a monster she can’t identify. When the paths of all of these men collide, Meribel will find herself alone in the fight of her life, desperate to protect those she loves as danger closes in from all sides.
How did With My Little Eye end?
The Reveal:
Cooper was a bad guy, but he wasn’t the stalker. He had been drugging Sheila (as well as the daughters of his previous girlfriends) to try to drive a wedge between her and her mom and see how far he could take things. He had killed the daughter of a previous girlfriend. This happened to be the sister of Xena, short for Maxine, the homeless girl that Sheila and Honor were helping.
The stalker was a previously unintroduced character–a skinny nerdy 19 year old. Once Meribel saw him, she realized she’d seen him all over.
The stalker kidnapped Meribel and brought her to his RV. There was another girl tied up in there, and Meribel choked the stalker with her belt while he was driving to free them both.
At the same time, Honor and Sheila had let Xena into the building to kill Cooper. She told them what Cooper had done to her sister, and they believed her. Xena pulled Cam’s gun on Cooper (which Honor had brought into the basement to protect them from the stalker they thought was there) but was unable to shoot him. The three girls ended up pushing Cooper off the balcony. He landed on the pavement right in front of Cam, who was coming to rescue Meribel from the stalker.
The Ending:
It ended pretty abruptly with Meribel calling Honor once she was rescued from the crashed RV. Cam had coached the children what to say to play dumb about Cooper’s death, but not a lot was resolved.
The Review:
With My Little Eye is a entertainment-industry stalker thriller where actress Meribel has run home to Georgia to escape her Hollywood stalker. I normally love Joshilyn Jackson’s thrillers, but this one wasn’t my favorite of the collection.
For its pros, I thought Jackson did a wonderful job of spinning the alternating plotlines together in a way that wasn’t confusing. There was a lot going on, but I never had a problem keeping it straight. I think the audio copy and full-cast narration helped a lot with this, because from other reviews it sounds like it was hard to keep the POVs straight without chapter titles.
I didn’t like Meribel, I found her whiny and annoying. Cooper and Cam were too similar, so I kept getting them messed up. I was also disappointed by the reveal of the stalker. The storyline with the kids helping the homeless girl was good, but if I had a stalker I’d definitely be paying more attention to what my little kid was doing with whom.
The ending was too cliffhangery for my taste. Some things were resolved but a lot wasn’t and I felt somewhat unsatisfied. An epilogue would’ve been good to wrap up some loose ends, I think.
I’m still a Joshilyn Jackson fan and will pick up her next thriller (especially if it continues to match these covers and titles, I love the theme!), but this is one you can skip.
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