Review: Everyone is Watching by Heather Gudenkauf

Everyone is Watching

by Heather GudenKauf

Release Date: March 26, 2024

2024 Park Row

Ebook ARC; 320 Pages

ISBN: 978-0778310792

ASIN: B0C1T118ZZ

Audiobook: B0CGCCCY5M

Genre: Fiction / Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

3 / 5 Stars

Summary

Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated.

When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show—someone is out for blood. And the game can’t end until the world knows who the contestants really are…

 

My Thoughts

Everyone Is Watching is another of those books that is jumping on the reality-show concept, one that live-streams the action to TT or Instagram and relies on twists and turns and unexpected timings to draw followers. I admit to being a wee bit interested in this phenomenon and would probably watch one of these shows if it did occur, although I would draw the line at violence, like one of the horror novels I read about this. It does make me fascinated about our culture, and this is really nothing new when you consider the gladiators and so much more in history, and why we are so drawn to this type of thing.

There are five main characters in this story and I really wish they had been better developed. I liked the background stories about the characters and thought they way the author introduced them slowly was quite well done, and you could eventually see how they were relevant to the story and why they were brought to the villa. Each character was given a nickname and it wasn't hard to figure out why this was done, but how this related to each other took a while to figure out. Unfortunately, I didn't really empathize with any of the characters and couldn't find it in myself to root for any of them. Personally, I didn't really care who won or lost.  I think this would have been far more interesting if I was invested in one or two of them, and then something happened to them or was worried about something happening to them which would have elevated the tension for me. For me, I couldn't care less who won or lost. 

I did really enjoy the plot however, but in the same way I enjoy a good bucket of buttered popcorn. It was good fun to read (eat), but there was nothing really fulfilling (filling) about it.  I'm all up for a more horror-type game, but if you are going to go there, you need to commit.  All the tools were there, but it was written in such a way that made it confusing for the character as well as the reader. When things started to go downhill and the characters realized they could possibly die in this game, I'm not sure there was enough fear or questioning involved, too much emphasis was just on the money rather than the reasons they were there.  I do love a locked-room mystery thriller though, so I am always down for discovering the reasons why people would stay over choosing to leave the minute something serious happens.  

Verdict

Everyone is Watching had a very interesting concept, was fun to read, but with such a dark concept, didn't take it where it needed to go. There are some things that happen in here that make you go 'hum', and I don't know why authors always have this need to have 'happy' endings for their books. It makes for a very predictable ending, something you've read before. Sometimes it would be nice to read something different where you go 'I didn't see that coming!', and maybe the villain actually wins? Or maybe the villain is not always the bad person?