The Watcher Girl

Grace McMullen is not a likable person. She fully admits that and seems to have no care for other people, hasn’t been in touch with any of her family for years and seemingly has no friends, besides her boss Jonah.

Grace is a “watcher girl”, someone who removes things from the internet; revenge porn, critical reviews and sometimes things more sinister. She spends most of her time alone, behind a computer and that is fine with her.

Having left her boyfriend Sutton 8 years ago, deciding she had too much baggage, Grace searches on the internet and finds he has gotten married. Not only has he gotten married but his wife looks exactly like her, they live in her hometown and their baby is named Grace. Making a decision that she must apologize to him for the way she left so many years ago, she goes home to her family that she has not seen in many years and finds that Sutton and his family only live three blocks away from her family’s home.

Grace’s stalking of Sutton’s house almost immediately results in an accidental meeting with his wife, Campbell. While a tentative friendship develops, Campbell does not know who Grace is. According to Campbell, Sutton has become manipulative, controlling, and threatening and she has the bruises to prove it. Grace is surprised, having never known Sutton to be anything less than a loving person. She blames herself for having turned his world upside down when they broke up. She wants to protect Campbell and baby Grace, but that is when things get weird. Some of Campbell’s stories are not adding up and Grace doesn’t know who to believe.

The Watcher Girl starts off as a sequel to The Memory Watcher but becomes so much more. I have not read The Memory Watcher and did not know this was a sequel until the end of the book. This book is well written, with very developed characters. There are several side plots with her family that make the book more interesting, including her Mother who is currently in jail for murdering the woman who cheated with Grace’s Father. The Watcher Girl immediately grabbed my attention and I read it in one setting. One of my favorite parts of this book was watching Grace confront her own demons, but also owning up to her faults at the same time. As the reader, sometimes I struggled with seeing things with the situation that I felt Grace should have seen. Minka Kent has done an incredible job creating a troubled family and what can sometimes result from misguided intentions. While Grace seemed very intelligent, it was her naivete that caught up to her at the end.