How well do you know your routine? When you wake up in the morning, do you make coffee at home or stop off at a cafe every day? Do you take the same commute? Where the same coat or jacket or shoes? What about bags? Do you carry the same purse or backpack? Do you drive or walk or take a taxi or subway? Do you buy lunch? Do you meet friends for nights out in the same spot?
You think you're the only one to know your routine. You think nobody pays attention to yours; they have their own to worry about. But you'd be wrong. How many people do you pass on a daily basis? How many do you nod "hello" to or break eye contact with? How many do you glare at until they quit staring at you? How many glare at you?
How many times do you send snapchats to your friends or post something on Instagram or upload a status on Facebook? How many people can see it? How many people have recorded it?
Who else knows your routine? Who follows you and, at the last second, veers off in a different direction, leaving you sighing breaths of relief and pocketing your mace again?
Is someone following you?
That's what Zoe Walker asks herself when she sees her picture in an advert in the London Gazette. Next to the photo is a site called FindTheOne.com. She is sure, certain, that she never had that photo taken. Her children and boyfriend assure her it's just a coincidence, nothing more.
But when another woman's photo appears, leading to her being dead 24-hours later, Zoe knows something is wrong. Danger is coming. She contacts PC Kelly Swift with her theory that whenever a woman's photo appears in the Gazette, she'll be killed. It's a warning.
PC Swift has her own demons to wrestle with. She's worried about an attack on her sister years prior, due to lack of police involvement when her sister went to them with fear of being stalked. Swift knows these girls need someone to protect them. This isn't random, this is a plan. A carefully, mapped out, categorized plan of girls and women in London who are being stalked by an online predator.
The one thing Zoe never counted on was that the predator is someone she knows.
Told in three different viewpoints, Zoe's in first person, Swift's in third and the stalker's in first, "I See You" is a psychological thriller that will have you second-guessing your privacy settings on social media and changing up your routine on a daily basis.
While PC Swift's story is told by interweaving past with present, I wasn't a fan of her chapters. The chapters alternate between her and Zoe, with the stalker's mingled throughout like a spice making a meal more flavorful. However, Swift's chapters were boring and dragging to me. I didn't really see the point in having Swift's backstory. It didn't add anything to the story other than filler.
The ending left me jaw-dropped, staring at the last words, as if they would change before my eyes. Can someone say "plot twist"?! I was SO sure of who the stalker was. And the first plot twist came. Then the second plot twist came and I was flabbergasted. Mackintosh definitely makes you rethink just who you can trust. And just how private you really are.
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