About the Book
Eyes aren’t the windows to the soul. Emails are.
Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking—love, friends, stability—and leaves her with too much time on her hands, which she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point.
While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender (and totally private) exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. Cassie knows she shouldn’t read them. But it’s just one look. And once that door opens, she finds she can’t look away.
Every day, twenty floors below Forest’s corner office, Cassie dissects their emails from her dingy workstation. A few clicks of her mouse and she can see every adoring word they write to each other. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness, reveling in their penchant for vintage wines, morning juice presses, and lavish dinner parties thrown in their stately Westchester home. There are no secrets from her. Or so she thinks.
Her admiration quickly escalates into all-out mimicry, because she wants this life more than anything. Maybe if she plays make-believe long enough, it will become real for her. But when Cassie orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something that throws the state of his marriage into question, the fantasy she’s been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn’t simply admire Annabelle—she wants to take her place. And she’s armed with the tools to make that happen.
My Review
Ooh, talk about some twists and turns! I really enjoyed Just One Look from the beginning – an innocent read of an email that could seem harmless but turns into so, so much more. Cassie is working a legal temp job after her disastrous firing, and while filtering through corporate emails stumbles upon a sweet exchange between husband and wife, Forest and Annabelle. Quickly realizing a personal email made it through the filter and that she shouldn’t look at it, Cassie makes the split decision to do exactly that – and have just one look at the words loving husband Forest writes to his wife. While Cassie doesn’t seem to be harmful – she simply wants to be in love and believe a happily ever after story – she suddenly finds herself in several comprising positions. Lying about her career and who she is in totality and fabricating chance meetings with both Forest and Annabelle to get a better glimpse at their world. But in attempting to create a new persona, it is Cassie who stumbles into the dark side of what a perfect relationship and life possibly looks like – and what exactly it takes to keep up that façade. A really solid read and if you enjoy psychological thrillers, this one should keep you entertained.
4 stars
