The difference between stalking and courtship is so thin, I thought then. It all depends on if the person likes you back.
…there was nothing I could do to shake my stalker’s avid interest. It wasn’t even about me, although Marker Man would say it was. I was a shape to him, the outline of an object, filled in by him, interpreted by him. Not a person. I couldn’t stop him from coming after me, my friends, my family, because he stayed hidden, watching me, inventing me.
Meribel Mills has a problem. Well, a few, really, but there is a GINORMOUS one in particular, even without the age thing. Coming up on the big four-oh, getting work is increasingly challenging. Acting is not kind to anyone, but gets worse, especially for women, as they age. Meribel had been making a living in the biz, her big break playing a regular in a TV series some years back. She is the most fortunate kind of actor, a working actor. People still recognize her on the street “Hey, weren’t you on…?” but she is not hounded by paparazzi like real stars.
Nevertheless, someone in particular did notice her, and is, in fact, obsessed with her. (No doubt he considers himself to be her Number One Fan) He sends her letters in a distinctive hand, candy scented, and brighty colored. While professing undying love, the images he includes tend toward the homicidal. LAPD was not much help. Happy to step in once her body had been found, but short of that, sorry. No crime? No time. It became so bad that she accepted a role in her home town, Atlanta, a place she had sworn never to return to, leaving LA, friends, contacts, and a promising relationship. Maybe her stalker would lose the scent. As if. They call him Marker Man.
Joshilyn Jackson – image from her site – shot by Scott Winn
We follow Meribel as she tries to cope with the threat from this stalker. She is also trying to negotiate her relationships with the men in her life, her ex, the bf she left in LA, and a new acquaintance in her building. The pressure ratchets up as the killer becomes bolder and more terrifying. Could he be one of her real or potential love interests?
Meribel did not move east alone. Her 12yo adopted daughter, Honor, moved with her. Mother-daughter relationships are always a central element in Jackson’s novels. This one, though, offers a bit of a twist. Honor is on the autism spectrum. It is quite interesting following her trains of thought, and seeing how she copes with the world. There is a reason this piece of the novel works so well.
My daughter came to me in high school and was like, “Mom I think I’m on the autism spectrum…I’ve been reading about girls on the autism spectrum.” I’m like, “Honey, tell me why, what you think, because…that’s insane.” So she starts saying all these things and to every one of them she’s like, “well, girls on the autism spectrum do” this and this and this and this, and I would say, “Honey, that is normal. I was just like that. Every girl does that. OK?” No, they don’t! But the things she was describing were very very classic female autism, and seemed normal to me, because I was autistic…It’s cool that I was able to write Honor from a perspective of knowing what was really going on with her. – from Friends and Fiction interview
The love between Meribel and Honor comes through dazzlingly. We really get to see what it might be like to parent at least one sort of neuro-divergent child.
Additional content covers several areas. Hollywood permeates as a background. We get a look at Meribel’s early days there trying to get work, and at the predation of those with power. She remarks about parties to which she is invited, girls and boys like me are there as party favors. We get a look at how the value assigned to age and beauty impacts an actor’s career options. Not just actors, either. Meribel is not the only woman here struggling to look as young and attractive as possible. There is at least some irony in the fact that Meribel, whose career success requires that people watch her, is afflicted by someone who became smitten via his TV screen, but who now watches in a very different way. He even enters her home. How can you hold off the obsessed when modern media and technology makes it so easy to find out about you, and worse, to locate you? There is further irony in the fact that, now in Atlanta, Meribel does some stalking of her own. And not just on-line. She, however, holds no psychotic views, and sends no terrifying letters.
…this book is about gaze, like who is watching you and how does that change the power dynamic. – from the Friends and Fiction interview
Or, I suppose, spying, if one extends the title. Privacy is tough to come by. Jackson also offers a look at fans and detractors, how they interact with an actor when they recognize one in real life. The book closes with a nod to events that are about to become a big deal back in LaLa Land.
Who can you trust? Several candidates are offered for the baddie. The guy she left on the West Coast has managed a trip to Atlanta. Is he just looking for love, or something darker? A neighbor in Meribel’s new apartment complex has an on-again-off-again girlfriend, but seems interested. He has some nice qualities, but some issues as well. Meribel is still attached to her ex, James, in her head, if not in reality, even though he is now married with kids. Was he the guy watching her from across the street in the rain recently?
This is my sixth Joshilyn Jackson novel. The first was Someone Else’s Love Story, her seventh, so I missed a fair bit. But I believe they were of a cloth in many ways. Her site identifies nine novels as Southern Fiction. I was smitten with SELS and with the two that followed, The Opposite of Everyone and The Almost Sisters. Jackson offered engaging characters, a strong sense of place, and considerations of religion, race, and culture that were smart and moving. With My Little Eye is the third novel she has written of a different sort, following Never Have I Ever in 2019 and Mother May I in 2021. All three are pretty good thrillers, and all have payload beyond the core story. But none of them, however entertaining, provide the deeper resonance and satisfaction of the three written before them. The change came about organically.
I think that what really happened was I’d been trying to say something about my family history and the South, this land that I love, and I feel ambivalent about and I wrote a book called The Almost Sisters. And I’m not saying that I said it perfectly. I don’t think you can ever…the thing I was trying to say, I’ll never be able to say it better than in The Almost Sisters. I felt like a weight had been lifted. So I just started writing my next novel…I got a third of the way through the book and we were in negotiations and I was like this is a thriller. I’m writing a thriller by accident, and I called my agent. I was like “we can’t sign that contract. I’m writing a thriller. And she’s like “You’re writing a what?” – from Friends and Fiction interview
Don’t get me wrong, I like her thrillers, including this one, just fine. I appreciate the content that arrives along with the more page-turning tales, and respect her feeling that she has said all she has to say about the South, for now, anyway. But I enjoyed her earlier work more. I may be in a minority on this, as sales of her thrillers, I am told, have been better than for her Southern books. It’s like ice cream, I expect. It is all wonderful, but everyone has favorite flavors.
In any case, Jackson will engage you with a special mother and daughter, make you smile at their connection, keep you turning pages as you try to figure out, along with Meribel, who Marker Man might be, and worry who may or may not be left alive by the end. Your eyes may or may not be little, but you would do well to put them to use reading Joshilyn Jackson’s latest spark to increased blood pressure and late-night-reading-induced sleep loss.
Q – How did you get into the head of a stalker and how did that affect you?
AHe made me need to take a bath. I didn’t want to write him. I didn’t plan to write him in there. I started writing the book. I knew it would be mostly Meribel’s story. Meribel narrates probably 80 percent of the book, but there are a few other voices that come in, and I did not plan to let that man talk, and then I was like, ok. He has to be more present than this. Like I thought people aren’t gonna understand how, why would she leave her town. They would have to understand. Because I knew how bad he was, but it wasn’t appearing on the page. So, then I wrote his letters. I was like maybe I’ll just show his letters, but even that was not enough. People aren’t gonna understand why she makes these extreme choices until they understand how much danger she’s actually in and how bad this is. But yeah, it was gross and icky and he’s not a good person. – from Friends and Fiction interview
Review posted – 06/16/23
Publication date – 04/25/23
I received an ARE of book name from publisher in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.
This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads
=======================================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages
My reviews of other books by Joshilyn Jackson
—–2021 – Mother May I
—–2019 – Never Have I Ever
—–2017 – The Almost Sisters
—–2016 – The Opposite of Everyone
—–2013 – Someone Else’s Love Story
Interviews
—–Friends and Fiction – Joshilyn Jackson | Friends & Fiction #166 April 26, 2023 by Patti Callahan Henry, Mary Kay Andrews, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Kristin Harmel – – from 9:39
—–Military Press – Interview with Joshilyn Jackson by Elise Cooper
—–Decatur Church – 2023-04-25 Joshilyn Jackson “With My Little Eye” Book Launch – with Allison Law – video – 52:20 – start from 10:00 or so
Songs/Music
—–Billy Ray Cyrus – Achy Breaky Heart – Chap 20 – in the wave pool
—–Los Del Rio – Macarena – Chap 20 – in the wave pool
—–The Police – Every Breath You Take
Item of Interest
—–Wrote a Book – Book Club Questions for With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson by Luka
Coot's Reviews 