I KNOW YOU

A lonely woman’s efforts to find friendship reveal the nasty underbelly of social media.

Heavily pregnant Taylor Watson has moved from California to London with her British husband, Jake, in an attempt to heal their marriage after his affair. Taylor finds it hard to forgive Jake, especially since his travels for his job often leave her alone. In an effort to make new friends, she joins a walking group, where she meets Simon, an ethical hacker who works out of his home as he takes care of his aging father. Simon’s a bit odd but seems harmless. A more appealing potential friend is Anna Jones, who’s also pregnant and who has a husband off working in Qatar. Taylor helps Anna decorate her rather sad apartment, and they begin to spend more time shopping and lunching together. When Taylor’s neighbor Sarah asks her to join a book group, she brings Anna along to meet the other member, Caroline Hughes-Smith, who went to school with Jake. Sarah, setting her cap for Jake, uses the excuse of arranging a birthday party for Taylor for a night out with him, arousing Taylor’s suspicions. Interspersed chapters present the thoughts of an unidentified person stalking the hated and despised Taylor online, where both she and Anna overshare details of their lives. Meantime, Anna insists she’s being watched, perhaps by the person who dropped a baby rattle through her mail slot in the dead of night. She confesses that she’s feared the unknown ever since her roommate was raped and murdered while Anna slept. In Jake’s absence, Taylor relies more and more on Anna, who feeds her doubts about Jake and Sarah. When a crisis arises, the agonized Taylor can’t decide whom to trust.

Kantaria (The One that Got Away, 2017, etc.) has produced a psychological thriller that will make your hair stand on end as you join her heroine in guessing which of her new friends is really her deadly enemy.