Looker (Sims) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
In prose that moves between lyrical and caterwauling, the poet Laura Sims has pulled off the high-wire act of making bitterness delicious (Most Anticipated Books of 2019).
Vogue


This debut is a penetrating and unsettling psychological thriller.… It’s a novel about identity, appearances, and envy, and it’s one of the season’s most timely reads, an innovative experiment in what a thriller can be (Most Anticipated Books of 2019).
Literary Hub


In this electrifying Hitchcockian debut, an unhappy woman’s obsession with a nearby actress will push the boundaries between insanity and desperation.
Washington Independent Review of Books


Tense, twisted and briskly paced.… Somewhat surprisingly, the most disturbing thing about Looker is the creeping sense of complicity that Sims engenders in the reader… [compelli g] us to ask: Have we been deranged, predatory voyeurs into the actress's life—or into the narrator's?
Shelf Awareness


Laura Sims’ sharp debut novel is a thriller about an unhealthy fixation between neighbors, one that’s propelled by the unnamed narrator’s unraveling as she descends into a vortex of resentment and obsession (Best New Books Winter 2019).
Southern Living


(Starred Review) [C]hilling and riveting. In this tightly plotted novel, Sims takes the reader fully into the mind of a woman becoming increasingly unhinged, and turns her emotionally fraught journey into a provocative tale about the dangers of coveting what belongs to another
Publishers Weekly


[A] gripping and intense debut.…This twisted and tightly coiled tale will define obsession on a new level.
Library Journal


Readers fond of protagonists who profess to guzzling wine at nine a.m. will breeze right through this one's bad decisions, moments of shocking clarity and cruelty, and—no spoilers!—total undoing. A dark and stylish drama featuring a self-aware yet unstable narrator.
Booklist


Like a modern-day version of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Sims' novel shows the warped reality and claustrophobic mentality of a person losing a grip on her moral compass. But this reality is conveyed with slack language and a piling on of plot turns…. Its most original and electric moments [are] when the narrator dives into the edgy poems she teaches her students.
Kirkus Reviews