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Book: “Watch Us Fall” by Christina Kovac
Publishing Info: Simon & Schuster, December 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publicist
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Lucy and her three best friends share a glamorous but decaying house in the heart of Georgetown. They call themselves “the Sweeties” and live an idyllic post-grad lifestyle complete with exciting jobs, dramatic love lives, and, most importantly, each other.
But when Addie, the group’s queen bee, discovers that her ex-boyfriend Josh has gone missing, the Sweeties’ worlds are turned upside down. In the days leading up to his disappearance, Josh, a star investigative journalist from a prominent political family, was behaving erratically—and Lucy is determined to find out why. All four friends upend their lives to search for him, but detectives begin to suspect that the Sweeties might know more than they’re letting on.
As the investigation unfolds, Lucy’s obsession with the case reaches a boiling point, and with it, her own troubling secrets begin bubbling to the surface of her carefully curated life. A thrilling account of the lies and delusions that lurk beneath cloistered groups of female friends and the sinister realities of celebrity, Watch Us Fall is a gripping mystery and an examination of the things we tell ourselves when we can’t face the truth.
Review: Thank you to Kaye Publicity for sending me an ARC of this novel!
After a couple years of slow starts to Minnesota winters, we FINALLY got a solid amount of snowfall just in time for Thanksgiving! And it looks like it’s going to be a cold and snowy winter for the foreseeable future. I, for one, am stoked, because I LOVE having snow on the ground for the holiday season. I also love having books to read that match the feel of the winter wonderland that we get for winters in Minnesota, and “Watch Us Fall” by Christina Kovac is a perfect pairing for the weather. Does it have a snowy setting? Yes. Does it have a strange mystery at its heart involving a missing person, a political dynasty, and close roommates who also have secrets? Yes. Does that make something I definitely want to read? Oh yes.
We have two narratives at hand with this mystery: the first is that of Lucy, our first person narrator who is connected to missing person Josh through her roommate/dear friend Addie, and who is trying to piece together what happened after the fact. The second is that of Josh himself, told in a third person narrative in the time leading up to his disappearance, generally starting around the time he began seeing Addie. Sometimes I am a bit hesitant when a story switches between POV styles, but I thought that it worked for the most part in this book, mostly because it helped peel back some layers of the mystery in ways that we couldn’t have if it was just one or the other. Along with that, it is an interesting way to throw in some misdirections and red herrings in ways that kept me on my toes, as I found myself thinking ‘ah, okay, I think I have this figured out’, only to then say ‘no, wait, that’s not it, maybe it’s THIS’. As we make our way to the point where both narratives converge, we have learned a fair amount about both Lucy and Josh that then made for the final push to be suspenseful and gripping.
I think that one criticism I had was that when I read the description it sounded like we were going to have a lot of focus on all of the Sweeties and their friendships as they connected to each other in different ways. But instead of having a number of interesting female friends with differing dynamics, we didn’t really get to see much of Estella and Penelope. Lucy as a character was fine, but at times I found her to be a bit grating, and if we had a bit more from Estella and Penelope to balance it out a bit I think that it would have worked better for me. On top of that, I’m not sure if I felt that some of the final twists and reveals were earned. I found myself a little underwhelmed by aspects of the solution to the mystery as a whole, but that is very possibly a very subjective thing and it may not apply to everyone.
BUT! The winter setting is basically perfect for this time of year. Like I stated above, I love it when winter settles in and the books I pick up match the vibe, and “Watch Us Fall” definitely has that winter mystery vibe! If you have the snow like we do and you like thrillers, consider picking it up!
Rating 7: A suspenseful mystery with generally successful dual narratives (though I wanted more from other characters), “Watch Us Fall” is a perfect winter read for thriller fans.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Watch Us Fall” is included on the Goodreads lists “I Support Women’s Wrongs”, and “Books With Unreliable Narrators”.
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