You Must Be New Here

A Novel

By: Katie Sise

Narrated by: Erin Mallon, Vanessa Johansson, Caitlin Kelly, Dominique Franceschi

A friendship is put to the test when a young woman disappears from a quiet community in a dark and twisty novel of suspense by the bestselling author of Open House and The Vacation Rental.

Sloane Thompson has a daughter named Daisy, attends school activities with other parents, and even has an amicable relationship with her ex-husband. But after ten years in bucolic Sycamore Glen, Sloane has yet to find someone to call a true friend. Until Harper and Ben Wilson move in next door.

Harper is open, charismatic, and restless. She and Sloane quickly become confidantes and fall into a deep and intoxicating friendship. Then one afternoon, Daisy’s dependable babysitter, Margaret, fails to show. When texts from Margaret’s mother and boyfriend go unanswered, the inexplicable disappearance becomes a cause for alarm.

As anxious hours turn into days, suspicion grows. And tension tightens. As if something is about to snap. When it does, long-held secrets are revealed, and not everyone in Sycamore Glen is who they seem to be.

©2025 by Katie Sise. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“A pulse-pounding psychological thriller that will leave you breathless. In a claustrophobic suburban landscape that feels like a pressure cooker of secrets, Katie Sise masterfully unravels the dark undercurrents of human nature. You Must Be New Here is both deeply unsettling and impossible to put down.”—Kaira Rouda, USA Today, Amazon Charts, and international bestselling author of Jill Is Not Happy

Great read

Fabulous narration and a gripping story. There were so many different stories woven together. Can highly recommend.

Really well done

Great suspense built up over time. You surmise (along with the character) who did it from the start. Yet, there is the tiniest morsel of doubt until the very last pages. Manu interwoven stories that play out over the life of the book.

Wow, a definite must read!

I love hearing from the different points of view and the author's depth of characters. Strong, female characters, persevering through the most difficult circumstances, survival through trauma, and resilience. It was hard to predict how the very end was going to turn out. When it finally got to the moment of truth at the crime scene, it left me hanging wondering, what exactly happened, craving more details, when it went into the epilogue. It was wild how it finally turned out! There were twists and turns all the way. I love how you could see how it portrayed some sort of closure from all the perspectives. As the story came to a close, the women ultimately found healing and reconnection. Not only within their family but a better, tighter bond with each other.

Fine?

Just meh- very obvious red herring plot points and characters.
Like others the narrators weren’t my favorite. Clara was fine, Sloan’s made everything sound way more dramatic than it needed to be. Like every sentence needed to sound like something gripping was coming next when it just was a mundane thing. And the last narrator for Lucy…why did it sound like a bad AI rendering of someone with a slight Asian accent?… am I the only one that heard that? And she wasn’t Asian- or did I miss that and just hear “red hair” and assume she was a white chick 😂 it was such a weird voice.

Ok story, narration is annoying.

Sloane’s voice couldn’t be more annoying. Clara was fine, but I couldn’t get past the Sloane character’s voice.