Review of No One You Know- Michelle Richmond

No One You Know- Michelle Richmond

From the publisher-

All her life Ellie Enderlin had been known as Lila’s sister. Until one day, without warning, the shape of their family changed forever. Twenty years ago, Lila, a top math student at Stanford, was murdered in a crime that was never solved. In the aftermath of her sister’s death, Ellie entrusted her most intimate feelings to a man who turned the story into a bestselling true crime book—a book that both devastated her family and identified one of Lila’s professors as the killer.

Decades later, two Americans meet in a remote village in Nicaragua. Ellie is now a professional coffee buyer, an inveterate traveler and incapable of trust. Peter is a ruined academic. And their meeting is not by chance. As rain beats down on the steaming rooftops of the village, Peter leaves Ellie with a gift—the notebook that Lila carried everywhere, a piece of evidence not found with her body. Stunned, Ellie will return home to San Francisco to explore the mysteries of Lila’s notebook, filled with mathematical equations, and begin a search that has been waiting for her all these years. It will lead her to a hundred-year-old mathematical puzzle, to a lover no one knew Lila had, to the motives and fate of the man who profited from their family’s anguish—and to the deepest secrets even sisters keep from each other. As she connects with people whose lives unknowingly swirled around her own, Ellie will confront a series of startling revelations—from the eloquent truths of numbers to confessions of love, pain and loss.

A novel about the stories and lies that strangers, lovers and families tell—and the secrets we keep even from ourselves—Michelle Richmond’s new novel is a work of astonishing depth and beauty, at once heartbreaking, provocative, and impossible to put down.


No One You Know is the first book I've read by Michelle Richmond. Though I wasn't wild about it, I wasn't disappointed either. The book is about Ellie, and her emotional struggle with the murder of her sister, Lily.

Michelle Richmond's writing is very precise, and I liked that. There were a couple of times the story slowed down for me. Lily was a expert at math, and because of that Michelle Richmond put in quite a bit about math equations, and theories, and Ellie's job dealt with coffee, so there was a bunch of coffee information. I like coffee, but I don't find it interesting, and I hate math. I found myself skimming through those parts. The story would be going fluently, then brake. It got frustrating.

Ellie finds herself confiding about her sister, and her murder to her college professor, who she thinks has become a good friend, only to be betrayed when she finds out he is writing a nonfiction book about it. The consequences in so many peoples lives when the book comes out was a very interesting part of the book.

Though there was the mystery of who killed Lily, I didn't really get into it like a typical who done it. The mystery part took second to the emotional journey of Ellie through her grief, and what ifs.

No One You Know is a decent read, but not all I was expecting it to be. I wouldn't go out and buy it, but if you come upon it at the library, check it out, and give it a try.

Rating: 3/5