Richmond has a fast-paced, riveting style that carries you along like a leaf swirling downstream. She doesn't cheat...we have all the pieces to the puzzle. I like that! I could relate to Ellie in both her love for her sister, her confusion regarding herself, and her need to find the truth at last. Deeply moving, completely realistic, profoundly human. Richmond is on my list of authors always worth reading. ( )

This is a mystery story, but almost nothing like a typical whodunit, one in which a woman solves the mystery of her older sister's death nearly 20 years before. The older sister was a budding math genius attending Stanford. Both sister's lives became defined by the event and especially by a teacher of the younger sister who took advantage of her friendship to write a true crime story that named a fellow grad student as guilty of the murder - the book became a sensation and launched the author's career, as well as seeming to destroy the life of the grad student her sister had been working with. The author of the crime story is something of a sleazeball, not entirely evident at first. This is well told and I don't want to spoil anything by further descriptions but those who want to know more can read other reader's reviews.

I was initially drawn to this because it is set in San Francisco and around the greater Bay area. I really enjoyed this book, but I think the math geekiness was a bit overdone, as well as a few other expositions and too much time spent with the creepy ex-teacher. The author plays fair with the reader and there is a satisfying conclusion to this. ( )

This was the ideal vacation read. It was diverting, without requiring my undivided attention. In it, a woman looks for her sister's murderer, after the man who she thought was the culprit convinces her of his innocence. It's pretty much a standard thriller/mystery novel, but it's well-executed, well-written and well-plotted, which is enough to make it a stand-out in a very crowded field. Refreshingly, the conclusion didn't involve the protagonist putting herself into jeopardy, the killer being unnaturally evil or the person a lesser novelist would have chosen. No One You Know was fun, and while I suspect I'll have forgotten it in a few months, it was good enough for me to want to find a copy of the author's other book. ( )

rabck from MyssCyn; Twenty years after her sister Lila's murder, Ellie's path crosses with the man accused of the crime. Then her sister's notebook with her math equations comes into Ellie possession. What if the true crime book got the alleged killer and facts wrong? Really good who-dun-it. I particularly liked some of the book writing references, such as "arbitrarily you decide to look back or look forward" and "we live our lives by the way of [a] story" ( )

I really enjoyed this book by Michelle Richmond, the second one of hers I have read. Ellie's sister Lila, a brilliant mathematician, died 20 years ago and author Andrew Thorpe wrote a book about the case naming the killer as Peter McConnell the man Lila was having a relationship with. Before he wrote this book Thorpe spent many hours talking to Ellie and learning about her, and Lila, and the family. Ellie trusted him at that time and saw him as a friend, to whom she could tell her secrets and as a result she was horrified when he told her he was going to turn all their converstions into a book. She begged him not to but he went ahead anyway and this was the first of several crime novels he wrote. Over time Ellie became defined by the book. She saw herself in the way she was portrayed in the book. Grief had blinded her to logic and she could not move on with her life. But when she meets Peter McConnell many years later and talks to him she begins to have doubts about Thorpe's version of the story. As Michelle writes every story is an invention of the author. He decides its beginning and end as if it could only exist one way. But Ellie believes there is another way to tell this story and wants to further investigate the murder so she can move on with her life. This book had so much to offer. There was not just the solving of the mystery. Along the way as Ellie works to solve the mystery of the murder and rediscover herself there are many valuable comments on the art of story wrting. There does seem to be an expectation that if a book is classed as non fiction it will turn out to be true. but Thorpe's motives were questionable. He was more concerned with making money. Ellie tells Thorpe he should have concentrataed on the minor characters too for as he had said in one of his lectures the minor characters have to be dstinct too so that when people have finished reading the book they can remember everyone who has crossed its pages. Thorpe gives Ellie information that leads her to meet with other of the characters in the book and as a result the murder can be solved. There are mathemataical elements in the story as well for Lila was a gifted mathematician but they do not overwhelm the book. They are interesting. Ellie becomes a coffee cupper and works in the coffee industry and I loved this part of the story too for I love my coffee. This was a great book. We live our lives by way of a story. There are many small narratives that make up our story and I loved the way Ellie was able to solve the murder so that it was no longer the major story of her life. She wa able to move on and and see herself in a different way, and trust people again. ( )