Who’s Who
I’ll start with the two narrators, then the people around them, and the last section has spoilers, so I’ll warn you before we get there.
The book alternates between two points of view. Odd chapters belong to Aly, even chapters to Josh, and the epilogue is Aly’s. That means you get to hear what each of them thinks the other is doing, which is where much of the humor comes from.
Aly Cappellucci
Aly is an emergency room nurse at an inner city trauma hospital. In her own chapters she introduces herself as someone who has seen the worst of the worst. Stabbings, shootings and car wrecks are a normal shift. She says she was at the top of her nursing class.
She is funny, blunt and very good at staying calm, and she copes with a bad night by being dark about it. She is also lonely. The hospital is short on staff, she pulls long shifts, and the men she sees stop calling when she gets busy.
Her mother died in a car accident when Aly was sixteen, and the book comes back to it when a patient reminds her of her mom. Her full name, Alyssa Cappellucci, matters later, because her family has connections she mostly keeps away from. She also has a recently awakened kink for masked men, which is how the whole story starts.
Josh
Josh is twenty-six, covered in tattoos, and very good with computers. He lives with his roommate Tyler, rarely leaves the apartment building, and runs a secret social media account where he posts masked videos. That is the Faceless Man. He is polite, dry and a little anxious in person, and quiet and menacing on camera.
He is also a stalker. He researched Aly before he ever met her, and breaks into her house in the first act. He knows it. Josh spends a lot of the book arguing with himself about whether he is a bad person, and the book lets him be funny about it.
His big fear is his father. Josh’s dad is a violent man whose crimes are the subject of podcasts and documentaries, and Josh worries that he will turn out the same way. He has been in therapy for years. His mom and stepdad, Maria and Rob, are the people he trusts. I’d call him the main reason the book works. He is menacing and very soft at the same time, and I’d rate him a firm five out of five. That’s my opinion.
Fred, the Cat
Fred is Aly’s cat, and he is a full supporting character. He is loud, he screams when he is unhappy, and he has strong opinions about bacon. Josh has never touched an animal before the book starts, and when he pets Fred for the first time he is terrified he will want to hurt him. He doesn’t. By the end Josh calls Fred his son, and Fred mostly ignores his own mother whenever Josh is around, which Josh enjoys more than he should.
The Faceless Man
The Faceless Man deserves his own entry, because Aly and Josh treat him as a separate person. He is the persona behind the mask: a tall, shirtless figure in a balaclava, with dark tattoos winding down both arms, who never speaks. When he needs to talk to Aly, he types, or uses a voice changer. He also hides a lot of what the audience would otherwise see, and the mask is what makes his videos feel dangerous.
That split is the point of the romance. Aly falls for the mask first, and then for the man who feeds her cat. By the middle of the book she is quite sure who is under it, and she plays along anyway. Late in the book, Aly wonders whether the mask is a different man, or just the same Josh letting a darker side out. I think the book wants you to decide for yourself, and that question is what keeps the final chapters tense.
Tyler
Tyler is Josh’s roommate and best friend. He is blond, vain, a bit of a bro, and extremely loyal. He once hooked up with Aly, which is why her text reaches him in the first chapter. He screens the women he brings home so that nobody with a true crime hobby meets Josh. Tyler does not know what Josh has been doing. He mostly wants Josh to have a life.
Minor Characters Worth Knowing
A few smaller names pop up and they are fun. Steve is Aly’s chatty neighbor, an ultramarathon runner who jogs past her house in the middle of the night, and who appears on her new security cameras. Carl is a real man in Utah, whose secret mask hobby Josh borrows as a decoy for his online trail, without Carl ever knowing. And Cara McKinley is Tyler’s college ex, whom Josh saw as controlling and manipulative, and who is one reason he guards his friend so fiercely.
The Hospital Crew
Aly’s coworkers show up in short scenes. Tanya is a fellow nurse who talks about the strange nights with her. Brinley is the new nurse in Chapter One, whom Aly coaxes through a rough first shift. Vern works in the forensic lab, wears pinup makeup, and agrees to run Aly’s DNA samples on her breaks. There is also Greg, a janitor with a baby face, and I’ll come back to him.
The Cappellucci Family
Aly’s uncle Nico is the head of a mob family. He is small, gray at the temples, wears a bathrobe at five in the morning, and cares a great deal about his espresso machine. He is friendly, he is frightening, and his wife Moira is the one who tells him off. Moira is Irish, funny and unfiltered, and Aly says her family had ties to the IRA.
Their sons are Aly’s cousins. Junior is the one in charge on the ground. Greg is the youngest, and he works at Aly’s hospital as a janitor, while also reporting to his father. Alec and Stefan are two more cousins. There is also Vinny, a driver, and a man named Lucius who owns an auto body shop and does not like Harry Potter jokes.
Spoiler Zone
From here on, spoilers. If you haven’t read it, stop.
Bradley Bluhm is the villain. He is a patient who comes into Aly’s emergency room after an assault, and he is the man who is accused of raping a drugged woman. He is rich, charming and has the same eyes as Josh’s dad, in Josh’s view. The book makes it clear that Brad is dangerous, and he follows Aly.
The big shift comes in Chapter Sixteen, when Brad tries to break in and Josh’s duct tape accidentally kills him. Aly’s family helps with the body. After that, the book is about the family, the cleanup, and the two bodies that the police eventually find in Brad’s basement.
How They Fit Together
The pairing works because of how they fit. Aly wants someone obsessed enough to protect her and take care of her, and Josh has been told his whole life that his obsession makes him dangerous. She gives him permission to be what he is, and he gives her someone who pays attention. The side characters mostly exist to keep that couple alive and in trouble.
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