You Are Not Alone

Cassandra and Jane Moore are the sisters who initially appear to be at the helm of their circle, an organized group of women dedicated to vigilante justice. They rarely appear alone in the novel and present themselves as a united front. They are stylish and elegant, using their looks to communicate wealth, status, and power. Cassandra has “long, glossy black hair, gold-flecked eyes, and creamy skin” (8). Her sister Jane is “softer and curvier” than her muscular sister, but just as commanding in presence (8).

The sisters run a successful PR firm in New York and are well-known and highly regarded. However, their real passion is revenge. Their sister Valerie was nearly raped by their former step-brother, and after finding out that fact as adults, they dedicate themselves to vigilante justice. They form a circle of like-minded women, using the skills and connections that each woman has to commit a series of ugly crimes of vengeance.

Cassandra and Jane lack traditional morals and are almost entirely without personal ethics. They are ruthless and cold-blooded and see no issue with vigilantism. They are willing to resort to murder and are ultimately happy to frame Shay, an innocent woman, to evade detection by law enforcement. The primary skill that they use both in their interactions with the women in their circle and their criminal acts is manipulation. They draw lonely, emotionally wounded women to them with the promise of help and friendship, then exploit the sense of indebtedness that Amanda, Daphne, Beth, Shay, and Stacey feel for them. They entirely lack empathy and are not bothered by pretending to care about the women in their circle to help punish various abusers and predators.

Amanda is one of the women in the Moore sisters’ circle. Her death by suicide at the start of the novel is the plot’s inciting incident, as Shay witnesses her death. She is “an emergency room nurse with an effervescent personality” (23). Although she dies at the beginning of the novel, she is one of its primary characters, and the authors explore her backstory in depth through many flashbacks.

Like the rest of the women in the Moore sisters’ circle, Amanda is drawn to them because of her willingness to accept vigilante justice. After years as a nurse, Amanda has seen perpetrators go unpunished time and time again. She is initially willing to help the sisters and comes in handy because her work gives her access to a range of medications and she has medical knowledge. It is Amanda who suggests punishing Beth’s ex-husband by giving him a dose of ipecac, an obscure drug that induces severe vomiting.

Amanda is ultimately one of the novel’s moral centers, as she eventually has second thoughts about vigilantism. She is a kind, giving person. She enjoys baking and sharing her baked goods with friends. She is, until she meets the Moore sisters, good at her job and values both her professional and personal lives. While she is willing to make Beth’s husband sick, she is horrified when James’s punishment escalates into murder. She wants to save his life at the very end, not because she values it but because she was trained to do so as a nurse. She feels that her role in James’s murder flies in the face of the oath that she swore to help rather than harm people.

Amanda’s refusal to speak to the circle after James’s murder is further evidence of her rejection of vigilante justice and the moral relativism that enables it. Her death by suicide occurs because she realizes Valerie is about to kill her, as Amanda was originally on her way to speak to a detective about James’s murder. Amanda’s motivations at the time of her death are thus ultimately revealed to be more about escaping Valerie than wanting to die, as she had planned to expose the sisters.

Stacey is one of the women in the Moore sisters’ circle. She is a secondary character, but is nonetheless important both within the novel’s narrative structure and because of her relationship with Cassandra and Jane. Stacey “dropped out of school after the eleventh grade, but later earned her GED and has taught herself so much about technology that she is now in demand as a cybersecurity consultant” (16). She is able to crack passwords with ease and helps Cassandra and Jane with a series of surveillance tasks that facilitate their vigilante justice.

Stacey is an intelligent, capable woman, but unlike Shay and Amanda she uses her powers for criminal activity rather than for good. She does not feel remorse or guilt and is entirely comfortable with both vigilante justice and the more extreme acts of revenge that the sisters plot. Her backstory is similar to the other women in the circle: The sisters helped her out of a difficult situation and gained her trust and loyalty through welcoming her into their lives rather than coercion.

Cassandra and Jane met Stacey through Beth, who had met Stacey after Stacey was arrested for assaulting a serial child abuser. Stacey was drawn to Cassandra and Jane because they could help her mete out the kind of justice that she rarely saw: The child abuser whom she assaulted was not punished or forced to give up custody of her child. Stacey sees vigilante justice as a chance to right the world’s wrongs, and she remains loyal to the sisters even at the end of the novel.

Beth is one of the women in the Moore sisters’ circle. She is not as fully developed a character as Amanda, Shay, or the Moore sisters, but she is important for the role that she plays in the sisters’ circle. Beth is a “public defense attorney who always seemed a little overwhelmed and flustered” (24). As a public defender, she has access to legal and arrest records and uses that access to help the Moore sisters in their various criminal activities. Beth does not mind using her role as an attorney to help the sisters commit crimes, in part because she knows how common it is for serious offenders to go unpunished. She has arrived at a point in her career where she is open to the idea that vigilante justice is often the only justice there is.

Beth has also been the victim of mistreatment: Her husband, whom she financially supported for years, left her when she was diagnosed with cancer and her treatment became too “difficult” for him to deal with. The sisters helped her publicly humiliate him, and for that she feels a deep sense of gratitude to them. Like the rest of the women in the Moore sisters’ circle, she lacks a traditional sense of ethics and sees the boundary between right and wrong as inherently blurry.

Daphne is one of the members of the Moore sisters’ circle. She owns a chic boutique in the West Village and “has a sort of innate sophistication” (24). As with the rest of the circle, the Moore sisters use her in any way that they can, and Daphne’s boutique becomes a place they send people they wish to keep in their orbit. Daphne does not receive as much depth and detail as some of the other characters, and she is presented primarily through the lens of her rape at the hands of James Anders, the sisters’ former step-brother and Valerie’s would-be rapist.

In the wake of Daphne’s rape, she feels profoundly disempowered and chooses not to press charges because her doorman saw her kissing James and she is sure that no one will believe her. When she meets the Moore sisters, they exploit her vulnerability and hopelessness by offering her what they offer all of their recruits: the opportunity to exact vengeance on an aggressor who has escaped punishment. Daphne feels a deep sense of indebtedness to Cassandra and Jane, although she does become fearful when the police begin to investigate James’s death as a murder.

Valerie is a shadowy figure for much of the narrative, and it is only at the novel’s conclusion that she is revealed as its main antagonist. Presented initially as Jane and Cassandra’s employee, she is actually their sister. Like all of the women in the sisters’ circle, Valerie has a history of abuse and mistreatment. She was victimized by their step-brother James (known in high school by his nickname “Trey”), first through James’s bullying and finally during his attempt to rape her.

Valerie is a strong-willed, capable woman who deftly performs a variety of difficult jobs throughout the novel. She is skilled in deception and obfuscation, often adopting new identities as she helps the circle to carry out its various acts of vigilante justice and revenge. Valerie is the novel’s most ruthless character: She is willing to commit murder when she deems it necessary, and she does not limit her targets to those whose histories of abuse mark them as “worthy” of vengeance. She is just as willing to kill Shay as James, even though she readily admits that Shay has committed no wrongdoing and does not “deserve” to die.

Ultimately Shay realizes that Valerie is the “invisible architect of every act of vengeance their larger group has perpetrated” (332). While Cassandra and Jane appear to be the leaders of their circle, Valerie is actually in charge. She is so manipulative, however, that even Cassandra and Jane do not realize that Valerie is the group’s true kingpin.