A Stranger in the House

Daaaaaaamn!
Crazy on every page!
About half way through I wasn't sure how much more I could take but I stuck it out and it got better and ... dammmmn! Do you ever really know a person?

Adrianne

This is my second book by Shari Lapena and is probably going to be my last. Her latest release seems interesting, but I'm getting really tired of the "domestic thriller".

A Stranger in the House was published back in 2017 and the slew of books that have come out with a similar premise have not been scarce. We have our conventional all American newly wed couple, living in a beautiful house in upstate New York, where nothing can ever go wrong. Enter a car accident, amnesia, a nosey neighbor, a tortured past and a murder - that's the plot everyone.

It has a lot of the single white female vibes, but tries to do so much more. It tells rather than shows, making the connection with the characters harder than it should be. There is a bit of a show more twist in the end, but by then, there could have been murderous clowns from outer space and I would have felt the same. The entire read felt as if I'm an outsider looking at events and internal thoughts, but never actually being able to connect with any of the characters. I could care less what happened with them - they were instruments to progress a plot. I can't care about a plot when I don't care about the characters. Sorry Lapena. show less

Tom Krupp comes home from work one night to find his wife is gone. He looks around the house. She couldn't have gone far. Her purse and cell phone are still in the house. So he waits. Maybe she had to run to the store. Perhaps she's over at the neighbors. As he begins to get nervous, the police come to the door. There's been an accident. His wife had a car accident -- hit a pole -- in a rough part of town. She's ok....but what was she doing there late at night? Even Karen Krupp isn't sure. She has no memory of the accident or most of that evening. But soon there is much more to the story than just a car accident. Maybe Tom doesn't know his wife of 2 years as well as he thinks he does. Funnily enough, Karen feels the same way.

I checked show more this book out of my local library when I finished one of Lapena's other books -- The Couple Next Door. This book has a very similar vibe to it: a suburban couple's lives start falling apart when an event crashes through the facade of lies they have constructed around themselves. This story builds its suspense a bit slower than The Couple Next Door, but once it builds up steam....and the suspense builds up some pressure....it really packs quite a thrilling wallop. I had things partially figured out, but there were a couple twists that caught me by surprise. Just like bad guys in suspense movies are never dead the first time they seem to be.....a good suspense novel is never, ever over until the last twist. This one had some good late wrenches to it....nicely done!

I think what creeps me out most about Lapena's thriller novels is that they are realistic. What happens in A Stranger in the House could happen. There's nothing mystical, magical, supernatural -- it's all base human behavior, lies, cunning and survival instinct. It almost makes me want to start looking at my husband sideways ..... 14 years of marriage.....what's he hiding? Is he really who I think he is? What don't I know about him? My neighbors...extended family.....the in-laws....friends.....all the people I think I know......what are they hiding? What lies lurk in their past? Hmmmm. Maybe I need another lock on the front door. :)

Great thriller novel! I sincerely hope Lapena writes more!

For more information on the author and her books, check out her website: http://www.sharilapena.com/ show less

Meh.

If you need more than that one word review of this dull tome read on.

A middle-class man comes home late from work to find his wife gone. All her things still there – including purse and phone and all the things a person would take even if only leaving for a moment. Tom is annoyed, then a bit worried. Mostly for himself. Meanwhile an unidentified, middle-class lady has had bad car accident while in an unsavoury part of the city. It will surprise absolutely no one who has ever read a book or seen a movie that she is Tom’s missing wife, Karen, though the tone implied this was A Twist of Alarming Proportions. Additional unsurprising elements of the story include a case of amnesia, a hidden past for one of our not-so-happy couple, an show more unexplained dead body, an extra-marital affair and a barking-mad, childless neighbour.

Am I being too harsh? Possibly. But I can’t help it. Everything about this book is just so bland and predictable. That there is nothing new in the storyline need not have automatically made the book virtually unreadable but the entire thing has a tepid quality to it. Like someone from a government agency had documented a citizen’s worst nightmare on form 729B and in so doing smoothed away all of the interesting bits. Familiar plot devices and genre tropes are thrown in almost at random, certainly without subtlety or innovation, and there is a lot of telling and precious little showing throughout the book.

The characters are two dimensional; totally lacking in believable emotions or inner voices. Tom is a self-absorbed dullard whose love for his wife runs about as deep as a bird bath in a drought. Karen’s supposed troubles always read like someone talking about bad things, never like actual experiences a human being was actually going through. And the deranged neighbour lady is just a joke. For a much more nuanced and authentic-feeling characterisation of a woman driven to a kind of madness by her unfulfilled desire for motherhood check out Michael Robotham’s THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS rather than this dreck.

There is nothing memorable about the setting either. For ages I thought we might be in Canada because that is where the author lives but then one of the cardboard cutout cop characters said something like “that’s a big offence here in New York“. I assume the state rather than the city given there was a vague Stepford quality to the little enclave where Tom, Karen and the delusional neighbour lady live but I don’t care enough to work it out.

Or, as I have said before, meh. show less

I tried so hard to like this book. I hoped it would get better and that the twist would not be what I expected right from the opening pages, but alas no. It was boring and predictable throughout. The amnesia ploy is far too convenient a cliché to be believable. The husband and police must be extra-dense to not see what is going on from the start. This book was almost a DNF, and that's pretty rare for me. I managed to get through it with a lot of sighing and eye-rolling. The Couple Next Door, while suffering from similar problems, was a better written novel than this. I think the premise of A Stranger in the House could have been interesting, but it just didn't work.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in a Goodread giveaway.

Karen and Tom Krupp are happily married, they live in a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, Tom is a successful accountant. But one night when Tom comes home from work he notices Karen's car isn't in the driveway, the front door is unlocked, supper has been left on the counter waiting to be cooked. And no sign of Karen anywhere. She didn't even take her phone or her ID. When the police arrive on their doorstep Tom learns that his wife has been in an accident - she lost control of her car as she sped through a rough part of town. Karen is in the hospital with a concussion that leaves her with a pounding headache and no memory of what happened to her. The cops think that's convenient. They think she was up to something and doesn't want show more her husband to know.

There are lots of secrets and lies in this book. Trust no one. I couldn't wait to find out exactly what happened the night of Karen's accident. The writing itself isn't spectacular, but it's not awful either - the suspense keeps things moving right along. Lapena definitely created an unlikable character in this one! A compulsive read for me.

I won a signed copy through Goodreads First Reads. Thank you Penguin Random House Canada. show less

SPOILERS

Karen, driving erratically at high speed, crashes into a pole and suffers a concussion. She cannot remember any of that evening and her husband has no idea what she might have been doing in that part of town. Then a man's body is found nearby.

The set up was excellent, but after a while it all fell apart. I don't know much about guns, but surely if Karen fired the gun there would have been gunshot residue on the pink gloves. I spent the whole novel waiting for this to be investigated. I also wanted Karen to get the locks changed if she was so sure someone had been in her house - this was finally addressed after the horse had bolted, so to speak.

The characterization was superficial; Brigid in particular read like a robot. Tom and show more Karen were fairly unlikeable and the lawyer and policemen had no personalities beyond being competent at their jobs. We were told over and over how much Karen and Tom loved each other, but all their emotions were really off. Tom sleeps with Brigid - twice! - at an emotionally unlikely time and lies to Karen and the lawyer about why he had done so. Karen is "infuriated" about this, but muses that it is also the best thing that could have happened. Really? The best thing?

Then there were the final chapters, where Karen was revealed to be a completely different person - I need a bit more foreshadowing than her readiness to lie to the police about her amnesia - which felt dishonest and lazy on the part of the author. The last page with Brigid knitting her baby clothes was just icky. show less