Book Review ~ The Stranger

While I am not a “Stranger” to reading Harlan Coben’s novels, this latest novel might have me thinking twice about talking to strangers.

From the back cover
The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world.

Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life.

Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne's deception, and realizes that if he doesn't make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he's stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them.

The Stranger of the title is a secret-teller, not a killer, but his secrets can be just as deadly. The story starts when a stranger tells the main character, a lawyer with a perfect family {or so it seems} a secret that can totally change his life when it becomes known out of the blue, years later.

His unannounced visit to Adam leaves this happily-married man suddenly grasping the possibility that he had never really known his wife at all. But even more terrifying discoveries are looming just around the corner and with them, almost unheard-of danger. Soon, Adam’s wife is missing, and others who are somehow connected to The Stranger and his “co-workers” are showing up dead, and Adam is trying to hold his family together while the life he knows falls apart around him.

These people are ordinary people just like you and me living their lives until “The Stranger” lets past actions come into their present. Some of the elements of the overall conspiracy aren’t fully explained, but that doesn’t matter, since that makes the story-line all the more believable.  It grabbed me from chapter one with its vivid characters, plenty of mystery, suspense, small town life, sports politics, conspiracy, blackmail, murder, drama, thrills, chills and unexpected twists. The plot is unpredictable, a gripping story of all the characters that make you care about their struggles and their well being.   It was easy getting lost for hours in this book and not being able to put it down because you want to find out who this Stranger really is, what actually happened to Corinne, and what outcome awaits the supposed friends and colleagues of Adam’s.

I enjoyed the fact that this story was an out of the ordinary murder mystery dealing with modern technology. Definitely worth reading!  Real life doesn’t come wrapped up in a pretty box, and this page-turner is one stranger that readers will want to meet.

What would you do if someone came up to you and revealed a secret about someone close to you? To what lengths would you go to protect a secret and your family? 

Take Care