Tag: thriller

3.5 star

Review: A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

In this neighborhood, danger lies close to home. A domestic thriller packed full of secrets, and a twisty story that never stops—from the bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

He looks at her, concerned. “How do you feel?” She wants to say, Terrified. Instead, she says, with a faint smile, “Glad to be home.”

Karen and Tom Krupp are happy—they’ve got a lovely home in upstate New York, they’re practically newlyweds, and they have no kids to interrupt their comfortable life together. But one day, Tom returns home to find Karen has vanished—her car’s gone and it seems she left in a rush. She even left her purse—complete with phone and ID—behind.

There’s a knock on the door—the police are there to take Tom to the hospital where his wife has been admitted. She had a car accident, and lost control as she sped through the worst part of town.

The accident has left Karen with a concussion and a few scrapes. Still, she’s mostly okay—except that she can’t remember what she was doing or where she was when she crashed. The cops think her memory loss is highly convenient, and they suspect she was up to no good.

Karen returns home with Tom, determined to heal and move on with her life. Then she realizes something’s been moved. Something’s not quite right. Someone’s been in her house. And the police won’t stop asking questions.

Because in this house, everyone’s a stranger. Everyone has something they’d rather keep hidden. Something they might even kill to keep quiet.

This is probably the second-last Shari Lapena thriller that I have to catch up on! She, of course, unsurprisingly by now, always has a great talent for fast-paced thrillers—I literally read this in a day. I believe I have actually read it once before, but despite that I still enjoyed re-reading it, although I kind of knew how it would end.

A Stranger in the House revolves mainly around a couple who lives in a nice neighbourhood and are newly married. But one day the wife drives like a bat out of hell in a dark part of town and gets into a serious accident. Why can’t she remember anything? Her paranoia also gets the best of her as she realizes someone has probably been in her house. This is a story of paranoia and the tale of a perfectly normal-looking couple falling apart at the seams. Will she recover her memories in time to see the truth?

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3.5 star

Review: An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

A weekend retreat at a cozy mountain lodge is supposed to be the perfect getaway . . . but when the storm hits, no one is getting away

It’s winter in the Catskills and Mitchell’s Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing–maybe even romantic–weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge woodburning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery.

So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity–and all contact with the outside world–the guests settle in and try to make the best of it.

Soon, though, one of the guests turns up dead–it looks like an accident. But when a second guest dies, they start to panic.

Within the snowed-in paradise, something–or someone–is picking off the guests one by one. And there’s nothing they can do but hunker down and hope they can survive the storm–and one another.

I’ve been trying to catch up on Shari Lapena’s thriller/mysteries, so here I am with a review of another one! I don’t always have the biggest expectations for her books, as the ending is often not exactly what I want (like it was again here). However, as a queen of suspense in the page to page reading, it once again delivered.

An Unwanted Guest takes place in a quaint hotel up in the snowy mountains when 12 guests get snowed in by a huge snowstorm. In typical closed-room scenarios, one by one people start dying off for seemingly inexplicable reasons. We get the POVs of all the guests and the two attending staff, and so begins our journey of suspense. The journey is incredibly fast-paced and suspenseful, even if the ending was much less so.

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4 star

Review: Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

In this family, everyone is keeping secrets–especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don’t come much richer than Fred and Sheila Merton. But even all their money can’t protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered the night after an Easter Dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.

Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their capricious father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else that night who crept in with the worst of intentions? It must be. After all, if one of your siblings was a psychopath, you’d know.

Another Shari Lapena review! Although the previous books I’ve read by her weren’t my all-time favourites, she always delivered when it came to the suspense, and this book was no different. Of her novels that I’ve read so far, this one was so far my favourite. The elements of mystery and psychological suspense were well executed and I was wondering until the very very end what happened.

Not a Happy Family revolves around a very familiar plot. Two high status rich parents are murdered in cold blood, with three children who stand to gain a substantial inheritance. Was it a mere robbery gone wrong? Or is there something much more sinister at play? With a whole melange of suspicious characters without alibis, just who is telling the truth? Told through the POVs of almost all the characters (and even the detectives), Lapena takes us through a riveting whodunnit with twists and turns galore, all the way to its exciting finish.

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