A Familiar Stranger

Lillian Smith is a mess.  She’s a demoted LA Times obituary writer who once covered the rich and famous, but is now barely holding onto her job. She struggles with alcohol and mood swings.  She’s booze buddies with a cemetery caretaker who lost his young daughter.  Her bestie, Sam, a real estate developer, has to help her pick up the pieces every time her life spirals, and she’s found evidence that her husband of almost 20 years is cheating on her.  On top of it all, she’s concluded one thing about herself … that she’s boring.

When she has a chance coffee shop encounter with David Laurent, a man with an enticing French accent and a clear interest in her, she not only takes his business card, but she lets her better judgment take a back seat.  After all, if her husband, Mike, can have secrets, why can’t she?

Lies tend to snowball, and this is no exception, with Mike and Lillian apparently trying to outdo each other on who has the bigger secrets. Eventually, though, everything hidden comes to light. From the countdown chapter structure, we know that someone in the story dies … but who? And why? About halfway in, you’ll find out, and then things take a REALLY unexpected direction!

A.R. Torre never fails to deliver a juicy thriller with complicated characters, intriguing motives and a compelling plot, which makes her a go-to author for me every time she has a new release!  I read the majority of this in one day and was, once again, pulled into the story, trying to untangle all the threads and figure out what I was seeing.

My one downside? I don’t know if others will find one of the big reveals as predictable as I did, but my guess did turn out to be correct, which took some shine out of the ending for me. 

Overall, it was a well-written, nicely plotted story that kept me eagerly turning pages, and I would definitely recommend it!

★★★ ½  (rounded to 4)

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer, NetGalley and author A.R. Torres for the opportunity to review this ARC honestly. It’s due to be published September 27th, 2022.