A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena – Book review

If you find yourself in a reading slump, sometimes a tight, quick thriller is just what’s needed. This was the case with me and A Stranger in the House. I’d previously read The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena and really enjoyed it. I’d been meaning to read another by her, so took the chance on A Stranger in the House and it was exactly what I needed.

Opening sentence: She doesn’t belong here.

How well do you know someone?

Karen and Tom Krupp live in a nice New York suburb. Tom is an accountant and met his book-keeping wife at work. They soon got married – with a notable lack of family or past friends on her side of the church – and life seemed good. Until…

Karen is in a car accident in a shady part of town and has – what she hopes is – temporary amnesia. While she’s trying to remember what happened, a body of a man is discovered in an abandoned restaurant near where she had her accident. Is she in any way linked to this? Unfortunately for Karen, thanks to one random-on-the-surface piece of evidence, the police think she might be.

He realises he doesn’t really know that much about his own wife.

We also meet Brigid, the Krupp’s neighbour that became a close friend of Karen’s. She is in many ways a classic nosy neighbour – always watching out of her window and keeping tabs on what people are up to. She definitely knows more than she first lets on and her secrets soon come to the surface too.

What really happened?

Detectives Rasbach and Jennings are on the murder case, they are good at what they do, so the main question is – is Karen as innocent as she really seems at first?

What is love anyway, she thinks, but a grand illusion? We fall in love with an ideal, not a reality.

While the plot of A Stranger in the House was a tiny bit predictable – I thought there would more of a surprise coming, a little more thrills and spills to round things off – it was still a very entertaining read. I enjoy Shari Lapena’s straight-to-the-point writing style. It keeps the pace up and let’s you just be taken away by the story. A solid domestic thriller.

• Get your copy of A Stranger in the House here;
• Published by Penguin 2018;
• 305 pages;
• My rating: