Shallow characters, crass dialogue and two very different versions of one affair that reads like wading through toffee!
The first of Michele Campbell’s three psychological thrillers that I have read, A Stranger on the Beach opens in standard enough fashion with a married older woman indulging in a passionate fling with the much younger local bad boy in her gossipy beachside town. Forty-two-year-old New Yorker Caroline Stark, a married woman of twenty years’ standing to Jason, a successful investment banker, is preparing to host a housewarming party at the couples lavish new residence overlooking the ocean and reconnecting now daughter, Hannah, has left for college. But when Jason arrives late to the party with a Russian woman whom Caroline suspects is his mistress it is just the beginning of her humiliation as she discovers their bank accounts are empty, Jason leaves and promptly goes incommunicado and Hannah refuses to take sides. When Caroline drowns her sorrows in a local inn and hooks up with twenty-seven-year-old Aidan Callahan, a bartender with a violent history and murky reputation in a bid for comfort and revenge she ignites an obsession in the life of a volatile and vulnerable young man.
With the action immediate and the reader thrown straight into the midst of Caroline’s story I was prepared for a pretty run of the mill psychological thriller with a familiar set-up. But Campbell plays havoc with a successful formula and presents her audience with two contrasting stories of how the affair unfolds with no obvious way to gauge the reliability of either. Believe Caroline and she is living in fear of a seriously disturbed young man with previous history for turning violent and his older brother the town’s chief of police despite persistently telling him that she is hoping to reconcile with Jason. According to Aidan he is merely responding to Caroline’s signals and doing everything he can to protect her, just like she asked.
I struggled to buy into the concept of reading two contrasting perspectives on one affair with the overlaps between the versions minimal and often contradictory and one of them a complete pack of lies. The constant back and forth between Caroline’s take and Aidan’s impedes any sustained build-up of momentum with the bulk of the novel feeling like it is never edging any closer to the truth. Caroline’s chapters are heavy with foreshadowing and presented in the first-person, whilst those of Aidan are told in the third and at a slight remove but throughout the entire novel one party seems more sincere, despite Campbell’s obvious intention for readers to believe the opposite. Whilst further details on Aidan’s chequered past and his connection to the land on which the Starks’ swanky home stands are revealed, Caroline’s first-person viewpoint is far choosier about what it discloses.
The story takes a different turn into the back end as it becomes more of a police procedural and limps to an underwhelming finish, largely because of the authors lack of sleight of hand, some glaring clues and an outcome that is telegraphed well in advance. Littered with well signposted red herrings that will make every savvy reader of the genre roll their eyes, the end result is an uninspired spin on the telling of an age old plot. Although the legal involvement in the later stage is far more astutely written that the vacuous prose and crass dialogue throughout the majority of the novel, my interest tailed off with the ‘mystery’ all too obvious. Due to characters that I struggled to connect with and were poorly realised it made the entire story feel like a huge effort to struggle through, especially given the novel was about a hundred pages too long!
A pointless and unrewarding psychological thrillers that takes its readers through two polar opposite narratives of drawn-out melodramatic dross with one very obvious liar and then reveals that exactly half of it is utter make believe. At times confusing but ultimately simply frustrating.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
With the action immediate and the reader thrown straight into the midst of Caroline’s story I was prepared for a pretty run of the mill psychological thriller with a familiar set-up. But Campbell plays havoc with a successful formula and presents her audience with two contrasting stories of how the affair unfolds with no obvious way to gauge the reliability of either. Believe Caroline and she is living in fear of a seriously disturbed young man with previous history for turning violent and his older brother the town’s chief of police despite persistently telling him that she is hoping to reconcile with Jason. According to Aidan he is merely responding to Caroline’s signals and doing everything he can to protect her, just like she asked.
I struggled to buy into the concept of reading two contrasting perspectives on one affair with the overlaps between the versions minimal and often contradictory and one of them a complete pack of lies. The constant back and forth between Caroline’s take and Aidan’s impedes any sustained build-up of momentum with the bulk of the novel feeling like it is never edging any closer to the truth. Caroline’s chapters are heavy with foreshadowing and presented in the first-person, whilst those of Aidan are told in the third and at a slight remove but throughout the entire novel one party seems more sincere, despite Campbell’s obvious intention for readers to believe the opposite. Whilst further details on Aidan’s chequered past and his connection to the land on which the Starks’ swanky home stands are revealed, Caroline’s first-person viewpoint is far choosier about what it discloses.
The story takes a different turn into the back end as it becomes more of a police procedural and limps to an underwhelming finish, largely because of the authors lack of sleight of hand, some glaring clues and an outcome that is telegraphed well in advance. Littered with well signposted red herrings that will make every savvy reader of the genre roll their eyes, the end result is an uninspired spin on the telling of an age old plot. Although the legal involvement in the later stage is far more astutely written that the vacuous prose and crass dialogue throughout the majority of the novel, my interest tailed off with the ‘mystery’ all too obvious. Due to characters that I struggled to connect with and were poorly realised it made the entire story feel like a huge effort to struggle through, especially given the novel was about a hundred pages too long!
A pointless and unrewarding psychological thrillers that takes its readers through two polar opposite narratives of drawn-out melodramatic dross with one very obvious liar and then reveals that exactly half of it is utter make believe. At times confusing but ultimately simply frustrating.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.