Far too much going on & with substantive discoveries slow to be made. 2.5 stars
The Perfect Stranger is the second adult psychological suspense novel from former YA focused author, Megan Miranda. I confess to having my reservations about the first (All The Missing Girls) from the overwrought first-person narrator who I found impossible to connect with to the reverse chronology and closer scrutiny revealing some serious plot holes. However I can’t deny that it contained a certain element of easy page-turner irresistibility and I was intrigued enough to stay the course. Overall The Perfect Stranger is a similarly frustrating experience, primarily because it takes too long for any substantive discoveries to be made and because on many occasions there is just far too much going on, making the novel feel almost like two distinct plot threads becoming confusingly enmeshed!
Thirty-year-old former Boston Post journalist Leah Stevens is seeking an escape route after her inability to reveal her source for an article became potentially libellous and her career blew up in her face. Fleeing the prospect of a civil lawsuit and with a restraining order against her when she runs into a former roommate who she hasn’t seen in eight years and makes an intoxicated decision to start over in rural Pennsylvania together it makes perfect sense. Couching her decision to become a teacher and “make a difference” as a conscious life choice to her fault-finding mother Leah leaves an array of unfinished business trailing in her wake. Four-months in to her new life in a backwater town of Western Pennsylvania and despite their opposing schedules with Emmy working nights in a dive of a motel, Leah is forced to question when she last saw her friend, or indeed, any sign of Emmy even having been home. When Leah’s morning commute hits a accident roadblock by the lake she is convinced that the identity of the victim who has been viciously assaulted will be that of missing Emmy.. but what she discovers sends her reeling as the twenty-eight-year-old victim, Bethany Jarvitz, in fact bears an uncanny resemblance to Leah herself.
When she eventually makes it into the school halls Leah is still niggled by the worry of Emmy and can sense the buzz of an impending storm brewing, subsequently finding out that an anonymous tip-off leaves the married and respected school basketball coach, Davis Cobb, identified as prime suspect. Suddenly the eyes of the police hone in on Leah, all wanting to know if Coach Cobb has ever tried anything untoward with her and given his habit of drunk dialing her late at night, the evidence is readily apparent. However making a statement and going on record risks Leah’s own undisclosed past catching up in one fell swoop, hence she is reluctant to assist handsome detective, Kyle Donovan, but with a case to solve but he is nothing if not persistent. As pressure mounts, the failure of Emmy to return sees Leah enlisting Donovan’s investigative resources in a mutually beneficial exchange of information in return for Leah giving the lowdown on Davis Cobb. With no digital footprint, mobile or date of birth for Emmy even proving her existence is a tall order for Leah and she is forced to question just who she has been living with and whether there might be an ulterior motive for their swift relocation to rural Pennsylvania.
With the connection between the disappearance of Emmy and the charges against Davis Cobb impossible to see at first glance it takes far too long as a reader to have any idea of just where the story is headed. With further details of both plot elements gradually forthcoming almost a third of the novel passes before Detective Kyle Donovan begins to seriously question wonder there really is an Emmy Grey, and at times reading The Perfect Stranger is akin to groping in the dark. With the police becomingly increasingly sceptical about Leah’s assertions she begins to realise that she has inadvertently become the focus of a much bigger story and the very person under suspicion. As a game of cat and mouse begins with Leah drawing out Detective Donovan’s angle on the story she realises that in order to prove her credibility she alone will need to uncover the truth behind the person she knew as Emmy. Given that their inaugural meeting links back to the inception of the libellous story that ruined Leah’s career this inevitably means facing some of her own very painful mistakes...
As Leah steadily drip feeds the specifics surrounding her swift desertion of Boston, the correlation with the developing situation in Western Pennsylvania and her ‘history’ assumes greater clarity, posing the question of whether Leah has previous ‘form’ in this area and in turn putting her reliability at issue. Arguably Megan Miranda holds this ammunition that pivotally connects the two distinct threads back for far too long, risking Leah’s own situation smothering the more intriguing question of just who is Emmy Grey and just what was she running from. The result is that Leah is hard to take at face value and given some of her frustrating actions early occasions she is hard to sympathise with. Given that I neither felt I understood Leah or was particularly convinced of her emotions I think Megan Miranda was asking an awful lot of her readers to stay invested for the long haul that is required.
Although there are occasional glimpses of on-point insight where Miranda captures something perfectly, from her musings on journalism to the mistakes of the past which we fail to confront, for the most part The Perfect Stranger feels like another skittish narrator working herself up into a lather and leaving the reader woefully far behind. Leah’s focus on crime reporting gives her an innate predisposition to see the danger in many an innocuous situation and her perceptive understanding of the way the police operate in forming a hypothesis and taking an angle is well conveyed. As facilitators of the truth, albeit by different means, getting at the real story is the ultimate agenda of both the police and journalists and this theme runs through the entire story.
Whilst the reader can piece the basic threads together to stumble upon a passable conclusion and The Perfect Stranger does end on a stronger note it requires a hefty dose of staying power and head scratching along the way. A proliferation of threads smothers the basic message about whether we really know a person or simply choose to believe the story they present. I cannot deny that Megan Miranda does a good line in unsettled anxiety, even managing to make walking into a classroom feel as imbued with menace as running the gauntlet, but given the very apparent glimpses of promise in this story, The Perfect Stranger ends up feeling like a opportunity missed.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
Thirty-year-old former Boston Post journalist Leah Stevens is seeking an escape route after her inability to reveal her source for an article became potentially libellous and her career blew up in her face. Fleeing the prospect of a civil lawsuit and with a restraining order against her when she runs into a former roommate who she hasn’t seen in eight years and makes an intoxicated decision to start over in rural Pennsylvania together it makes perfect sense. Couching her decision to become a teacher and “make a difference” as a conscious life choice to her fault-finding mother Leah leaves an array of unfinished business trailing in her wake. Four-months in to her new life in a backwater town of Western Pennsylvania and despite their opposing schedules with Emmy working nights in a dive of a motel, Leah is forced to question when she last saw her friend, or indeed, any sign of Emmy even having been home. When Leah’s morning commute hits a accident roadblock by the lake she is convinced that the identity of the victim who has been viciously assaulted will be that of missing Emmy.. but what she discovers sends her reeling as the twenty-eight-year-old victim, Bethany Jarvitz, in fact bears an uncanny resemblance to Leah herself.
When she eventually makes it into the school halls Leah is still niggled by the worry of Emmy and can sense the buzz of an impending storm brewing, subsequently finding out that an anonymous tip-off leaves the married and respected school basketball coach, Davis Cobb, identified as prime suspect. Suddenly the eyes of the police hone in on Leah, all wanting to know if Coach Cobb has ever tried anything untoward with her and given his habit of drunk dialing her late at night, the evidence is readily apparent. However making a statement and going on record risks Leah’s own undisclosed past catching up in one fell swoop, hence she is reluctant to assist handsome detective, Kyle Donovan, but with a case to solve but he is nothing if not persistent. As pressure mounts, the failure of Emmy to return sees Leah enlisting Donovan’s investigative resources in a mutually beneficial exchange of information in return for Leah giving the lowdown on Davis Cobb. With no digital footprint, mobile or date of birth for Emmy even proving her existence is a tall order for Leah and she is forced to question just who she has been living with and whether there might be an ulterior motive for their swift relocation to rural Pennsylvania.
With the connection between the disappearance of Emmy and the charges against Davis Cobb impossible to see at first glance it takes far too long as a reader to have any idea of just where the story is headed. With further details of both plot elements gradually forthcoming almost a third of the novel passes before Detective Kyle Donovan begins to seriously question wonder there really is an Emmy Grey, and at times reading The Perfect Stranger is akin to groping in the dark. With the police becomingly increasingly sceptical about Leah’s assertions she begins to realise that she has inadvertently become the focus of a much bigger story and the very person under suspicion. As a game of cat and mouse begins with Leah drawing out Detective Donovan’s angle on the story she realises that in order to prove her credibility she alone will need to uncover the truth behind the person she knew as Emmy. Given that their inaugural meeting links back to the inception of the libellous story that ruined Leah’s career this inevitably means facing some of her own very painful mistakes...
As Leah steadily drip feeds the specifics surrounding her swift desertion of Boston, the correlation with the developing situation in Western Pennsylvania and her ‘history’ assumes greater clarity, posing the question of whether Leah has previous ‘form’ in this area and in turn putting her reliability at issue. Arguably Megan Miranda holds this ammunition that pivotally connects the two distinct threads back for far too long, risking Leah’s own situation smothering the more intriguing question of just who is Emmy Grey and just what was she running from. The result is that Leah is hard to take at face value and given some of her frustrating actions early occasions she is hard to sympathise with. Given that I neither felt I understood Leah or was particularly convinced of her emotions I think Megan Miranda was asking an awful lot of her readers to stay invested for the long haul that is required.
Although there are occasional glimpses of on-point insight where Miranda captures something perfectly, from her musings on journalism to the mistakes of the past which we fail to confront, for the most part The Perfect Stranger feels like another skittish narrator working herself up into a lather and leaving the reader woefully far behind. Leah’s focus on crime reporting gives her an innate predisposition to see the danger in many an innocuous situation and her perceptive understanding of the way the police operate in forming a hypothesis and taking an angle is well conveyed. As facilitators of the truth, albeit by different means, getting at the real story is the ultimate agenda of both the police and journalists and this theme runs through the entire story.
Whilst the reader can piece the basic threads together to stumble upon a passable conclusion and The Perfect Stranger does end on a stronger note it requires a hefty dose of staying power and head scratching along the way. A proliferation of threads smothers the basic message about whether we really know a person or simply choose to believe the story they present. I cannot deny that Megan Miranda does a good line in unsettled anxiety, even managing to make walking into a classroom feel as imbued with menace as running the gauntlet, but given the very apparent glimpses of promise in this story, The Perfect Stranger ends up feeling like a opportunity missed.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.