While I found this book to be slow-moving at first, once the pieces all started coming together I could not put it down. Leah Stevens, a former journalist turned teacher, moves to a small town to start over. But she doesn't do it alone. An old friend with a skeptical past, Emmy, joins her. In this story Miranda weaves a tale of deceit, mystery, suspense, and self-doubt when Leah begins to question just who Emmy really is and what secrets she is hiding as well. Four star read for me.

I was really excited to read The Perfect Stranger, I’m a total psychological thriller addict! Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed. The main character (Leah) is really frustrating and naïve – I did not find myself rooting for her as I usually do the heroine of a book. The romantic connection Leah makes (I won’t say who, as to not include spoilers) is completely predictable. Leah is constantly withholding information and putting herself in danger to try to solve the mystery; nothing new or exciting there. Overall this book was an underwhelming 3.5

Full disclosure: I haven’t read All the Missing Girls but am still open to giving it a chance.

I have reviewed "The Perfect Stranger" by Megan Miranda for ReaderToReader.com where it will remain on the site indefinitely. The link to the site is listed below. If there are any questions or concerns, please contact Vickie Denney at: Vickie@ReaderToReader.com

"The Perfect Stranger"

Journalist Leah Stevens moves to rural Pennsylvania to take a teaching position. She's starting her life over after being forced to quit her job at a Boston newspaper where she reported on a story that caused a man's death.

Leah reconnects with Emmy Grey, a friend she shared an apartment with eight years prior. Allegedly through with her tour with the Peace Corps, Emmy also wants to settle down someplace quiet.

Davis Cobb, the school coach, invites Leah for a drink, making advances which she rebukes. She starts receiving annoying emails, phone calls, and one night Cobb shows up at her house, drunk.

When Leah is caught in traffic on her way to school due to an accident where a woman is found beaten near the lake, she is shocked upon noticing the victim bears a striking resemblance to her. Leah fears Cobb responsible and notifies the cops of his harassment.

Emmy and Leah do not see a lot of each other due to conflicting schedules, but it's been several days since Emmy has been home. Leah believes she is with James, a guy she is dating, but decides to inform the authorities of her absence.

Perusing Emmy's possessions for clues, Leah's search and the police investigation turn up nothing. Do they think Leah made Emmy up? When James is discovered dead in the car Emmy had been using, Leah becomes suspect.

Is her past following her? Has Emmy played her all this time? And why?

Listed as contemporary woman's fiction,"The Perfect Stranger" is better described as a psychological thriller. The distinct characters add to the suspense, complete with twists and turns, leaving the reader thinking... "do we really know our friends?"

In the masterful follow-up to the runaway hit All the Missing Girls, a journalist sets out to find a missing friend, a friend who may never have existed at all.

Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.

Determined to find Emmy, Leah cooperates with Kyle Donovan, a handsome young police officer on the case. As they investigate her friend’s life for clues, Leah begins to wonder: did she ever really know Emmy at all? With no friends, family, or a digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Soon Leah’s credibility is at stake, and she is forced to revisit her past: the article that ruined her career. To save herself, Leah must uncover the truth about Emmy Grey—and along the way, confront her old demons, find out who she can really trust, and clear her own name.

Everyone in this rural Pennsylvanian town has something to hide—including Leah herself. How do you uncover the truth when you are busy hiding your own?

Although The Perfect Stranger is billed as All the Missing Girls #2, the two books are actually not at all related. Both are great in their own ways, but do not expect a sequel out of The Perfect Stranger.

In The Perfect Stranger, we follow Leah, a journalist turned teacher running away from her past in a small town where nobody goes unnoticed... except, it seems, her roommate Emmy.

When Emmy unexpectedly goes missing, Leah is unable to find anyone to vouch for her roommate’s existence at all. As she battles the demons of her past and attempts to uncover the truth about what happened to her roommate, she realizes that she may be in danger as well. Leah must fight the clock to clear her name and save her roommate, and herself, before it is too late. But nothing is as it seems, and in a world where you cannot be sure your roommate exists, who can you trust?

The Perfect Stranger had me hooked within a few chapters, and fans of All the Missing Girls will definitely want to pre-order Megan Miranda’s next best-seller. Thriller fans will not be disappointed as readers are kept guessing with each twist and turn until even you won’t know which way is up.
**Disclaimer** I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After Leah Stevens career is ruined after an explosive article that forces her to resign and leave Boston she encounters a long lost friend who is also looking to get away from her problems.

After months of living together in the rural woods of Pennsylvania Leah’s roommate Emmy goes missing. Ontop of that she’s dealing with a stalker who is emailing her and calling her for the past few months, and when Emmy goes missing all her problems come together for an explosive conclusion.

Who really is Emmy, how much does Leah really know about her? Why was a woman who looks remarkably like Leah attacked and left for dead not far from her home.

When the police stop believing Leah and wonder if Emmy is a figment of her imagination she begins to investigate on her own, cracking both cases wide open.

An edge of your seat thriller will have you closing your blinds at night and double locking your doors.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to review this!
4⭐️’s

"The Perfect Stranger" by Megan Miranda was the first book that I've read by this author and all I can say is wow! This is a compulsively entertaining book that grabbed me from the start and kept me enthralled until the end. "You can't escape the truth. It finds you eventually." This observation is made by the main protagonist of the book, Leah Stevens. Throughout this story, Leah searches for the truth but it constantly evades her. After leaving Boston, Leah moves to a rural town in western Pennsylvania to live with her old roommate, Emmy Grey. Stevens was a journalist with a prominent Boston newspaper but is forced to resign from her job because of a story she wrote without a substantiated witness.

Leah changes careers and becomes a high school English teacher. She tries to start a new life, but trouble lurks around the corner. Instead of living an idyllic life in the country, Leah finds herself immersed in the disappearance of her housemate and a murder investigation. As the story progresses, more layers are uncovered to expose Leah's past and how it ties in with her present. Her search for the truth ultimately leads her to question her past relationship with her friend Emmy Grey.

Megan Miranda does an excellent job at building suspense. There are many layers to this story which are unraveled at a dizzying rate. I couldn't get through the pages fast enough. Leah is eventually forced to confront her demons from the past so she can make sense of the present. Along the way, she finds clues that she eventually has to piece together.

I highly recommend this book if you're looking for a fast-paced story to sweep you away. Many thanks to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster and Megan Miranda for a copy of this book in exchanged for an unbiased review. (less)

This story was anti climactic. Too confusing to start putting pieces together until the end and then presented very unimpressively.

I was so impressed with Megan Miranda's adult fiction debut, All the Missing Girls, that I nominated it for the Texas Library Association Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List. We are thrilled that Ms. Miranda will be speaking at our Author Luncheon in San Antonio in April. With her second adult fiction title, The Perfect Stranger, coming out in April, there is definitely no "sophomore slump." As a matter of fact, I may even like this one better than the first! As I was reading it, I felt like Gretel from the fairy tale following a trail of clues; except those clues led me into the dark forest of the unknown rather than into a safe harbor. It is amazing how the author structures her story and drops bombshells in the narrative which take the reader into unexpected territory. You have a somewhat unreliable narrator, but one you are rooting for; a series of crimes that you can't quite figure out; and forays into the past that shock you as they reveal truly unexpected plot twists. The resolution is satisfying and consistent with the themes explored in story. The Perfect Stranger is....well, perfect - and one of my favorites of the year. As someone who reads a LOT of books, I am truly excited to be able to recommend this one to my library patrons.

This is the first book I've read by Megan and it did take me a little bit to really get in to it. However, once the action started I had a hard time putting it down. Imagine your roommate disappears the same night that another woman is badly injured, yet there is no trace your roommate ever existed. Things begin to happen around your small town that somehow all point to you, yet you have a past you don't want uncovered so you are left searching for her to prove your innocence.
This was the perfect story of a "friendship" gone badly and how naïve we can all be when we need support from others.

I first became aware of Megan Miranda’s storytelling skill when I read her previous novel All the Missing Girls, which was told BACKWARDS. Not an easy thing to pull off, but she did it in a 5-star fashion, so I was ready with high expectations when I received an advance copy of her latest book The Perfect Stranger in exchange for my honest review (thanks, Simon & Shuster and NetGalley!!)

In this one, the protagonist is an apparently troubled journalist named Leah Stevens, who has moved to a small town in western Pennsylvania to escape and start over. She picks up and takes off with her friend Emmy, becoming a high school teacher while Emmy works odd jobs under the table…or does she??? In fact, did Emmy really exist at all? When Leah reports her missing and the police come to investigate, there is no record of her existence anywhere, either currently or in the past when Leah and Emmy were college roommates. The reader is taken on a twisted ride while Leah tries to find Emmy while hiding her own past (the details of which are rolled out slowly, revealing the reason for Leah’s rush out of Boston and into Pennsylvania.

As the details of her past are revealed, we learn there was a restraining order against Leah and a threatened lawsuit for her actions in a story she wrote in Boston. Leah is just settling in to her new life when someone beats the crap out of a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Leah, and then Emmy disappears. Leah desperately wants to find Emmy, and becomes deeply entangled with the lead detective working on Emmy’s disappearance. She tries to cooperate, but the is no trace of Emmy, not even a digital footprint. At this point the reader may wonder if Emmy ever existed, or whether Leah might have dissociative identity disorder.

The possibility of a split personality is revealed as Leah tells the reader “I was an adolescent when I first started to see myself as two people…I was both walking down the hall and watching myself walk down the hall.” Speaking of a female student, she said she ”…held herself as if she knew it. She must’ve thought there were certain rules that still applied. “

Leah’s struggles become more clear as she continues ”…then you learn. Your backbone was all false bravado. An act that was highly cultivated, taught and expected of girls now. The spunk that was appreciated and rewarded. Talk back to the professor to show your grit.” Leah has learned that for her young student “…danger had not yet made itself apparent, but it was everywhere, whether she wanted to believe it or not.”

That is part of what makes this so GOOD: this is not just a mystery/thriller (although it definitely is a good example of that genre) – it is also a critique of how women fit in (or not) and learn to make their way in the world, whether it is essential to follow the rules, and the importance of learning about trust.

Leah’s struggle to reclaim her good name, find Emmy and figure out who, if anyone, she can trust makes this an interesting and exciting book. Five stars. And I look forward to Megan Miranda’s future work!

Summary: This suspenseful, well-written, unique and twisty thriller was an awesome read.

With her journalism career in ruins, Leah Stevens is ready to for a fresh start when she runs into her old roommate, Emmy Grey. The two of them quickly agree to move somewhere new to start over together. Shortly after their move, when a women who looks like Leah is attacked and Emmy disappears, Leah realizes she might never have known who Emmy was at all. In fact, she is unable to prove to the police that Emmy even exists and soon becomes a suspect herself.

This was such a fun, well-written story! As in All the Missing Girls, Megan Miranda brought the scenery and the characters vividly to life. I found it suspenseful throughout and couldn't put it down. It was slightly less unique and surprising than her previous book, where the story proceeded backwards in time, but it did still feel different from anything else I've read. There were a few twists I saw coming before the main character did, but there were also twists that surprised me as late as the last chapter. Even if it wasn't quite as perfect as All the Missing Girls, it definitely wasn't a letdown. I'd recommend it to fans of the author's previous thriller and to everyone else.

Leah Stevens has a checkered history she'd rather leave in the past. It's not that she's done anything wrong so much as has been perceived to have done so. That's all it takes though for a reputation to be tarnished beyond repair. With her promising journalism career sunk, Leah simply wants the opportunity to start afresh. A new life in a new town with a new job and new friends. All new, that is, except for her new best friend Emmy who made the trip with her. In fact, it was Emmy's idea.

Life is good for awhile, all but for the sensation Leah has of being stalked. A little too much unwanted attention here and there. It's obnoxious, but she can look past it because she's going for drama free and fresh. Remember? Then Emmy disappears and Leah is left trying to piece together the scraps of their life together. Has something terrible happened to Emmy? Did Emmy do something bad and disappear of her own volition?

It's like cutting through to the center of an onion; one cut doesn't do it. First you must pull back layer after layer before you can discover what waits for you in the middle. Emmy's life, much like that onion, seems to be folded in upon itself in and endless array of questions. Attempting to answer one requires first that another question be answered and before that another and another. Solving the mystery of Emmy will take Leah back through her own troubled past. Left to reconsider and process again all that she thought she once knew.

Full of spellbinding and nail biting suspense, The Perfect Stranger goes to show you may never really know the people around you. Even those closest to you may prove to be holding some of the deepest and darkest secrets of them all.

Thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book from the gorgeous cover to the captivating storyline. I will most certainly recommend it. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with the advanced review opportunity.

Megan Miranda has done it again... kept me up half the night finishing this superb psychological thriller. It starts off a little slow as the characters develop and the story unfolds but by midpoint it is a full blown page turner. Recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I would like to think that if I somehow found my way into a real life mystery, that I would act like the main character in this book. Somehow, she keeps finding herself in the middle of mysterious happenings, and rather than running from it, she finds herself digging for answers, or clues to solve the mystery.

I was immediately drawn in, and would love to read another story from this author!

Great story!

A friend...a very good one. Someone who knows you better than you know yourself. Someone you can turn to in your darkest hour, to help you pick up the pieces. What can be better? Leah considers herself lucky to have such a person in Emmy. She's been there for her through it all, even after all the time they were out of touch.

And now, Emmy is willing to give up everything and start over for Leah. Everything begins to unravel, however, when a local girl turns up beaten and left for dead. And then Emmy goes missing. Exactly when did Leah see her last, anyway? As Leah digs deeper and deeper, she realizes that maybe she didn't really know Emmy that well after all.

This is the perfect follow-up to Miranda's last novel, All the Missing Girls. It has just the right mix of intrigue, mystery, whodunit-ness to keep you guessing. And even if you put pieces of the story together before the halfway mark, as did I, the last 30% is sure to take you for a ride. That alone is enough of a reason to grab this one!

A Nail biting suspense, with a complexity that mesmerize the reader as it pulls into a psychological battle between reality, facts and perception.
Megan Miranda doesn't disappoint with this new installment.

THE PERFECT STRANGER

Megan Miranda's latest book is a terrific follow up to last years "All the Missing Girls". Leah Stevens is a former reporter for a Boston newspaper, who left her job to avoid a possible lawsuit over her last article. One day she runs into a former roommate Emmy and the two decide to get a fresh start together in Pennsylvania. When a woman who looks very similar to Leah is attacked, and Emmy disappears, Leah starts to investigate. What she finds is that Emmy may not be the person she thought she was, and that last article she wrote may not be the end of the story. I enjoyed this book very much, and now look forward to whatever this author might choose to do.

This is my second book by Miranda, but it won't be my last! She weaves together a smart, quick-paced story with some familiar characters and an eerie setting. Looking froward to the next book!

No one in the Perfect Stranger is who they appear. No one. Not the protagonist, Leah Stevens, to her friend Emmy Gray, or even the occupants of the small Pennsylvania town Leah and Emmy have moved to.
A poor decision causes Leah to need to leave Boston. When she reconnects with Emmy, an old "friend' who also wants to get out of the town and experience something different, the two move to Pennsylvania, where Leah gets a job teaching high school English and Emmy gets a job as a cleaning person at a motel.
But then Emmy goes missing and a woman is found dead in the woods close to Leah's home.
Are the two incidents connected? They don't appear to be. But Leah's life gets worse when one of her school colleagues is accused of killing the woman, a colleague who was also, apparently, stalking Leah.
From here. Leah's present life smacks full faced into her past one and she begins to suspect that no one around her is exactly who and what they are pretending to be.
I hate spoilers so that's all I say for now.
I was given an arc of this book by Netgalley for an honest review, so here goes:
What I liked about the book: the way Leah uncovers what's going on around her. She is a reporter and even though she is not working as one right now, all those old reporter instincts serve her well. I like that because she is true to herself. I also like the way the author portrays the other characters. They ring true.
The book is plotted so that as each new episode occurs, a little snippet of Leah and Emmy's past is revealed along with it.
All in all, a great story line and well told. I liked this book much more than All the MIssing Girls ( and the only reason I didn't like that one as much was because it was told backward. I like linear moving books a lot more!)