Initially I was too busy to read more than a few pages of this book a day so it took me a while to get into it. Once I had time to read more than a few pages it became the kind of book you don’t want to put down.
Leah is trying to make a new life for herself in rural Pennsylvania with her old friend Emmy. She is having some trouble adjusting to the quiet nature of life outside of the city. “Other sounds, more familiar now: the creak of the old mattress, crickets, a howl as the wind funnelled through the valley I lived in, a whisper in the night. You are her.”
Emmy returned to Leah’s life at exactly the right time. Leah was being threatened with a potential lawsuit over a newspaper article she had written and she had been ‘advised’ to quit her job.
Then someone who looks like Leah, Bethany Jarvis, is found badly beaten by a lake near their home and Leah realises she hasn’t heard from Emmy for days.
Leah and Emmy have differing approaches to how they live their lives. Emmy is clearly impulsive, transient and gets bored easily. Leah, on the other hand, prefers to make plans and weigh up a situation and other people.
Leah has a full- time job as a teacher at a local school and Emma works nights as a cleaner at a motel so they don’t tend to see a lot of each other. Sometimes Leah only knows Emmy is about because she can hear her with her boyfriend Jim. Their infrequent contact with each other is why it takes Leah so long to realize Emmy is missing.
Leah is on her way to work when Bethany Jarvis is found badly beaten and then later find out that Davis Cobbs, the school coach, has been arrested. “Davis Cobb was the reason I’d begun leaving my phone on silent at night. I ignored his calls every time they came through – always after eleven P.M, always after I assumed he’d been down at the bar and was walking back home. Always the same thing…
He’d offered a drink at the nearest bar – he had a ring on his finger, it was the middle of the day, you can follow me in your car. It seemed like a friendly welcome-to-town-offer. He seemed like a lot of things – until he showed up at my door one night.”
Then he began emailing her and leaving her voicemails all the time which she always deleted.
Leah is questioned by the police about the incidents between her and the coach and shortly afterwards she tells them about Emmy being missing. But who is Emmy? Leah is sure she is a victim but the police aren’t so sure, in fact they aren’t sure she exists at all.
And why does Leah get the feeling she is being stalked?
This was definitely worth reading. The characters were well thought out, the story was full of suspense, and I was kept guessing right until the very end.

I received this book as an Advanced Reader's Copy with the understanding that I would read and review it.

I requested Megan Miranda's The Perfect Stranger, even though I wasn't really a fan of her other most recent book, All the Missing Girls. I figured I should give her another try, especially since many people liked All the Missing Girls. I am glad that I gave Ms. Miranda another try, as I throughly enjoyed this book.

Leah is a new teacher in a high school in western Pennsylvania, having left Boston with her journalism career in tatters and her name sullied. Her roommate, Emmy, is a borderline mythic figure in her life, seemingly carefree and true to herself. When Emmy disappears without a trace, Leah's world is turned upside down.

This book was surprisingly compulsive (especially since I didn't like All the Missing Girls). I couldn't wait to pick it back up and return to Leah's spooky story! The story did meander in a few spots, but it was overall well done. I will be reading Ms. Miranda again.

I loved this book! could not put it down. I am going to now read all the other books from this author! I really enjoyed the author's writing, and was very invested in the outcome of the main character. Thank you for letting me read this book!

I would like to start by saying that I haven't read Megan Miranda previous book "All the missing girl"
But I really enjoy "The perfect Stranger", It was well-written with a thrilling story that kept me interested until the end.
By half way in the book, I couldn't put it down.
I raited it 4 starts in goodreads, I'd definitively recommend this book!

Great story. Couldn't put it down.

This had more than enough suspense and angst! I am new to this writer and I am so glad that I discovered her!
The characters have depth and gave each page the right dose to create the turns and twists that made this story.
I can usually figure out the who and why quickly but this one had be second guessing myself after every chapter. You get so engrossed in what is going on you do not realize how much time has gone by. That is always a good thing!
This was extremely good and interesting and will simply may you think and be captivated!

Loved this; looking forward to sharing it in my Summer Reading Guide to be released May 2017.

Five stars all around.
This book had me completely on edge the entire ride.

The narrator is borderline unreliable; you are never quite sure if she’s telling us the truth, lying to herself, or outright crazy. She does have some boundary issues, some of which I related to, but the reader can’t be sure if they cross a line or exactly which line they cross. Megan Miranda does an excellent job of throwing in clues here and there to keep us off kilter.

But reliable or not (I’m not spoiling the answer!), the narrator is a very intelligent woman. I loved her. To the outside world she may have had some issues, and she’s disappointed herself, but that does nothing to take away the very quick way her mind works.

I’ve seen some reviews state that the narrative isn’t perfect, and while that may technically be true, Miranda accomplishes so much more than your average author does in a mystery book like this. This story is intricate, in the very best way, and I felt Miranda did a genius job putting it all together, just as she did in her previous book All the Missing Girls.

I don’t believe it’s a spoiler to state that nothing much is what it seems here, and that Miranda really shows how any narrator can be unreliable because you are seeing the story solely through their interpretation of events. But what if a reliable narrator tells you a story based on misinterpreted events?

All the Missing Girls was incredible and made me a huge fan of Megan Miranda, now The Perfect Stranger has sealed that deal. I cannot wait for her next book.

I find most mystery/thrillers these days to be too obvious, with us readers figuring out the mystery before we reach 20% of the book. However, that is not the case with this book as well as All the Missing Girls.

I don't know how much I could say about the novel that's not already in the book description without spoiling anything, so I'll just say this was a very enjoyable read, it kept me guessing until the last chapter and it had me change my theories about what was going on every time I turned a page.

Megan Miranda's books have made me stay up late reading because I need to know what's next. I think I may have found a new favorite author.

I loved the suspense and characters in this book. I would recommend this book .

Megan Miranda did it again. Actually, I liked The Perfect Stranger better than her first novel, All The Missing Girls. The main character is complex, and the book is full of many twists and turns. If you like thrillers, this one is worth a read.

Leah Stevens is a journalist whose career abruptly ended after an expose gone wrong. Leah then decided to pack and move to a small town with her friend, Emmy Grey. Like Leah, Emmy is running away but in her case, it is from a bad relationship. Although the two live together, it soon becomes apparent that there are secrets about each other that they don’t really know.

The quiet and peace of the small town is shattered once a woman is discovered assaulted by the side of the road. Worse still, the woman bears a very strong resemblance to Leah. Soon, Emmy goes missing and then a body is found. The twists begin from then on. The detectives are eager to solve the mystery and so is Leah who is caught up at the center of the unfolding drama.

One thing that I really liked this book is that I couldn’t predict any of the twists. Leah seemed like an unreliable narrator so I found myself doubting her. At some point, I wasn’t even so sure about her sanity. I mean, I even doubted the existence of her roommate. This book kept me guessing and just when I thought that I had it all figured out, new twists emerged.

If you enjoy complex books with plenty of secrets and twists then The Perfect Stranger by Miranda Megan will be perfect for you.

The Perfect Stranger is a great follow up to Megan Miranda's book, All the Missing Girls. To compare the two would be completely wrong because they are two completely different books with two different plots. The only thing that remains the same is Ms. Miranda's writing which is nothing less than superb.

In The Perfect Stranger we have our main protagonist, Leah. She needs to escape her old life and fast. People she loved and trusted turned on her, her work turned their backs on her, she has nothing left to do but get the hell out of dodge.

Emmy has been in and out of her life for years but that doesn't matter. True friends don't need to be in each other's lives everyday to pick up where they left off. When Leah needs to leave, Emmy needs to escape and what's better than a small mountain town in Pennsylvania.

What Leah thought was the truth isn't. When everything around her starts to crumble, will she come out alive or end up a victim?

The Perfect Stranger is full of suspense, surprises, twists and bends that will leave you guessing right up until the very end. When you think you have everything figured out, think again.

Leah Stevens is forced to leave her investigative reporting job in Boston and find an obscure teaching position in Pennsylvania after printing an article with allegations towards a professor she is unable/unwilling to corroborate. She is sharing a house with a former roommate, Emmy, who has returned to the States after many years in the Peace Corps. Leah is struggling in her first teaching job, concerned about a school coach who keeps drunk dialing her late at night and who may be peeking through her windows. She also has a strange feeling that her roomie has disappeared. When a woman who closely resembles Leah is brutally attacked near the school where she teaches, the local police are concerned that Leah herself may be in danger.

It's a daunting task trying to repeat the success of Miranda's best selling novel All the Missing Children. The Perfect Stranger, unlike its predecessor, is written in chronological order. This doesn't improve the reader's ability to wade through the clues and mysteries surrounding the main players. There are some basic questions to answer and scenarios to resolve. What happened to Leah to end her journalistic career and drive her out of Boston? Does the mysterious Emily even exist? Can someone live so far off the grid that even the local police cannot track her? Who is stalking Leah and to what end?

Miranda takes her time rolling out the unhappy life of Leah Stevens. Some books feel dark and ominous. I found The Perfect Stranger to be dark and depressing. There are times when an author can be too clever, too concealing of the truth and too willing to stretch the reader's patience and credibility before all is revealed. Told in first person, we are limited to Leah's perspective of events present and past. This perspective stunts development of the secondary characters turning them into little more than red herrings on the page. Considering Leah was a journalist in Boston, she has very poor recall of day to day events surrounding her life with Emily. Throw that doubt of her mental stability at the reader and it puts all events involving Leah into question. It’s a clever plot device to keep the reader off balance. When stretched out over an entire novel, a novel which moves at a glacial pace, it loses its charm.

3 stars

ARC received with thanks from publisher via NetGalley for review.

The Perfect Stranger was not a very good book. The main character was fairly unlikeable and so wishy washy all the time. I felt like Megan Miranda was trying too hard to make them all seem culpable. Instead they all seemed nutso. I will not post my review but I will not be recommending this one to anyone.

I received a copy of The Perfect Stranger through NetGalley for an honest review. Thank you to Simon & Schuster and to Megan Miranda for the opportunity.

I LOVED this book. I didn’t want to put it down. The characters are complex, and the plot has so many twists and turns. The writing is very vivid and descriptive, and there is a lot of suspense and strong character development. The reader also feels like s/he is right there alongside the main character, Leah Stevens, as she is experiencing each situation and uncovering more information.

Even Leah’s house ends up being a central part of the plot. At first it seems that Leah feels comfortable and safe in her home and enjoys all of its features, including the location near the lake, the view from the sliding glass door and the animals that live under her porch. As the book progresses and the plot builds, the house turns into something menacing as Leah pieces together what happened to her roommate, Emmy, and realizes she is being stalked. The stalker aspect had me on edge, too!

The only drawback is that there is not closure to all of the storylines in the book. The reader has to come to his/her own conclusions to some of the open questions.

READ THIS BOOK. I highly recommend it. I’m a big fan of suspenseful thrillers but this one definitely stands out. It blew me away. I was still thinking about the book for a long time after I finished. It’s very different than All The Missing Girls and I liked it even better.

This is my first NetGalley ARC and I’m so pleased to be writing this review.

"You can't escape the truth. It finds you eventually."

The follow-up to Megan Miranda's highly acclaimed book "All the Missing Girls" is a very interesting read. The characters are well developed, especially the main character Leah. Reflections throughout the book help shape her story nicely. The other main character, Emmy, is also well developed through Leah's broken memories of her.

As the plot unfolds, a bizarre set of circumstances leads you to wonder if you're reading about a story that the main character has made up. Maybe a figment of her imagination. Maybe an alternate reality she has created to cope with some of her own problems. But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Creepy events keep happening that are more than mere coincidence. Pay attention to the story or you'll miss the subtle foreshadowing throughout.

All along the way Miranda gives you little bites of information that force you to push forward and continue reading well into the night. She has a way with descriptive language and dialogue that slowly ratchets up the tension page by page. The sordid details from Leah's past and present constantly work against her at every turn in the case, and the tension ratchets up another notch as she dives into her past on her own to discover the truth. Everything comes crashing down on Leah towards the end of the book as she tries desperately to fit the pieces together. The conclusion is not really unexpected, but I appreciate how Miranda ties up all the loose ends nicely.

I recommend this book to fans of mysteries and thrillers. It was a good fast paced read. I received this as a free ARC from Simon & Schuster on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Most of the time when an author has a spectacular debut there is insane pressure for the next book they put out. While, sometimes unfair, most people end up disappointed in the next novel.

I will admit I am normally one of those people but this was not the case with The Perfect Stranger. I may be the minority in that but I really felt as though this could almost surpass All The Missing Girls. If the order of release was reversed I 100% believe this book would have a higher rating.

This is a great thriller and it keeps you guessing throughout. Miranda is such skilled story teller that every time you think you have someone or something figured out she masterfully flips the tables on you.

For me the highlight of the whole story is really how it tackles friendship and what you would do for the people you know and love. She brings up the saying of would you help bury the body or turn the person in, and while we all have our own opinions of ourselves, this story helps tackle what some might do it when actually faced with that option.

Loved this book! Pacing was excellent, just enough twists and turns to keep me up all night but not so many that I was rolling my eyes at the improbability of any of it. Great read, will definitely recommend!

Thank you to netgalley for this free edition of The Perfect Stranger.

Wow what a ride. This book has a lot of twists and turns and really keeps you guessing

I would say it's full of suspense and a real page turner!

Creepy to think people steal others identities and what they think they can get away with.

Highly recommended!