4★
“Truth and story—doesn’t matter which comes first as long as you get where you need to be at the end. As long as you end at the truth, all’s fair.”

That’s how Leah Stevens lived, and that’s why she had to leave town in a hurry. She knew the truth, directed attention to it, and it had fatal consequences that affected an old friend. She found support in the shape of Emmy Grey, her roommate after college whom she hadn’t seen for eight years. Emmy is a bit of a loose cannon, to say the least.

Leah tells us her story, sharing a bit about her family, a bit about her career, and gradually more about why she had to leave.

When she and Emmy parted company in the past, Emmy had said she was going overseas with the Peace Corps. Fancy running into her in a pub just when Leah was looking for a way to leave town. It was not unlike how she met Emmy the first time, when she was looking for a flat to move into after college. Emmy was fun, impulsive. Emmy drank a lot of vodka (with Leah). Emmy had peculiar values. Leah quotes Emmy.

“'All relationships fall into three categories. Three. That’s it.' She’d tipped her head to the side, her hair spilled out around her, to check if I was listening, whether I was awake. I liked moments like this, staying silent and letting her spin a tale. She’d looked back to the ceiling. 'Okay, here’s the hypothetical. Take anyone you know. Anyone. Let’s say you know they’ve killed someone. They call you and they confess. Do you either, A, call the police.' She held up her thumb. 'B, do nothing.' Her pointer finger. 'Or C, help them bury the body.' Her third finger went up, and she held them over her face, waiting.”

The girls move from Boston to Pennsylvania, where Leah has lined up a high school teaching job and hopes to start a new life. It’s certainly not Boston.

“Just yesterday one of the other teachers said there was a bear in his yard. Just that: a bear in his yard. Like it was a thing one might or might not notice in passing. Graffiti on the overpass, a burnt-out streetlight. Just a bear.”

The teachers are nice, the kids are pretty much normally troublesome, and life is ticking along until a young woman is found badly injured and unconscious by the lake. This young woman looks surprisingly like Leah. Could she have been mistaken for Leah? Was Leah really the target, and if so, why?

Meanwhile, Leah has had some strange phone calls and emails. She suspects the school coach, and he’s locked up for a while, which quiets things down. When he’s released, it starts up again.

Kyle Donovan is the handsome young cop who investigates and gets a bit more embroiled with Leah than he intended. But he hasn’t met Emmy. Funny thing, that. Nobody’s seen Emmy for several days. In fact, Leah has trouble finding anyone who has EVER seen Emmy, and she has no idea how to prove she really does exist.

Talk about your three kinds of people! How do you classify people who just up and disappear? Is she going to turn up as another victim at the lake?

The author does a fine job of keeping up the suspense while getting on with the story, and she never falters. Leah and Emmy are believable characters (even as we wonder whether Emmy is a creation of Leah’s imagination), and Leah’s journalistic transgression is explained, to my great satisfaction.

It’s a well-told mystery with a wee bit of romance, which, although unnecessary, does serve to explain why Leah and Kyle might share some confidences they wouldn’t otherwise.

Leah is a lot braver than I would ever be, and Emmy is as clever as all get-out, as we used to say. It’s fun watching Leah use her journalistic skills to track every tiny lead.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted (at my peril), so quotes may have changed. . . but I like to give a sense of the author’s style.

As always, Megan Miranda's characters are fascinating. I enjoyed the writing of this book, but it didn't keep my interest as well as All the Missing Girls did.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

"A journalist sets out to find a missing friend, a friend who may never have existed at all."

A former reporter who loves a good crime/mystery novel, I was drawn to this book based on that sentence in the description alone. And I'd say it lived up to my expectations. I liked Leah and her relentless pursuit of the story as she came up with questions, tried to track down the answers, and piece together the story surrounding Emmy.

And the storyline was pretty good too. A few unexpected twists and turns that kept me guessing.

Overall, if you like crime/mystery type reads, pick this one up.

Loved All the Missing Girls but this was too slow for me and I put it aside. May try it at a later date!

I'm definitely not the only person who thought Miranda's previous novel All the Missing Girls was fantastic so I was very excited to start this one. This novel has several subplots and the clues were given to the reader very slowly which I think most readers will think adds to the overall suspense. It makes you just want to know now how everything is connected. I highly recommend this book to anyone that loves psychologically thrillers. Thank you to netgalley for an advanced reader copy.

Megan Miranda offers another twisty thriller but what I enjoyed most about this story was the very satisfying ending. So many times a book is so good and twisty but the ending is just ho hum but this....yes! Get her!

Strange and weird story. Kept me guessing until the very end. Amazing that there were so many negative, and corrupt individuals in Amanda's circle. The author skillfully weaves an amazing tale.

I enjoyed the first book immensely, but felt let down by this one. I felt hopeful in the beginning with such a great opening but it grew rather tediuous for me to ax my way through in the end.

This is one of those situations where they put all the good scenes in the preview. Everything cool that happens, happens in the blurb and then all the good is sucked out and there is nothing left but regular words on a page of an average book.

It felt the same to me, the same as every other psychological thriller that is out there right now. Nothing new to the plot, some admittedly good twists and turns but nothing that took my breath away. It was pretty predictable to me and the end reveal really failed to wow me in the biggest way.

I am not really a fan of the writing style I think and the narrative falls flat for me when it comes to the characters and their personalities.

I didn’t hate this book but it wasn’t my favorite. I would have others to suggest to a fellow reader rather than this one. The blurb said wildly gripping but I didn’t feel that way at all when I was reading this book.

I loved Megan Miranda's first book and was so excited to see that I had a copy of the new one. It was entertaining but not as good as the first.

So good! I love books like this - fitting the pieces together, unreliable characters that keep you guessing, identifying clues & trying to NOT fall for the red herrings!! I really enjoyed this author and I plan on checking out some of her other novels. :)

ARC copy given in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Netgalley!!!!

Leah Stevens is a disgraced journalist who has to leave Boston, after being accused of fabricating a source and ruining a man’s life. She is facing a restraining order and a potential lawsuit, when she runs into an old college friend, Emmy Grey, who offers her the perfect escape. Emmy is moving to rural Pennsylvania to escape a troubled relationship, and she invites Leah to share the rental house with her.

Leah is relieved to have a chance to start over – she gets a job teaching at the local high school and tries to put her past behind her, slowly adapting to quiet, small-town life. But just when things are starting to settle down, a woman is assaulted near Leah and Emmy’s house – and she bears a striking resemblance to Leah. Before she can understand what exactly this means for her, Leah realizes that Emmy has disappeared – a possible victim of the same attacker.

Detective Kyle Donovan works with Leah to search for clues about Emmy’s whereabouts, but they both soon realize that Leah knows very little about her friend – in fact, Emmy’s entire existence is called into question. She has no social media presence, and no paper trail leading to her supposed jobs and residences. To make matters more complicated, Leah’s intimacy with Kyle begins to jeopardize the whole case – as her credibility is called into question, Leah must confront her own past to clear her name and save Emmy. Before long, it seems like everyone in their small Pennsylvania town has shocking secrets to hide.

This slow-paced thriller is filled with clever twists, made all the more eerie by how real they seem – the circumstances Leah finds herself in could happen to anyone, and it forces us to question how well we can ever know the people we call friends. The reality of Leah and Emmy’s lives is uncertain and unreliable, with the ground constantly shifting beneath the reader. Although I didn’t love the characters, I did begin to really believe in them, and their very bad decisions. Their story was dark and complex – even though I guessed some things, it all came together in a very unexpected and satisfying way.

I received this book from Simon & Schuster and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Leah randomly runs into an old friend, Emmy, who is fresh out of a troubled relationship and looking for a new start. Leah has her own problems and is also looking to start over somewhere new, so the timing couldn't be more perfect when Emmy suggests they move together to a small town in PA. The pair had settled into their new lives when tragedy strikes - a woman in town is found brutally assaulted and clinging to life. What's even more disturbing is how much this girl resembles Leah and the questions the police are asking. In the midst of this, Emmy goes missing without a trace. While cooperating with the police, Leah launches an investigation on her own to find answers, but discovers there is very little she actually knows about Emmy. The police find nothing on Emmy either - it's as if she's a ghost and doesn't exist....

I had read All The Missing Girls and definitely wanted to read The Perfect Stranger (thank you to the author/publisher/NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review). The Perfect Stranger didn't disappoint! The ending tied it all together and those final pages were great!! I really enjoyed the way it ended. This one is a quick read - it's one of those you don't want to put down because you want to find out what the heck is going on (and I wasn't sure which way things were going). Enjoy!

A shining star in a sea of miserably written mysteries.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While it is not a literary masterpiece, it was intriguing all the way through and well written.and Miranda created a cleverly constructed mystery, which kept me guessing. Awsome cliffhanger, a rarity these days and, moreover, especially from an author who is also a good writer. There were all sorts of twists and turns and plot complications (but believeable ones). I hadn’t the faintest idea of what was going to happen and it was so well written and plotted that I wanted to keep on reading to get to the end and solve the mystery. This happens so rarely nowadays.

Furthermore it is filled with quality descriptions, characterizations, believable dialogues and a love scene that is not over done, not over described, and gives the reader just enough to be tantalizing.

And it is quite a novel novel, to be redundant. It’s so nice to read a book where someone has thought out of the box to create a plot that is unique.

Thank you, NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Perfect Stranger.
"All is not as one thinks" rings throughout this suspenseful novel by Megan Miranda. Most characters are strangers to others as well as themselves at points throughout the novel. Emmy turns out to be the perfect stranger to herself but especially to Leah. Leah herself is the perfect stranger to Emmy, Kyle, and most of all to herself.
The Perfect Stranger is suspenseful from start to finish.

A great book until the end, which was a bit rushed.

Well written. I thought I had it figured out and I had it wrong. I like that. It's a solid read.

I did a top five thrillers I can't wait to read this summer as part of my Sweet Summer Reads Series and The Perfect Stranger was absolutely a part of that! Thanks for the advanced copy!

While this isn't high art, it's a very strong piece of the densely-populated genre of mystery fiction, which is not typically my preferred fare. I enjoyed it immensely, and it was nice to take a break from heavy-handed literature. Each chapter is easily digestible and the pacing is great. There's nothing extraneous here.

Miranda does a great job creating a well-rounded protagonist in the unreliable narrator, Leah. The plot keeps twisting around, and while there was one particular "revelation" that I saw coming from the beginning, the book kept me on my toes for the most part. This book is a great example of something that would be enjoyed by fans of Gone Girl, but isn't a clone (like Girl on the Train, for example). Rarely do I find a book that I'm upset when I finish, as I'm generally ready to start a new journey after spending 8+ hours in one story, but in this instance, I was surprised when it ended-- which could be because the ending is rather abrupt. It felt like the author made her point and then just stopped writing, but I don't think that's a bad thing as there's nothing worse than rambling on simply because you A) feel compelled to wrap everything up into some neat little package, or B) feel like you need to follow the classic story structure in which we have a certain number of pages tying things up.
I would highly recommend this as a beach read, to fans of chick lit and mystery fiction alike.

Loved this book looking forward to what this author has coming in the future.