Wow! Get ready for a roller coaster of a ride with A Stranger On The Beach! Full of twists and turns that leaves your head spinning. The ending will blow your mind away! Though it does seem to go on a little too long towards the end, it is still a definite must read for the summer of 2019! 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 star rating from me!

I was initially pulled into this story based on a good opening scene and the beach setting. WE meet Caroline who's wealthy, attractive and seemingly alone in her new beach house as her husband works in the city and more and more seems to be too busy to come to the beach house for her. She notices a lone man gazing on the beach gazing at her beach house, he looks dangerous to her and slowly the wheels of what's to come are set in motion. Drama ensues, lies and betrayals are exposed and slowly but surely people are not what they seem. I thought I would like this story but the characters were so unlikeable and cliche I just didn't. I felt like I had read this story before and in much more suspenseful ways. By the halfway point this became a predictable story and I ended up skimming quite a bit.

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Caroline Stark is hosting a lavish housewarming party at her new beach house. When her husband, Jason, shows up not only late to the party, but followed by a Russian woman he claims is a business associate, the couple get into a very public and very ugly fight. She knows that Jason is lying and that the woman is really his mistress.

When her marriage falls apart and she is left with an empty bank account, and cancelled credit cards, Caroline has an impulsive fling with a bartender. Aidan also happened to be working her party that night and knows all about her husband problems. What she doesn't know is that Aidan has a history of violence.

As if things couldn't get worse, her college-aged daughter seems to be taking her father's side. Crestfallen, she turns to Aidan for comfort—but that comfort soon turns to revenge. The only problem is that their brief fling has left Aidan with a dangerous obsession with Caroline and her family. Meanwhile, Jason disappears and all eyes are on Caroline. Isn't it always the spouse?

Told from multiple points of view, Campbell confuses her reader (on purpose) by telling the same events from two very different perspectives. The dynamic is also interesting: Caroline is a wealthy, 43-year-old woman who is trying to keep up appearances to launch her career and social standing whereas Aidan is a 27-year-old bartender that served time for manslaughter. Both characters are unlikeable, untrustworthy, and unreliable.

There were a few plot holes that I ultimately struggled with, but I'll partially overlook given Campbell's strong writing and ability to deftly create suspense and tension. She pens some strong characters and used the unreliable narrator as the perfect mechanism to execute her effusive plot. There wasn't the startling revelation that I was hoping for in that I did figure it out, but again, her writing was intricate and compulsive.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book takes you on a ride on the crazy train. Seriously. I didn't know who to believe or what I was reading.
Caroline Stark, 43, lives in a lavish beach house that she loves. She sees a stranger on the beach--Aidan, 27 years old, gorgeous. His grandfather used to own the land the beach house sits on, so he has fond memories. Caroline thinks that her husband, Jason, is cheating on her. In a night of drunkenness, she has a one night stand with Aidan and he gets a little too attached to her after that, but who is to be believed? Who is the reliable source?
Caroline and Aidan each have their own POV and how they see the same events. I thought for sure I knew what was happening, but I was wrong.
This story was just flowing and moving right along at a fast pace until the 66% mark. That's when another POV was introduced and things got a little bit wonkier for me. Still, a great story, messed up that it is!

I finished up Michele Campbell's A Stranger on the Beach this week and LOVED it. Fantastic writing! Creative and suspenseful twists and turns! This novel is yet another fantastic addition to the St. Martin's psychological thriller stack.

Caroline Stark lives on a modern, picturesque (expensive) beach house in the Hamptons. She designed and decorated it herself, having torn down the old and dilapidated old house that came before. It's her pride and joy, and she can't help to admire her beautiful home. And she's not the only one.

Aidan Callahan often stops to admire the new modern beach house that now sits upon what used to be his grandfather's land. He should hate the house and despise that this woman has torn down the home of his ancestry and built this new monstrosity, but the truth is he is drawn to it. Some might say he's even obsessed.
A bartending gig on the property allows Aidan to see the place up close for once, instead of gaping from a distance on the far-off beach. Finally, he's able to study the home and take a good, hard look at the people occupying it. Perhaps the rich owners aren't quite as put-together as he's always assumed. There are secrets in the Stark home, and Aidan is about to become one of them.

Caroline's husband, Jason, is having an affair. She's sure of it! Well, she'll teach him. She'll show him what happens when you leave your wife of twenty years for a Russian woman and take all of your money with you. The stranger from the beach seems like a good place to start.

Told from Caroline's and Aidan's perspectives, this thriller weaves two very different tales. Who is the victim? Who is the predator? What has really gone on at the beach house? And who's going to be able to prove it?
This is unreliable narration at its finest, and I ate it up! The characters of Aidan and Caroline are spectacularly written. The mystery surrounding Caroline's husband, Jason Stark, leaves you as perplexed as Caroline feels. About two-thirds of the way through the book another perspective is introduced: that of Lieutenant Jess Messina of the New York State Police. She has a heart for justice and perhaps a still-innocent view of the world. But her attention to detail and her ability to put the clues of the case (did I mention the missing dead body?) above her personal feelings will land her in the middle of an investigation she couldn't have fathomed.

A Stranger on the Beach publishes on July 23rd. Fans of The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn will love this novel. 4 stars!

Looking for a fun, fast summer beach read?

This one features a beach front setting, an obsessive relationship, and two POV's. One in first person and one in third person, but they don't exactly match up, so we must decide who is being truthful and who is living in their own little reality. Hmm... I think I know!

Caroline and Aiden have a roller coaster of a relationship and most would agree that it did not start off on the right track . Her being a seemingly happily married woman and Aiden being a complete stranger who shows up at a time when Caroline is feeling weakness. Especially since she has just caught her hubby with a mysterious Russian woman. Maybe revenge is what she is feeling?

I do love an unreliable narrator and there were some twists that I saw and a few that definitely surprised me.

I loved how this ended, I was completely absorbed as the action and pace revved up during last few chapters. There was no putting it down until the end. Maybe a perfect storm?


Blog review closer to publication.

First I want to say thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for my ARC of A Stranger on the Beach in exchange for an honest review. I heard so many good things about this one that I was DYING to read it.
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Honestly, BELIEVE THE HYPE!! Not only is it a fast read but it completely sucks you in at the very beginning. I couldn’t put it down. I loved how the chapters alternated between Caroline and Aiden’s POVs and felt that it added to the suspense. I felt sorry for Caroline and thought Aiden was crazy. This one definitely kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. You keep thinking you know what’s going on when in reality you don’t.
If you are a thriller lover you are ABSOLUTELY going to want to go out and get a copy of this one!!
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This is the first book I’ve read by this author and I’m looking forward to reading more very soon!!
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Caroline notices a stranger lurking outside her new beach house. A house that she built for lavish parties and as a vacation home for her family. Unfortunately, her life is turned upside down when she finds out her husband is lying to her. Caroline and her husband have a very public fight at their party, where the handsome stranger from the beach, Aiden, is also hired to bartend. As Caroline watches her marriage fall apart and her lavish lifestyle fade away, she looks to find comfort and maybe even a little revenge with Aiden. Carline thinks it’s a harmless fling. Aiden thinks it’s the start of something new. What could possibly go wrong? However, when her husband, Jason, goes missing Caroline’s nightmare really begins. Aiden’s obsession with her becomes more disturbing by the minute and she may even be accused of her husband’s murder.

A stranger on the beach, a cheating husband, missing money, a dead husband, a murder trial.
So many twists in this book you just need to read it! I don’t want to say any more so you can enjoy
all the surprises in this book!

Caroline’s life is in shambles when her husband shows up to their housewarming party with another woman. As her life is crumbling around her she brings home the stranger on the beach for a night of passion. What was meant to be a meaningless hookup to get her mind off her current situation turns into her worst nightmare as the stranger becomes completely enraptured with her...

This book hooked me right from the very first chapter and I finished it within a few days. I found myself continually thinking about the characters and the plot anytime I put the book down. I loved that there was an alternating POV between Aidan and Caroline. The ending was completely unexpected. I will definitely be checking out other books by this author!

Publication Date: 7/23/2019
Rating: 3.5 / 5
I received a digital galley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for the chance to read and review!

A STRANGER ON THE BEACH by Michele Campbell is a twisty thriller. Caroline Stark is a seemingly happily married woman with a loving husband, a daughter in college and a stable life. As the book opens we are introduced to her newest achievement, a gorgeous dream beach house, newly built and furnished and about to be the scene of an open house. Alone at the house, she spots a stranger on the beach and immediately thinks that this man is trouble.

We quickly learn that Caroline’s life isn’t as perfect as it might at first seem. Her husband lies about where he is and when he finally shows up at the open house he has a strange Russian woman in tow. Caroline and her guests are left to believe that he is clearly cheating on her. There is talk of divorce and money missing from their joint accounts and Caroline sees her life falling to pieces around her.

Enter Aiden, the stranger from the beach. We know little about him at first apart from having a keen interest in the house and a shady past. Aiden’s life begins to intersect with Caroline’s even more when she decides to get drunk at the local bar where he works. Aiden offers to drive her home and in a moment of weakness Caroline welcomes him into her bed. For Caroline this was nothing more than a mistake that could derail her attempts to get her family life back on track. For Aiden it was the first step in a permanent, loving relationship and his obsession has Caroline scared.

This book is told from two distinct points of view for much of the story. We get a first person account from Caroline’s POV. She is telling her story and there is definitely a feeling that she is giving us a spin that asks for sympathy and understanding, providing what justifications she can for her actions. We also get chapters from Aiden’s POV, though these are written in third person.

There are definite discrepancies in the story between these points of view and the reader is left to question what is reality. Initially it took me a bit to connect with the two different narratives being given, but it did keep me wanting to read on to see what was going to happen next. Knowing that there is an unreliable narrator at work keeps things interesting and having two narrators without knowing if either one is reliable definitely added to the book’s suspense. It isn’t clear who is controlling the story and who is the one being manipulated.

I had a little bit of a struggle connecting with the characters which I think ties back to the unreliable nature of the narratives. That said, the premise of the book and the ongoing questions that I wanted answered were such that this book kept me hooked. I did see quite a few of the twists coming, but not all of them. I was going through a bit of a reading slump at the beginning of the month, but this book kept me engaged with the plot to keep reading.

From the beach front setting to the dark air of suspense, I definitely thinks this is a good summer beach read! A STRANGER ON THE BEACH by Michele Campbell is out on July 23rd!

My review was posted to my blog (dgreads.home.blog) on 7/10/2019 (link added below) - a link to this post was also put out on Twitter.

A shorter version of this review was also put out on my Instagram (@dgreads - link to the post added below). I will provide a publication date reminder on 7/23/2019 to link to this post in my stories.

I will post my review to retail sites on 7/23/2019.

https://dgreads.home.blog/2019/07/10/a-stranger-on-the-beach-by-michele-campbell-out-7-23-2019/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzv20Fcg85A/

2.5 stars. Rounding up because this was mostly a three star read and kept me turning pages, but the ending was kind of a letdown for me, and I found the switch to police procedural of sorts less engaging than the first half. It's hard to say what I didn't like without spoiling anything, but I will say that there are ways to do unreliable narrators that I enjoy and some that seem cheap and dishonest, and this was the latter. Of course it was obvious from the beginning that one of the two POV narrations was not true, because Caroline and Aidan's depictions of the same events were quite different. So at least one of them had to be lying, but they weren't narrating TO anyone specific, so who were they lying to? That's the kind of unreliable narrator that bugs me, but you'll have to read it to figure out who is telling the truth!

This book was such a wild ride! We're following the perspective of two people, who are telling very different versions of the same story. Like with many other thrillers, I don't think you should read the full synopsis! I think it gives too much away, but I'll give a brief overview.

Caroline is our first main character. She's been having some marriage issues, and then her husband ends up showing up late to their housewarming party with another woman. In a moment of anger, jealousy, and drunkenness, she sleeps with a bartender named Aidan. He is our second main character, and after sleeping with Caroline he quickly becomes obsessed and believes they're in love. Things happen, and we don't know which version of the story to believe.

I loved the switches in perspective between these two, I didn't want to stop reading!

About 2/3 of the way in, we get into the perspective of a cop who is investigating things that went down involving the two of them. The truth wasn't immediately obvious, which kept it a bit exciting, but I didn't like the ending quite as much as the beginning-which is why this didn't quite make it to a 5 star. Overall though, I definitely highly recommend this book and I really enjoyed it!

I've reviewed and enjoyed Michele Campbell's It's Always the Husband and She Was the Quiet One in the past. What I like about her books is that they are original mysteries and are just as great for reading on vacation as they are next to the fireplace in the dead of winter. Her latest, A Stranger on the Beach, is no exception.

We begin with Caroline, who just bought a beautiful new beach home with her husband. After suspecting her husband of cheating on her, Caroline begins an affair with Aiden, a stranger she has spotted staring at her house a few times. As readers, we start off believing everything that is told to us, but then begin to suspect that we are in the hands of unreliable narrators. In my opinion, this is the best type of novel -- when we aren't 100% sure what is going on until later in the book.

As has happened before with Campbell's novels, the ending fell flat for me. But the process of getting there was a pulse-pounding ride! I love this author's writing and always look forward to seeing what she has in the pipeline next.

MY RATING - 3.5

Ah, I had such a love/hate relationship with this book. Throughout the whole novel you truly believe everything Caroline is going through and saying is true and you believe you know who the bad guy is. I honestly enjoyed it until the last few chapters, I don't want to give anything away but I felt duped in the end that everything I read was fake. It is definitely a thriller and keeps you on the edge of your seat- I still recommend to read but sit back and get ready for the truth to come out.

2.5 stars

Let me just say right off the bat that my opinion of this book is clearly the minority view, so if you were strongly considering reading this book, I would suggest also checking out the higher-rated reviews as well for a more well-rounded assessment.

This is actually the second book that I’ve read by Michele Campbell (the first one being her sophomore novel She Was the Quiet One) and seeing that I had enjoyed her previous work, I had high hopes going into this one. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be very different from what I expected, and not in a good way either. The biggest problem I had was with the structure of the narrative, especially the first two-thirds of the story, which switched back and forth between the point of view of Caroline Stark (a 43-year-old rich woman with a mansion on the beach) and Aidan Callahan (a 27-year-old bartender with a questionable past) – normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but with this story, it was particularly confusing because the exact same events / situations would be told in completely opposite ways, so as I’m reading, I have no clue who is telling the truth and how things really happened. Though I get what Campbell was trying to do by structuring the first two-thirds of the book this way with the whole unreliable narrator thing, I think the reason why it didn’t work for me was because it was overdone and dragged out for way too long (basically there would be one chapter from Caroline’s perspective and then the next chapter would be from Aidan’s perspective, but describing essentially the same event – this went on for at least 40+ chapters, though to the author’s credit, the chapters were relatively short) – this made the story too tedious and a chore to read.

Structure of the narrative aside, the other major problem I had was the characters, all of whom were written in a way that they came across as clichéd and unrealistic – most important of all though, none of the characters were likable and not only was I not able to connect with any of them, I also couldn’t bring myself to feel an ounce of sympathy for them either. Actually, come to think of it, “unlikeable” is too nice a word -- “loathsome” is a better fit for how I felt about most of the characters, though in the case of Caroline, I would probably go even harsher. Caroline actually got progressively more loathsome and annoying as the story went on, to the point that near the halfway mark, I finally got fed up and decided to skim through the rest of the book so I could still get a general idea of the plot without having to endure any more of Caroline’s stupidities (sorry, don’t know how else to say it). I’ve said before how much I can’t stand characters that are written in a stereotypical way – well, in this book, every single character is portrayed in this manner, but not only that, their actions actually get more and more ridiculous and outrageous with each chapter (Caroline especially here, as she not only kept making poor choices over and over again, she also kept whining about those choices, made no attempts whatsoever to fix the messes she caused, then tried to blame others attempting to help her for petty things like “stressing” her out or calling her at the wrong time...and that’s just scratching the surface of her “antics”). The characters as well as the direction in which the story seemed to be headed (which was essentially nowhere at that point) became such a huge source of frustration for me that I was actually tempted to DNF the book in order to preserve my sanity -- the only reason I didn’t go that route was because I was past the halfway mark already and I figured, given all the time I wasted reading the book up to this point, I was at least owed the “satisfaction” of seeing how it ends (more specifically, I wanted to see what type of comeuppance, if any, the characters would get).

I don’t want to say too much more, as I’m afraid I might end up giving the story away through all the complaints I have about the characters and their actions (with Caroline, I had actually written down 2 full pages of things that annoyed me about her – and that was only from the first half of the story before I started skimming!). Again though, I’m the outlier here, as everyone else seemed to like this more than I did, so perhaps this book just didn’t jive with me. As for this author’s other works, I’m actually on the fence as to whether I will continue to pick up another of her books – on the one hand, this is a repeat author for me and I truly did like her previous work, but on the other hand, this book left such a bad taste in my mouth that I don’t know if it will tarnish my expectations of her next book. I guess we will have to see what happens….

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley

I received a copy of this book from netgalley in return for my honest review. This book was so good. It kept my attention and really kept me guessing!!!! I never knew what was going to happen next!!!! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good mystery!!

A Stranger on the Beach by a new to me author Michele Campbell. A psychological thriller that has you hooked from the beginning of the book. Great storyline and dialogue.

A true psychological thriller, this book will have to questioning everything and wondering what in the world is going on... I simply couldn’t put it down because of what a whirlwind the plot was. It reminded me of Carolyn Kepnes’ YOU because of the creepiness and stalker-ish characteristics. I usually enjoy seeing everything unfold from multiple perspectives, but having that happen with this book just made my head hurt and left me confused at some points. So much was going on.

The first half of the book kept me guessing and pushing forward to find out what was going to happen next, but as I read on, everything became more obvious and the plot seemed to slow and sometimes drag on and become repetitive. The beginning was much stronger than the ending.

Amazing book. This book kept me on the edge of my seat and just when I thought I had it figured out. BAM. A twist I did not see coming.

This book had me hooked right away, and I had a hard time tearing myself away. It was quick-paced, and the story line had me intrigued throughout. That being said, I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters and following the alternating POVs with some of the nonsensical events. (The biggest confusion for me was when Jason was so set on leaving Caroline, but he suddenly took her back after one dinner, and the reader was supposed to believe everything was fine between them). By the end, when it wraps up, I understood why the gaps were there, but it was hard to still be invested without a character to root for. I also felt like the at the end, the author was trying to have the reader sympathize with Aiden as a victim, but it was already too late in my opinion. Overall, I truly enjoyed reading this because of the fast-pace, even though I was left confused and unsettled by the outcome. I would give it a 3.5/5 stars