Thank to NetGalley as well as the author/publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased and honest review…..

This was a really good thriller however without reading the first book in the series, you miss a lot of the development of the characters. Yet I read the book and enjoyed the early set up to the explosive ending.

The second book in the Rachel Marin series. It can be read as a stand alone, but the first book sets up the back story for some of the happenings in this book so reading HIDE AWAY will make this great book even better. The main character is a single mother of a 14 yr old boy. She is also a contracted police investigator. Much of the personal conflict she will face comes when she must choose to protect her already traumatized son from further injuries. BUT......

Jason Pinter has done an excellent job of keeping the story moving and the plot twisted just enough so you have to keep changing your mind on who done it!!!! That's what most of us read thrillers for, so I found this one an excellent second book in a series that has secured a spot on my "watch for the next book" list.

This is another book that I didn’t know was part of the series. Yes, you can read it as a standalone, but I feel like you are missing character development and crucial details that could make the book great

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. Great thriller/suspense. Highly recommend.

Wow! A Stranger at the Door is a super fast-paced thriller with all kinds of psychological interest going on. This is the second in a series. I did not read the first in the series and still enjoyed this. I didn't feel like anything was missing, so I'd say it can definitely be read as a stand-alone book. Rachel is a single mother whose life is finally starting to feel stable, life is good. But not for long, I'll leave it there, as the Goodreads synopsis gives you an idea of the story. I'm so grateful to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for my honest review. Highly recommended.

When I started this book, I didn't know it was the second in a series. I would recommend reading the first book, Hideaway, before the second to get all the background info. Having said that, this book can also be read as a standalone which is what I did.

I love the author's writing and character development! It is a great thriller with lots of twists and turns which kept me turning the pages way past my bedtime!!

A Stranger At The Door is the second book in the Rachel Marin Thriller series.I highly encourage everyone to read Hide Away first. The author does an excellent job of recapping the events from book one but there's just something special about meeting the characters for the first time, learning who they are, their back story.. A lot happens in book one that you need to read. Just trust me on this.

This storyline is so good, I love a book that surprises me and this book has a whole lot of that going on. The character development is excellent. There are some seriously shady characters in this book and several characters return from book one. Can we be friends? She gets herself into a lot situations. And let's talk about how there's also some humor thrown in there. Several times I found myself laughing.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Great thriller which kept me turning the pages well into the night. Great characters and plot. Highly recommend to others!!

A Stranger at the Door by Jason Pinter is a fast-paced, thrilling adventure, which kept me on the seat of my chair.

Will Rachel figure out what is happening in Ashby before her son is involved?

Rachel Marin
I absolutely love Rachel. She has a quick wit and the right amount of snark. In this installment, we see another side of Rachel, the protective mother bear. However, when Rachel is in this mod, she isn't her normal prepared and stealthy self.
Some of her more recent past comes back to smack her in the face, or should I say in the back of the head. She comes face to face with Evie and finds out why she moved to Ashby. Rachel also cools down her relationship with Detective John Serano a bit. They have a difference of opinion regarding the law and how John should be doing his job.

The Mystery
There are a group of men exploiting teenage boys. However, they are doing it all within the law. It is scary to think about how this guy is using the boys, but since he does it all legally, there is nothing that law enforcement can do. One of the men isn't as bad as the other, but the enforcers are extreme. I think part of what really hurt Rachel was that her son was targeted because of her actions, but he accepted the deal because he was as damaged as the other boys.

Five Stars
A Stranger at the Door by Jason Pinter is on point, and Rachel stays true to herself under the constant pressure from the outside world. She truly is out to save the underdog. My rating is five stars. This is such a fabulous series. I highly recommend it to all you thriller readers out there.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of A Stranger at the Door by Jason Pinter.

Until the next time,
~Jen

If you would like to see other reviews like this one, check out BaronessBookTrove.com.

This is my first book by J. Pinter but it will not be my last! I already purchased the first book in this series to read. I didn’t want to miss out on that book. I am hoping this series will continue over several books. I loved the character Rachel, she felt like a friend right away. I love when the characters do that because I immediately become invested in their story. This book had lots of twist and turns that keep you reading unable to put down. I really enjoyed this book and thank you NetGalley and ThomasMercer for allowing me to read this wonderful book

A STRANGER AT THE DOOR (Rachel Marin Thriller Book #2) by Jason Pinter is the second book in this intense thriller series featuring single mother Rachel Marin. She has turned her investigative skills and physical training into working as a freelance forensic investigator with the Ashby PD.

Rachel Marin is finally finding a measure of intimacy and peace in her life with her two children and boyfriend, Ashby Detective John Serrano when one of her son’s high school teachers is found dead in a house fire. The teacher was brutally tortured and murdered before his home was set on fire. No one can find a reason for this horrible crime, but just hours before his death he emailed Rachel and asked her for a meeting and her help.
As soon as the investigation begins, Rachel gets a visit from someone she never thought to see again and is warned to stay out of the investigation. At the same time, Rachel’s son, Eric is lured into a group that sets the two against each other and could be tied to not only to illegal activity, but murder.

Rachel refuses to stop investigating and will do anything to protect her son. Will she be able to put the puzzle pieces together in time to save her son and her own life?

I loved this book as much as the first! Rachel is such a strong female protagonist. She has remade herself to protect her children and will do anything for them. These are fast-paced violent thrillers are a cross between police procedural and vigilantism and therefore some belief must be suspended, but Mr. Pinter also adds moments of regular family life and laughter in the mix. This series has a strong push-pull continuing battle between Serrano’s legal justice and Rachel’s vigilante justice and the ramifications, but the two seem to need each other enough to work it out with Serrano pulling Rachel back from crossing that line (again).

I highly recommend this book, series and author!

I LOVED this book as well as the first in the series, "HIDE AWAY" featuring Rachel Marin. I am a huge fan of strong female characters and this is one of the best I have read. The only disappointment is the wait I will have to bear until the next one is written. Highly recommend!

I really enjoyed the second book in the Rachel Marin saga and hope there are more to come. While I did enjoy the first book slightly more, it was great to revisit these characters and see their growth. Bringing Evie back was fun, as I liked her character in book 1. I would have chosen to parent her son waaaaay differently than Rachel did, but it worked in the end. Thanks Netgalley for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

A meek woman can change into a tigress when her child is in danger. What if the mother already is a tigress to start with?

A second installment in the Rachel Marin series starts with a murder and continues in the swift thriller-y pace. The focus is on the kids - as they are charmed into the cooperation with the shady business. The deal looks sweet at the start, but later the taste changes into bitter. Without presenting any spoiler - this was a nice guessing game and the name of the killer/s came as a surprise.
But also I think that the plot parts were a bit overdid and the novel feels somehow prolonged. Luckily it is a very catchy read!
And yay for Myra being back. I have liked her appearance in the previous novel in this series and was glad to see her having a more prominent place here.

With thanks to NetGalley for a galley of this book to review. The opinions presented are entirely my own.

Just your average thriller

This is the second of the Rachel Marin series. Hide Away is the first and, in this case, it is strongly recommended that they are read in order.

Marin is a criminal investigator working with the Ashby police department in Illinois. She has a tragic past and lives with her two children; Megan, eight and Eric, who has hit the troubled teens at fourteen. She is romantically involved with John Serrano, a local detective. She wonders whether mixing business with pleasure is a good thing.

Eric is a troubled child who has withdrawn into himself and won't communicate with her. Something big is troubling him, and she is desperate to find out what it is. She receives an email from one of his teachers, telling her that he is concerned for some of the pupils' welfare but doesn't get the chance to elaborate as he is found murdered the next morning. Are Eric's issues and the murder linked in any way?

Although the main characters were well developed, the secondary ones were grey, which made it challenging to remember who they were and who was related to whom. The writing was sometimes awkward and confusing with dialogue which didn't ring true. Additionally, the actions of some characters were illogical. Although the writing itself was fluid and readable, the issues made it difficult to return to read the thriller with any huge enthusiasm.

mr zorg

Elite Reviewing group received a copy of the book to review.

This is book two of the Rachel Marin Thriller series by Jason Pinter - It can act as a standalone though i suggest you read in order! A horrific murder that will send chills down your spine. What dark secrets will come to light?

What would you do for your children? This is the second book in the Rachel Marin series. A high school social studies teacher at her son's high school is killed, A group associated with the murder has targeted her son to keep Rachel in line to not disrupt their plans. This book has a good plot and great characters that you grow invested in.

In the first book, I thought Rachel could be a little over the top knowing more than the experts around her, but in this second book she lets others in to the fold. I would probably read the books in order, but I recommend both books if you like mysteries and suspense.

A Stranger at the Door is a perfect example of a mystery series that sucks you right in and has you addicted from the start. I used to read tons of mystery series, but lately they all seem so similar to one another--author Jason Pinter does a fantastic job of building a character like no other, with a special set of skills, a unique history, and goals that are clearly defined and relatable. This latest installment of the Rachel Marin series is one you should NOT miss--I enjoyed it enough I've purchased the first book in the series. Thank you NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Far better than the first in the series! Readers will not want to miss this spectacular thriller!

It has taken a long time for Rachel Marin to get to a good place. After years of hardships and very difficult situations, she is finally happy adapting to life as a single mom and working alongside the local police department. When one of her son’s teachers is murdered and she is called into help on the case, her perfect little world starts to crumble. After the investigation begins, she discovers an email the teacher sent to her shortly before he was killed. As she is working with the department to find those responsible, an old friend she never expected to see again shows up in her life and threatens to reveal all she knows of Rachel’s past. While she is trying to help determine who murdered her son’s teacher, he is being recruited by someone looking to use her son to keep her in line if she gets too close to discover the truth.

As I picked up this book to start reading it, I thought about the first in the series, Hide Away. It was good, but not that memorable and nothing I planned to really read again. So with that in mind, I decided to give the author another shot and I am sure glad I did. I flew through the pages of this story and loved every minute of it. I had such a connection to the characters and was pulled in quickly. The way Pinter used Rachel being a mother and willing to do whatever it took to protect her family coupled with the antagonists using her son against her was so beautifully written. As a mom, I was drawn into the story by this and couldn’t put it down. The plot was great, characters were engaging, and it is an overall great thriller.

For me, one of the best aspects was the last fifty or so pages, the way the story wrapped up played out exactly as it should, nothing felt forced or unbelievable. The characters had a very natural way of talking and reacting to whatever situation they encountered. Really, there isn’t much negative I can say about this other than I’m sad it’s over, I could have been happy reading more and more. Hopefully there will be another in the series coming out and another after that. There is some harsh language, violence, and sexual content that makes it for mature audiences only. With that being said I would recommend to those that enjoy a fast-paced thriller and a long weekend with nothing to do but sit and read.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within are my own.

‘A Stranger at the Door’ by Jason Pinter (Thomas & Mercer)

Jason Pinter has more than 1 million books in print around the world, but it was with the first Rachel Marin novel, “Hide Away,” that many readers found something different — a unique blend of crime story and familial domesticity.

In that story, Rachel is a police-affiliate investigator who makes the decision to uproot her family after the traumatic death of her husband. Now, living under new names and in a new place, the single-mother Rachel tries to make a new life for her children, Eric and Megan, because the alternative is just too painful.

In “A Stranger at the Door,” all of this is threatened as Eric’s schoolteacher, Matthew Linklater, is horrifically murdered just after sending Rachel a cryptic email about an unspecified threat. Involving herself in the investigation, Rachel struggles to keep her children safe even as a ghost from the past surfaces to threaten her family, and as Eric becomes ever more distant as he unwittingly becomes involved with a cult of killers hoping to use the boy as a pawn.

In this second installment, Pinter does not shrug his duty in advancing Rachel’s backstory, teasing out what’s necessary to make this read a standalone for those uninitiated with the debut. A thrilling page-turner, “A Stranger at the Door” is a fully fleshed-out story that questions the meaning of justice. Fulfilling the promise of this sophomore release, readers will eagerly anticipate more of Rachel Marin’s developing story.