3⭐
Genre ~ domestic fiction
Setting ~ England
Publication date ~ July 12, 2022
Est Page Count ~ 397 (24 chapters)
Audio length ~ 9 hours 39 minutes
Narrator ~ Helen Lloyd
POV ~ single 3rd
Featuring ~ debut, dual timeline ~ 1970's and present, long chapters, domestic abuse, emotional abuse
TW: hiding because we find out late in the book (view spoiler on my GR review)

* An earlier edition of this book was published with the title Hello, My Name is May *

We first meet May in the present while she's in a care home as a result of a stroke. Then we head back to 1977 where it all began with her husband, Alain, and their daughter, Jenny.

This was a slow mover, but I couldn't help but feel sad for May in both timelines. The past because of the abuse she suffered and the present because she's unable to speak up when she desperately needs to. I thought how the author made her feel trapped in her own body was well done.

Definitely domestic fiction and not a thriller. Fine as a debut. Absolutely loved the ending.

Interesting and well written I just personally couldn’t get into the story. Difficult to follow at times and a little slow. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review*

Enjoyable if what somewhat slow building thriller. I didn't think I was going to enjoy it, but it ended up being very good.

May has suffered a stroke is unable to communicate and cannot do much for herself on her own, which frustrates her to no end. The story is told in alternating timelines, with May recalling life events such as being married to an abusive man named Alain and the birth of her daughter Jenny. This story is heartbreaking and tragic with some suspense sprinkled in there. We get to learn much about May of who she was as in the 70's to more present time and how she has changed throughout.

I was not sure if I was going to like this book, but it was a good read. The protagonist, May, is in a nursing home unable to speak from a stroke - and she is scared! Throughout the book, we experience flashbacks of her life story. These flashbacks give us reason to be afraid... if the man in the home is really the person May believes him to be. Worse, everyone seems to love the new guy! How can May tell everyone what she believes and protect them?

This is a heartwrenching thriller, with a character who is old and discounted by everyone. However, her knowledge could save people - will she be able to do it?

I didn't love the ending, nor would I say this is your typical thriller. However, it was a solid read.

Beware of trigger warnings (domestic violence).

The premise of The Stranger She Knew touches on one of my biggest fears - being trapped in your own body/mind unabkd to communicate or have control of what's happening around you.

You should read this if you enjoyed: The Silent Patient

Stopps summarizes The Stanger She Knew "As a young woman, May found that sometimes it was easier to say nothing and cope with what life threw at her in silence. Now, decades later, May has suffered a stroke and has lost her ability to speak. She is still as sharp as ever, but only her daughter and a new friend from the care home, see this.


When May discovers that someone very familiar, from long ago, is living in the room opposite hers she is haunted by scenes from her earlier life. May is determined to protect everyone from this new threat, but how can she warn them without her voice? And who really is this man charming everyone in May’s life?"


4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

May, an elderly woman of indeterminate age, lived independently but she wakes up in a nursing home, unable to speak or to control her limbs. Her thoughts turn to a conspiracy. She's not really this old woman, but a younger person in the guise of an old woman. She's a good person, yet her irascible behavior with the aides (carers) makes her less popular. Still she receives good care in the home she calls (in her mind) "the gravy boat" for its unending smell of gravy. Eventually, she makes a friend or two and her daughter Jenny visits. Essentially, her brain/thoughts function but her communication is almost nonexistent and until she can write, further in her recovery, few people understand her efforts at speech. So this is a novel about May and how she came to be so suspicious of a certain kind of man, including Bill across the hall.

It is a novel taking place in 1977 and 2017. About May, Alaine and Jenny, a family that could not survive intact due to Alaine's violent and unpredictable character. About May and Helen, her only friend, who shared their pregnancy time and a closeness that May never forgets. About May and Jackie, a friend in the nursing hime who is falling in love with Bill. What it means to be at various stages of illnesses late in life, mental and physical. What serious trauma can do to a person's mind, particularly a person who is virtually locked in, unable to communicate in nuanced ways.

It is a novel of elderly May and adult Jenny and a parent's regrets and the regeneration of a relationship. Of the ways our brains can be lovely in their memories or pernicious and about how we see others, judge ourselves or act on our deepest fears. This novel is not for those who want a lot of action in every book, because it takes place in only a few rooms, a few train rides and one brain. I liked the complexity of May, who is very, very well written in both her young and old womanhood. I like May, despite and in part because of her faults. I like her politics at the beginning of the feminist movement, her independence and understanding about why she stays with Alaine and in the end our understanding of what happened to her that makes her the complex, stronger, angry person she is today.

The story is of May, told from her perspective as an older woman in a care home who has suffered a fall, and had a stroke/TBI that has left her unable to speak, and with uncontrollable movements of her arm. The book goes back to 1977, and details May's memories as a young woman, wife, and mother after she sees another resident in the care home who reminds her strongly of her husband. I say the writing is fantastic because I feel like the author really embodied how it must feel to be unable to effectively communicate after having a stroke, and the detailed feelings of a domestic abuse survivor. I felt for May in both roles; I could feel her frustration with struggling to speak, and I felt her helplessness and feelings of unworthiness as she was being abused by her husband. The writing was believable and descriptive. But I just did not like the story. Despite the great writing, the story fell flat for me.

I really don't know how to rate this book. There are certain things I loved about it-- I loved the dual timeline perspective. I loved the awareness it brought to victims of domestic violence. I loved watching May's process of realizing that she was, indeed, in an abusive situation. I thought the premise of the book was interesting. I loved May's perspective while inside the nursing home because I have never read anything like that before. I thought the characters were lovable and relatable (except Alain, of course). There was so much about this book I liked!

However, after finishing it, I have to be honest and say this fell flat for me. I wanted to like it so much more than I did. No matter what as mentioned above, if a story doesn't keep me enthralled throughout, it's not a good read. I finished this just for the sake of finishing it, and because I committed to do so. Pace wise, it was very slow. It felt like I just kept waiting for something big to happen, and it never came. The ending of this book was absolutely awful, and it felt like the author just didn't know how to end it. In terms of thrillers, I like when things come full circle in the end. This one failed to do that, and the entire book was a flat line.

This was almost a DNF for me. I really struggled to get through it. I didn't find the main character likable or interesting to read about it. The end of the book did get a tad bit better, but not much. May has had a stroke, she is currently in the hospital unable to speak. We go back and forth between her in 1977 and 2018. She was once a part of an abusive relationship with her husband, but she is being haunted by him in the hospital?

Slowwwwww moving. I couldn’t get into this book at all. DNF at 50%. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me. The dual timelines had potential but ended up being muddled and often dragged on. I was waiting for the pace to pick up but it took until the end. And the ending was not as exciting as I had hoped it would be.

Overall, the plot was a bit dull, pace was too slow, and I especially didn't like the narrative around fatness. However, the writing was good.

2 stars.

TW: abuse

I’m so conflicted about this book. I loved the writing. I loved May as the main character but she also frustrated me so much. I was more than a little put off by her inability as young May to listen to her gut and follow through putting an end to a bad situation. I did feel as though the book is a trigger warning for anyone who has dealt with domestic abuse. That being said, older May was very in tune to the happenings around her, she had evolved and was willing to speak out even when she couldn’t necessarily speak. I enjoyed seeing how she had grown. The start of this book was a little slow for me but as it went on the author did a great job at telling the story and I felt as though it became compelling to read. The ending of the book was good and a shocking twist but it left me with so many questions. I was really really hoping there was another chapter! I do look forward to reading more from this author! Thank you Ms. Stopps and Netgalley for the e-arc and letting me review!

I recently went on this long rant about how much I love dual time zones when narrated properly within a book. The Stranger She Knew, has dual time lines down to a science and this book right here will have people talking for a long time.

Here is my only gripe....

I would not classify The Stranger She Knew as a thriller. I still thoroughly enjoyed this book but I feel as though when something is labeled "a thriller" I am kept in anticipation as to some big twist that will come and when it doesn't, I fell as though I become slightly disappointed. A genre needs to be accurate just so the reader knows what is to be anticipated. Again, this did not ruin the book at all and I enjoyed it very much.

Rosalind Stopps, is a true storyteller and I have become a huge fan. My attention was captivated early on and the ending left me completely satisfied. The Stranger She Knew, is a book I will definitely be recommending and I can not wait to see what this author comes out with next.

I went into this book expecting to be sucked in due to the emotions but I found that I didn’t care for the characters and ended up disliking the book so much so that I stopped reading after 33%. I’m sure it will be a favorite for some but it just wasn’t the book for me.

I love a book that has a ton of things going on, because it can go either way. This book gave me that feeling of “where is this plot going?” As a matter a fact? What is the true plot? It was Intriguing to me, and I wanted to know more of May’s past life because her current one was making me so sad, she had a stroke that disabled a part of her body and she can’t speak but her mind is on a whole different level of sharpness, I loved that about her.

Even though the book was a slow burn beyond slow burns, there was so much mystery to this book, I kept thinking “When is the hat going to drop?!!” And it did but it fell a little flat, and it wasn’t what I expected. But the end left me with some questions, and even though I don’t like when books end that way, I was able to create my own conclusions I felt satisfied with that.

As a young woman, May found that sometimes it was easier to say nothing and cope with what life threw at her in silence. Now, decades later, May has suffered a stroke and has lost her ability to speak. She is still as sharp as ever, but only her daughter and a new friend from the care home, see this. We go between the past and the present. It's a seriously wild ride with tons of crazy details and twists.

May discovers that someone very familiar, from long ago, is living in the room opposite hers. She is haunted by scenes from her earlier life. May is determined to protect everyone from this new threat, but she has to figured out how can she warn them without her voice.

This one was tough for me. I didn't love the back and forth timelines in this one. They were very vague at times. I get that it was to keep us in the dark but it just made it slow. I wouldn't quite classify this as thriller. I wasn't om the edge of my seat at all. I honestly am not sure what genre, maybe general fiction. I am not satisfied with the ending. This one just wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Harper 360 for the gifted copy! ❤️

Thank you to Harper 360 and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Stranger She Knew by Rosalind Stopps is an unputdownable thriller with a very distressing story. The story revolves around May, who lived in a picture-perfect marriage with her young daughter and lovely husband - at least on the outside. Now, May is a patient in a care home. She's had a stroke and can't communicate anything to her family. Little does she know that someone from her past is closer than she thinks.

Here is a chilling excerpt from Chapter 1, which takes place in Lewisham in 2017:

"I could hear the words in my head but they wouldn't come out.
I'm fine, I wanted to say, you can leave me here, I'll be OK. It was the blood, that was all, could smell blood, and I've always hated that. I wanted to explain to them. It makes me feel funny, but not funny ha ha, I would have said but they've got no sense of humour, young people. I didn't like the way the man was looking at me. I'm not just a stupid old woman, I tried to say. I may not have been speaking very clearly but there was no need for him to look at me like that. I tried to tell him, don't look at me like that, young man. I wanted to say it in quite a stern way but my mouth was doing that thing again of not working properly, as though I was drunk or I'd had something nasty done at the dentist. All that came out was a slur of s's and some spit. I noticed he didn't like the spit much, ambulance man or no ambulance man, he didn't like that at all. I'd say he flinched, leaned back a bit, but he couldn't go far because he was kneeling next to me on the floor."

Overall, The Stranger She Knew is a highly-distressing thriller that you won't be able to put down. Honestly, at first, the alternating timelines between the past and the present were weird, but I got used to it 1/3 of the way through. That's when the action picks up, and then it became unputdownable. I sped through the rest of the book. If you typically check out trigger warnings, definitely check out the trigger warnings for this book. Also, I still had some questions at the end. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of thrillers in general, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in June!

This book follows two timelines: present day of May in a nursing home and the past of May’s marriage with her abusive husband, Alain, the birth of her daughter, Jenny and her friendship with fellow mother, Helen.

In the present day May is in a nursing home and not able to speak, and can only communicate via the occasional written word.

This book follows both timelines and ultimately has a weird/cryptic and ultimately unsatisfying end that leaves way too much up to interpretation.

Also, this book has a lot of derogatory and self-hating comments in regards to the MC’s body being fat and therefore not desirable. This really rubbed me the wrong way (fat doesn’t mean undesirable), as it did not add to the story and was mentioned over and over again.

2 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and HQ for the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of The Stranger She Knew by Rosalind Stopps. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley and Harper 360 for this ARC.

Wow. The Stranger She Knew was a wild ride of a read. I won't go into much detail because I want to not spoil the twists for those reading it. I will say that even while I guessed a few of the twists, the way they unfolded was very satisfying. The whole book kept me in suspense until the very end. I give this book 4/5 stars.