Review: The Stranger Inside (by Lisa Unger)

My Rating: 4 stars

This is the third book of Lisa Unger's that I've read and while I liked this one better than her previous one (Under My Skin, which came out last year), I would have to say my favorite is still The Red Hunter, which I read 2 years ago.  With The Stranger Inside, Unger once again delivers a compelling story of psychological suspense that sets itself apart from other books in the genre through the oftentimes morally ambiguous characters she depicts — characters that often find themselves straddling that blurred line between right and wrong.   With each of her books, Unger does a deep dive into the psyches of her main characters and it is this exploration of their inner thoughts that drives the plot.

The story here revolves around Rain Winter, a former journalist and current stay-at-home mom to an infant daughter, who is living a blissful suburban life that she built with her loving husband Greg.  One day, Rain hears on the news a report about the murder of Steve Markham, a man who was widely believed to have escaped justice when he was acquitted of killing his pregnant wife a year earlier.  Having been one of the journalists who had covered the original murder case, including the trial and subsequent acquittal, the news of Markham's death triggers in Rain a curiosity that piques in her a strong interest to dig into the case on her own.  As she delves deeper and eventually uncovers an unexpected connection to a different case from her past, Rain suddenly finds herself pulled back into the dark memories of a horrific event that had occurred in her childhood — a nightmare that had left one of her friends dead, another friend irreparably damaged, and herself deeply traumatized.  Even when further involvement in the case threatens to rip apart the beloved family she worked so hard to create, Rain still can't seem to pull herself away.   In order to make amends for her past, will she have to sacrifice her family?  Also, in a world where justice is not always on the right side of the law, the idea of morality and right vs wrong ultimately comes into question.

Plot-wise, I would say that this book fell more into the "slow-burn" category, meaning that, even though there were some twists and turns as is expected in suspense novels, the plot was not fast-paced to the point of keeping me on the edge of my seat impatiently waiting to see what happens next.  Instead, most details were revealed gradually, a little bit at a time, through a narrative that jumped back and forth between the past and the present.   While this worked well for the most part, I did feel that there were a few sections that got a bit too bogged down by details, which made those parts of the plot seem to drag a little.  Overall though, this was a relatively minor issue, since things did get back on track pretty quickly after that.

With 3 of her books under my belt, Lisa Unger has become a "go-to" author of sorts for me now in terms of books in the psychological suspense genre.  In addition to continuing to explore her backlist when I get a chance, I'm also looking forward to her next release, whenever that may be!

Received ARC from Park Row via Edelweiss.

Review: Under My Skin (by Lisa Unger)

My Rating: 3.5 stars 

Last year, while searching for a book to complete an A to Z Author challenge I was doing, I came across author Lisa Unger's latest psychological suspense novel The Red Hunter, which ended up being a thrill-ride of a book that I enjoyed from beginning to end and found very difficult to put down.  Not surprisingly, when I heard that Unger would have a new book out this year, another psychologicaI suspense thriller entitled Under My Skin, I jumped at the opportunity to read an advance copy.  

The story revolves around Poppy Lang, whose husband Jack was brutally murdered a year ago, and even though on the surface it appears that she has moved on with her life, underneath she is actually still traumatized and broken, unable to return to the "normalcy" she had once known.  Still haunted by the mysterious circumstances of her husband's death as well as the few days immediately afterward when she herself disappeared, only to resurface later completely confused with no memory of where she had been or what had happened, Poppy begins to dive deeper and deeper into a life of chaos and confusion.  She starts to experience blackouts, moments where she would be lucid one minute but then completely lost the next minute, with things worsening as she dives deeper into a darkness where she is no longer able to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary.  The only thing that keeps her grounded is the insistence on finding out the truth about her husband's death while also attempting to dig up memories of those lost few days.

This book was a bit of a maze, with quite a few twists and turns as well as a couple red herrings thrown in to mix things up a little.  Out of the many books in this particular genre that I've read in recent months, I would have to say that this one comes closest to  what I would consider a "true" psychological thriller / suspense novel – Poppy's constantly confused psychological state, the concept of dreams versus reality scattered throughout the story, complex characters who all seemed to have another side to them that no one else is able to see, endless mind games and twists, etc.  All of this, coupled with the fact that the narrative is told entirely from Poppy's first person perspective, lent the story a bit of a chaotic, slightly disjointed feel, which I will admit bothered me a little at first – the jumping back and forth between past and present, the difficulty in distinguishing between events that actually happened versus those imagined by Poppy in her confused state of mind, etc. – this made the story slightly difficult to follow at times.  It wasn't until I finished the book that I realized perhaps the story was structured this way intentionally to better flush out Poppy's character and her mindset.

Overall, I did like this one, as it was well-written and both the story as well as the characters were interesting, however compared to Unger's previous book that I had read, I didn't seem to connect with this one as much.  I felt like there was a bit of repetitiveness in some parts which dragged the plot a little, especially in the middle section of the book, to the point that when I actually did have to put the book down in order to attend to personal matters, I didn't feel the pull of urgently wanting to get back to reading.  Perhaps I had different expectations going into this one given that the previous book of hers I had read was so good….or perhaps I'm just burned out with psychological thrillers given how many I've read over the past few months.  With that said though, I would still recommend this one, as it's definitely highly readable, but if this is your first time reading a Lisa Unger novel, I would say start with her previous ones first. For me, I still intend on reading her other works, it's just finding the time to get to them…

Received ARC from Park Row via Edelweiss

Review: The Red Hunter (by Lisa Unger)

My Rating:  4 stars

Coming upon the end of the year, I’m trying to finish up a few of the reading challenges I’ve been working on the past few months.  One of those challenges is the A to Z Author Challenge whereby we read a book by an author whose name starts with each letter of the alphabet.  One of the remaining letters I had left for this challenge was the letter “U” – since the book I was originally going to read for this letter was not available at my library and I didn’t want to waste any more time trying to hunt for another book that would fit, I decided to browse through the library’s catalog of “U” authors and just pick one that was available and that I would be interested in reading.  During my search, I came across a few books by Lisa Unger, an author I actually wasn’t familiar with, but since there weren’t that many choices in the first place, I decided to go with her latest work The Red Hunter (after researching it first on Goodreads of course, lol).  Not having much expectation going into it (since it was somewhat of a random pick after all), I was pleasantly surprised that the book ended up being an excellent read, a page turner that I thoroughly enjoyed and found difficult to put down!   From the explosive first scene, of a murder that takes place in cold blood, then a shocking rape scene in the next chapter, Unger wastes no time establishing the trigger points right off the bat that will end up driving the rest of the story.  We are introduced to the two main characters, Zoey Drake and Claudia Bishop – two women, completely unrelated, yet both suffer horrific assaults, unspeakable crimes that destroy their lives physically, emotionally, mentally.  Both women, strangers who endured very different traumas, go down different paths, choosing to handle the rage within them in different ways.  As both work up the courage to face the demons of their pasts, their paths end up colliding in ways entirely unexpected.

Technically, I would rate this book somewhere between 4 and 4.5 stars (closer to 4.5).  As a psychological thriller / suspense novel, this one was absolutely top notch!  There was the intense, well-crafted plot that had a perfect amount of twists and turns scattered in all the right places throughout the book, which is of course what we should expect from a good thriller, but what made this one stand out was the characters. It’s not often that we come across a thriller where pretty much all of the characters are well-developed, each one realistically drawn as flawed human beings who make as many bad decisions as they do good ones, ordinary folks who encounter the same day-to-day pressures the rest of us do.  I loved how the author explored the issue of moral ambiguity through her characters, especially when it came down to the question of justice versus revenge, but there was so much more as well – many sensitive and thought-provoking issues, explored on a deeper level, yet at no point did I feel that this bogged down the plot.  The two main characters especially were meticulously drawn – believable characters whom I was able to connect with and relate to, feel for them with the traumas they suffered, yet also feel frustrated and annoyed when they made bad decisions or acted in ways that they knew would not turn out well.  I felt I was on the journey with both these women and appreciated seeing their growth throughout the time I got to spend with them.

This was an absolutely enjoyable read, a thrill-ride from beginning to end!  No doubt that Lisa Unger is a great storyteller and while I did figure out some of where the story was going about two-thirds of the way through the book, that did not detract from my experience much at all.  One of the things I appreciated most about this book was the way it made me ponder and ask myself tough questions that I may not have considered previously.  A book that makes me think and wonder is a good book in my world but to also have it be suspenseful and well-written with an intricately woven plot and well-developed characters, that’s icing on the cake to me!  This is the first book I’ve read by Lisa Unger but rest assured it definitely won’t be the last!