The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“The bad guy, the one we could only imagine in the mask, in the shadows - it was always closer than we liked to imagine.”- The Perfect Stranger, Megan Miranda

Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.

Determined to find Emmy, Leah cooperates with Kyle Donovan, a handsome young police officer on the case. As they investigate her friend’s life for clues, Leah begins to wonder: did she ever really know Emmy at all? With no friends, family, or a digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Soon Leah’s credibility is at stake, and she is forced to revisit her past: the article that ruined her career. To save herself, Leah must uncover the truth about Emmy Grey—and along the way, confront her old demons, find out who she can really trust, and clear her own name.

Everyone in this rural Pennsylvanian town has something to hide—including Leah herself. How do you uncover the truth when you are busy hiding your own?

One of the weirdest new trends I've noticed in thrillers is the setting being Western Pennsylvania or at least the Appalachian Mountains. I don't have a problem with this- I couldn't, that's where my dad's side is from- provided there is no air of superiority or snobbishness on the part of the main character. Happily, there is none, or at least very little, of that in this book. 

Another observation- I feel like publishing companies abuse the term "psychological thriller". I rarely find that "psychological thrillers" are actually psychological thrillers, usually they're just straight up mystery-thrillers. When I think of psychological thrillers, I think of The Tell-Tale Heart, or The Blair Witch Project, stories that focus predominantly on the psyche of their characters and work to get into the reader's mind, too. I don't necessarily consider this book to be a psychological thriller by that definition. While Miranda tried to do that to some extent, it didn't really work and as a result just felt like a normal thriller.

But anyway, I picked up The Perfect Stranger mostly because I read one of her YA mysteries- The Safest Lies- and remembered really liking it. I mean, I don't remember anything else about it, but it was one of those books that just sucks you in and by the time you come out of it, the only thing you remember about the story is that it was pretty good. The Perfect Stranger is kind of like that- I was definitely sucked into it- but I remembered more of it and it wasn't as good as The Safest Lies.

I originally wanted to read All the Missing Girls first, but that book was checked out and this book wasn't, so I read it instead. There's nothing in this book as far as I can tell that would spoil or even connect it to All the Missing Girls, so I have no idea why it's billed as a sequel or companion. Maybe someone who has read All the Missing Girls can tell me?

But anyway, the book. The weakest part of the book is probably the prose. It's overwritten, to say the least, like Miranda didn't know when to stop. It's the kind of writing that's really only excusable if the book in question is a) a debut novel or b) if the story and characters are so good it makes up for it. 

So a is out. But what about b? The short answer is no. The long answer is that this is very much a generic thriller novel. Sure, the plot seems interesting based on the inside cover, but Miranda takes the uniqueness out of it and makes it seem like every other thriller novel. She also adds a lot into the book that has nothing to do with the plot, like the story line as to why Leah lost her job. That whole part seemed unnecessary to me, and distracting too.

The characters weren't much more unique, either. Leah was your smart, beautiful, etc etc heroine, who was once a true crime journalist though the way she talks about it you'd think she was a seasoned detective. She goes in depth about studying the cases and digging up leads and being the first on the crime scene and all I can think was "oh, so this is why detectives hate reporters". She reminded me as to why I don't always get along with journalists- a lot of them have this unbearable sense of self-righteousness and seem to think that their job is the most important one in the free world. Like, get over yourself already. This is especially apparent in Leah's obsession with the college case. I don't care if you have your heart in the right place, you don't go to the lengths that she did to get a story. A news article isn't a police investigation, and all she did was ruin people's lives in the process. 

There's also other characters, like a love interest with little chemistry and probably only in there out of some sense of obligation. To what, I don't know. None of the characters are particularly unique.

This also doesn't feel like that realistic a book. It's not unrealistic as books like Kelley Armstrong's Missing, but it's definitely not as ground in reality as some of Tana French's books. 

The Perfect Stranger is a perfectly middle of the road novel. I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it all that much either. It didn't make me angry the way Little Deaths did, and I think that definitely helped it. Miranda isn't breaking new ground in thriller land, she's barely even scratching the surface. I doubt I'll pick up another one of her books, but I'm fine with her being on the shelves.

5.5 out of 10