This one was a solid 3.5/5 for me. I really enjoyed the way that the author was able to combine classic mysteries with modern thrillers. It was complex and multi-layered and really kept me on my toes with narration changes, unreliable narration, and the multiple mysteries involved. In all, this was a great mystery and I read it during a stormy weekend, which really added a nice touch to the almost supernatural mood of this thriller.

Gets your heart going like a runaway train!

"‘If you’ll permit me,’ said the Stranger, ‘I’d like to tell you a story. After all, it’s a long journey and, by the look of those skies, we’re not going to be leaving this carriage for some time. So, why not pass the hours with some story-telling? The perfect thing for a late October evening...."

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The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths is a top notch thriller that I thoroughly enjoyed!
This is an unusual, original storyline with terrific characters, 15 year old, Georgia, in particular. I liked the parallel between Clare, a teacher who specializes the Gothic writer R. M. Holland , and the murder investigation. There are twists that threw me off my guesses at every turn, winding up with the biggest surprise at the end!
This is my first experience with Elly Griffiths and I will be reading more of her books!

With thanks and appreciation to NetGalley, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers, and Elly Griffiths for this advanced digital copy to read and review.



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The Stranger Diaries is a mystery thriller with Gothic horror overtones by Elly Griffiths. Released 5th March 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, it's 338 pages and available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio formats.

The author is quite astonishingly adept. It's not at all -easy- to get a jump-scare in a book and this one literally raised goosebumps several times for me. I have adored the gentle humor and intelligence of her Ruth Galloway series for years, but this standalone captivated me completely. I love the book-within-a-book device and this one is crammed full of delightful references for further reading. The alternating narrative PoVs were handled very well and weren't confusing or disorienting.

The plot is super twisty and the narrative tension is ratcheted up masterfully. I had several picks throughout the book for 'whodunnit' (my picks kept getting bumped off, as in the best murder mysteries). The denouement was satisfying and the bonus mystery of Mariana was wonderful .

This is one of the best and most enjoyable reads for me this year. (And I've read and reviewed almost 300 books in the first 6 months of 2019, so it's a pretty broad field).

Five stars. Wonderful author, wonderful book, very well written.

Fantastic book! I love book within a book structures, and I love gothic novels, and novels set in schools, so this one ticked off all the boxes, and was a great read as well.

Excellent gothic type book. Very well written. Looking forward to trying her series of books that I have not yet read.

A haunting read and not just because of the hint of a ghost story as a subplot. Clare teaches literature and focuses her research on Gothic author R.M. Holland. When a murder is linked to one of Holland's tales, Clare is immersed into the investigation as a possible suspect. When the next person is murdered, the suspicion shifts from Clare as suspect to possible target. An excellent novel which kept me reading well into the night.

The story has three main narrators:
Clare Cassidy - the first murder victim's close friend and fellow teacher at Talgarth High - and writing a book about the author whose home the school once was - RM Holland, the author of the short story - "The Stranger".
Harbinder Kaur - the DS investigating the murder, an old-girl of Talgarth High - not that she'd openly admit to that fact.
Her and Clare take a mutual dislike and distrust of each other when they first meet.
Georgia Newton - Clare's daughter and a student of Talgarth High.

Through these three women the story unfolds with the fourth "narrator" the short story "The Stranger".
The events in the story start to echo what is happening in real-life.
I found it very cleverly written, I couldn't guess the murderer until he/she was ultimately revealed.
I really enjoyed the alliteration of some of the names in the book - Clare Cassidy; Ella Elphick; Henry Hamilton - very clever.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me the chance to read this book.

Mystery
Adult

The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths (2019)
Clare Cassidy teaches English at secondary school set in seaside England, at the very school where famed Victorian-era horror writer R.M. Holland lived and worked. She uses his short story, The Stranger, in her creative writing class for adults, in fact, and is such a fan of his work, she is writing a biography of the enigmatic author behind The Stranger rumoured to have killed his wife. As October draws to a close, Clare is shocked to hear of the murder of her good friend and colleague Ella. Even more startling is the news that a note was found by the body, quoting a line from The Stranger. Clare soon finds herself at the centre of the investigation when she discovers an entry in her diary, written in the same handwriting as the note by Ella’s body. The tension rises as the danger draws closer, in an eerie mirroring of the short story she so loves to teach. I loved this mystery! It’s both a police procedural and a gothic mystery, loaded with atmosphere. While it’s aimed at adult readers, teen mystery fans may find it appealing as well, thanks to the voice of Clare’s 15-year-old daughter Georgia. By shifting narrators, and including excerpts from the Holland story, Griffiths creates a tension-filled mystery that is loaded with atmosphere, clues, and lots of fun Hitchcockian red herrings. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur is a great new character, and I hope we’ll see more of her in the future. She has a distinctive voice, fresh and smart with just the right touch of sassy. Once again, Griffiths (author of the Ruth Galloway series) has created an absorbing and inventive mystery. The full text of The Stranger (I think it's Griffiths' creation) is included as an appendix. You’ll find a copy of it at the Grand Forks & District Public Library. My thanks to publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the advance reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40796097

Clare is a divorced Mom and an English teacher. She lives with her 15 year old daught Georgie and their dog, Herbert. One of her fellow teachers is found murdered. This brings in DS Kaur and DS Winston, who are investigating the crime. Within a short period of time, another teacher is murdered. The detectives now feel the killer is someone Clare knows. Can they find the murderer before anyone else is attacked?

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. On a few occasions it got spooky enough that I had to put it down when I was reading in the middle of the night. I mostly liked DS Harbinda Kaur. She has a calm way about approaching the investigation and her internal thoughts were often very funny. I was surprised when the culprit was identified. A very enjoyable read!

My thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Netgalley.

Murders are happening in the small town of Sussex all related to the old home of R.M. Holland long turned Talgarth High School. Detective Sergent Harbinder Kaur is called in to solve the case revolving around Clare Cassidy.

In The Stranger Diaries, we meet a whole cast of students, teachers and others who enrich this masterful telling of a murder tale fit for a fireside ghost story. The characters are well fleshed out, the communication is effortless and the not knowing who could be hanging around the corner of the wall was an anticipatory chilling feeling. I found the story of The Stranger by R.M. Holland told within The Stranger Diaries as a genius move by Ms. Griffiths. You never really knew if the story being told was prevalent to the book or not. You will have to read it to find out.

I couldn't put this book down. I found it swerving and curving on who the murderer could be and never suspected who it turned out to be at the end. That is the sign of a good book.

A who-done-it story within a twisted thriller how could you not like The Stranger Diaries written by Elly Griffiths?

I give Stranger Diaries 5 stars for just a good old fashioned murder mystery. :)

Author Elly Griffiths grabbed me from the earliest pages and just wouldn’t let me go. The suspense kept me reading way, way, way too late into the night!

“The Stranger” in the title refers to a short story penned by R.M. Holland, a fictionalized Victorian horror lesser light in the mold of H.P. Lovecraft or Sheridan Le Fanu. That short story almost emerges as a character in Griffiths’ compelling novel, and it’s the key to so much!

Clare Cassidy, an English teacher at a West Sussex comprehensive (public high school for us Yanks), discovers that her colleague has been murdered. But that death leads to more and more unsettling discoveries. (I don’t want to spoil the novel by revealing too much; unfortunately, the novel’s description reveals too much.) Told alternatively by Clare, Clare’s 15-year-old daughter Georgia, and the misanthropic Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, The Stranger Diaries will delight readers looking for an excellent book to read with the lights on and others in the house. Shiver!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in exchange for an honest review.

I know that this novel has excellent reviews, but I couldn’t even get a quarter of the way through. I usually always finish books, so I was extremely surprised to see that it had some great feedback from other readers. There were times that I wondered whether I was reading the same novel as everyone else because the writing became so drab that I couldn’t continue. I did give it a chance and was hoping that it might have a slow start and pick up, but it just didn’t happen for me.

A real can’t put it down book
The story is told by three alternating narrators providing different and overlapping points of view
The mystery is solid and the writing is compelling

Claire, mother to 15-year-old Georgie, teaches English in a seaside town in Sussex, England. The school, Talgarth High, is the former home of famous author R.M. Holland, author of the short story The Stranger, and whose wife, Alice, is believed to haunt the halls after her death on the grounds. Claire is the school's resident expert on Holland, teaching a course on his short story and researching his life for a biography she is writing. She is horrified when a friend and colleague, Ella, is found murdered in a way similar to a character from the story and with a quote from it left behind. When notes begin to appear in Claire's personal diary in a strange hand, referencing both the murder and the Stranger, Claire becomes the center of the investigation as the police believe the murderer is someone Claire knows.

This was a great story and I love the "book about a book" premise. The book gives us three somewhat unreliable narrators; not unreliable in the sense that they're untrustworthy but rather that they have their own secrets, biases, and goals that don't always align with what's going on during the investigation. With constantly changing perspectives, I was always reevaluating the characters - whether they could be trusted, whether they were involved in the murder, and just what their intentions were. The plot was complex and layered, with new information being uncovered constantly. Claire's diary entries and snippets of R.M. Holland's story, The Stranger, are sprinkled throughout the book, adding additional layers of interest. I absolutely loved that we got The Stranger in full at the end of the book and enjoyed it in its own right. I'll definitely be picking up more by Griffiths in the future.

I read The Stranger Diaries while on a springtime getaway and at first, I couldn’t really get into it. I didn’t feel any compassion for or connection with the characters. Well, that was the case until I got to Georgia’s chapter.
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The book is split up into chapters which follow one main character at a time. It didn’t get redundant (which I thought it might!) and I found myself connecting more with Georgia than I did Clare.
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I loved getting to know Georgia in her pieces of the book, especially how she tends to act like a typical teenager to appease her parents. She’s a sly one, that Georgia. There's more to her than you think.

I also loved the settings throughout; I could envision them so easily, the gothic look of the school, the long train ride out of town, Clare and Georgia's little day trip - I could go on and on.
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The book kept me guessing throughout its entirety (love when that happens). I had one strong theory about who the murderer was, and I was completely wrong! Which, made me enjoy the book even more.

Hmm. I am of two minds when it comes to this book. I loved parts of this book and found them clever and interesting and compelling, and I enjoyed the POV character of Clare and the supposed short story written by R. M. Holland. The rest of the book, I feel sort of "eh" about. I felt no connection to the detective or Clare's daughter, who are both POV characters in their own right. I tore through the first half of the book but by the middle of the book, I had lost interest. This was a good attempt at a gothic mystery, but I was not all-in.

Elly Griffiths gives us a standalone gothic story in the Stranger Diaries. Told through the eyes of Clare whose friend is murdered and a policewoman Harbinder investigating the case, a teacher and another friend are the victims. Someone is writing in Clare's diary and mysterious events like the kidnapping of her dog keep everyone off balance. Whodunit? Read and find out.

Clare Cassidy is an English teacher at Targeth High School in West Sussex. The campus includes the house of gothic writer R.M. Holland.
Clare is writing a book about the author, and also keeps a diary that chronicles her life. She lives nearby with her teenage daughter Georgia and beloved terrier Herbert.
Her good friend and colleague Ella is murdered, and a note is found near the body with a line from Holland's famous short story, The Stranger.
When Clare begins to write in her diary, she discovers a note there, in the same handwriting!
DS Harbinder Kaur is the police woman investigating the murder. She is also an alumna of Targeth High.
The story alternates points of view between Clare, Georgia and Harbinder.
This modern gothic British mystery is mesmerizing! I loved the creepy, eerie tone and the humorous touches that lightened the story at times. The characters were engaging and interesting, and the mystery was intriguing.
Highly recommend reading this one! I also love this author's atmospheric Ruth Galloway series about an archeologist.
Thank you to HMH Books and Netgalley for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

I have one thing to say.

HERBERT!

Okay, I have more to say. This book is delightful. It’s everything I didn’t know I needed or wanted in a mystery novel, complete with biting wit, atmospheric tension, a crackerjack sense-of-place, three extremely unreliable and captivating narrators, and one of the most adorable dogs to ever exist on paper – Herbert, he of the woolly white fur and love of crisps.

Clare Cassidy – who I would argue is the main character of this piece – is an English teacher at Halgarth High in Sussex, which she believed would be a quiet place to recover from her divorce and continue raising her teenage daughter Georgia. Even more appropriately, Halgarth High was once the home of Clare’s favourite Gothic writer, R.M. Holland, and holds its own mysteries (and ghosts) within its hallowed halls.

Fiction bleeds into reality when Clare’s good friend, and fellow teacher, Ella Ephwick is found murdered in her home, and it seems as though Holland’s morbid tale, The Stranger, is coming to startling life. When a police detective named Harbinder Kaur is put on the case, Clare turns to her diary to sort out her muddled fears, and finds something new within the pages – a message. Hallo Clare, you don’t know me.

The novel switches between Clare, Harbinder and Clare’s daughter Georgia. Each woman has her own secrets, and all are equally worthy of spending time with. I’m not usually a fan of authors flipping back and forth between narrators, because I often find I’ve fallen in love with one person’s voice and then they’re gone, or worse yet, the voices don’t sound at all dissimilar, and I can’t remember who is supposed to be speaking. Thank goodness Griffiths doesn’t have that problem. Clare, Harbinder and Georgia are distinct, clearly delineated characters, and all offer their own foibles and strengths, their own hopes and selfish desires.

Although I could have gladly spent days (months!) with these women (in the unlikely event that Elly Griffiths is reading this – please make it a series, I’m begging you from my soul), I was also desperate to know the answer to the central question: who is the killer re-creating Holland’s stories of horror?

I didn’t guess for one moment who it was (if you read my reviews, you’ll know I normally do – even once from the synopsis) – and the ending was pitch-perfect and electrifying – from the shock of the killer’s true identity, to finally getting to read R.M Holland’s short story, The Stranger, in full.

The star of the story though – is Herbert. Herbert, Clare’s dog, who she loves with a fierce simplicity that I recognized immediately. My dog is my familiar, my companion, “my soul in animal form”. This quote – I love him so much that sometimes, when I look at him, I’m quite surprised to find he’s covered in hair. It made me laugh, it made my eyes sting with tears. Yes, this is how it is, loving these helpless, funny, greedy, loyal and endlessly affectionate beings – who ask for almost nothing, but take your entire heart.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I appreciate it!

Oh man, does Elly Griffiths know about atmosphere.

I am giving this 3.5 stars and rounding to 4!

Griffiths begins this novel with a small taste of the writer R.M. Holland's most famous short story The Stranger. This certainly sets the scene for the story that unfolds. From there, we get introduced to Clare Cassidy. She is an English teacher with an intense interest in Holland. All seems to be going okay until her friend and co-worker, Ella, is murdered. The police believe that the murder suspect is close to home leaving no room for comfort. The case evolves and becomes much more dangerous than anyone could expect especially Clare.

There were things I adored about this book. And there were things that could have been done differently. I really love the atmosphere. We have Clare working in the potentially haunted home of deceased writer, R.M. Holland. If that isn't creepy enough, his late wife may or may not have killed herself. Worse yet, she may haunt the halls. And a sighting of her could be deadly. I love the incorporation of the Gothic author. It really does give an average murder mystery novel that extra oomph. Had that not been included, I am not sure I would have received this novel as well.

Sorry but we have to talk about the issues. Griffiths clearly is not in her domain when writing from a teenage point of view. Which is totally okay. Those twisted young minds are hard to break through. BUT she didn't have to put emphasis on her discomfort. Every time we read from Georgia's point of view, she would include something like "normal teenage stuff" or "as teens are meant to do." Furthermore, she would single it out, like so: (normal teenage stuff). Now I am not talking like here or there. I began to notice the frequency enough that I began counting. For the record, teenagers don't often insist they are teenagers after every angsty response or eye roll. It became a bit cumbersome. Another plot point I was curious about was the ghost of Holland's wife. One more to the list of complaints, why do authors reach the climax and skip right over it? Here is the moment you've been waiting for! Oh, they are face to face! And end of chapter, it's all been resolved, closing up shop......like it's cool I didn't just wait 300+ pages for this altercation. But my last and greatest issue, I guessed the killer a little too quickly. Not to toot my own horn, but pretty much from being introduced to said character I knew. That isn't the fault of Griffiths, I am going to blame it on being born a genius....

Overall, I thought it was a fairly likable murder mystery. I loved the creepy author element. Griffiths played into her strengths being all atmospheric. But she has to try and convince the readers less that she can write from a teenage point of view. Stating through out "teenage this and teenage that" isn't convincing anyone.

Thank you NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the read!