This book started out absolutely fascinating. I was hooked, but then it slowed down before getting into anything particularly interesting. There was a long period, from about 25 percent to sixty percent where I wasn't sure I was going to finish it. The good news is, it does get better and the end makes it all worth the time to read.

I found the characters interesting, mostly because, honestly, I didn't really like any of them very much, but the author wrote the story in such a way that I was still compelled to keep reading it regardless. This book quickly becomes a guessing game, making you wonder who is right and who is wrong and trying to put the pieces together as you read so it makes sense. I found out at the end that I was both right and wrong about what was going on.

I gave this book four stars, because in the end, I didn't manage to guess exactly what was going on before it happened, as I so often do. That was exciting. This is an interesting read with just the right amount of psychological suspense to satisfy. Give it a read.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

I love books that hook you from page one and this one did just that. A Stranger on the Beach follows Caroline, a wife of a successful financier, and her chance encounter with Aiden, a young bartender. This is a twisty page-turner with all of the best plot elements: love, lust, murder, and deception. If you like this popular suspense genre, I'd highly recommend reading this book!

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I love thrillers so when I was invited to read this summer release early I downloaded it right away.

Married to a wealthy investment banker, Caroline built her dream beach house. Caroline noticed her husband of 20 years traveling more and being distant when their daughter went off to college. Now an empty-nester, Caroline decided to get back into building her interior design business and threw a lavish party to show off her new house, decorating skills and begin networking. Her husband walked in late to the party with a pretty Russian on his arm. Now all of their friends and family know he's cheating.

Broke and desperate Caroline goes to drink her woes away at the local bar Aiden bartends. One night of drunken sex leads to Aiden in love and Caroline wanting her old life back.

The book starts off with a couple of chapters from Caroline's point of view and then switches to Aiden's who tells a slightly different version of events. Both narrators seem unreliable and guilty which kept me guessing who to trust.

Aiden is well known in the small community with a bad reputation that has left him unlucky in love. He's such a likeable character even though he gave off major Joe Goldberg (You | Caroline Kepnes ) vibes.

The one night stand was well written. I've only been married 11 years but I can totally picture being in Caroline's shoes with the insecurities and revenge in her heart but regretting the encounter immediately.

I totally called the ending before it happened. I know it was a twist, but a common enough one that I wasn't blown away. Predictability aside, I did love Aiden's parting words.

A good read for my fellow Thriller/Suspense loving friends. I'm giving A Stranger on the Beach 4.5 stars!

When Caroline Stark meets Aidan Callahan, it isn't under the best circumstances. After learning her husband of 20 years is cheating and leaving her, not only physically but high and dry after draining their bank accounts, Caroline decides to drown her sorrows in booze at the local bar. It's there she meets Aidan and the two end up having a one night stand.

Aidan Callahan knows after one drunken night that Caroline is in love with him. He refuses to let her get away, he deserves this woman and she deserves him. Becoming obsessed with Caroline, Aidan does all he can to insert himself into her life. But, neither Caroline or Aidan are who they pretend to be. Both are hiding secrets.

Told from multiple POV, this book will have you questioning everything you read. Family drama, Suspense, Thriller all rolled into one good tale.

I received a digital advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review and rating. Thank you to St. Martin's Press for this opportunity.

I have been glued to this book over the last couple of days! It really grabbed my attention right from the beginning and drew me into the story and lives of the characters. What a wild ride. Almost every chapter, I was changing my mind about who was guilty and what was happening. I love that this novel felt like a suspense, psychological thriller, crime drama, romance novel and legal drama all in one.

It would be almost impossible to summarize this book without giving away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say, this tale of obsession, betrayal and lies will have you hooked from beginning to end.

I will absolutely recommend this read to friends and fellow book lovers. Get your copy when it is released in July!

Great read!
I found myself hooked from the very beginning! A married woman finds herself spending her time at her new beautiful beach house alone. She throws a housewarming party which gets ruined by her husband and his mistress! She later goes to the bar to drown her sorrows and she got more than she was hoping for. A stalker! This leads to lots of twists and turns which I won’t talk about so I don’t spoil any of the book!
For each chapter the point of view would change. At first it was confusing but later it made you question who is actually telling the truth! This was such a great book. I will definitely check out more books by Michele Campbell in the future!

This book was awesome!!!!
I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review-
Caroline and her husband own a beautiful beach home. He is so busy with work, or so it seems, that he is never there. Caroline meets a handsome stranger outside her beach home and the sparks fly.
An affair, an obsession, stalking, a husband murdered?
With twist and turns that move so fast your head is spinning you will reel at the ending.

I didn’t like Campbell’s “She Was the Quiet One” but so many did that I was excited to receive this one as an ARC from NetGalley.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this one either. The story really dragged on and at 40% I knew exactly how it was going to end. But I did want some clarification, so I continued. At 50% I was sick and tired of the extremely long conversations that explained everything I already knew ad nauseam.

By the end of the book I was hating the characters for not knowing what was going on. There were about 10 chapters too many, as it took the characters literally days to get up to speed.

Perhaps I read too many of this genre to appreciate the storylines, but this is a pass for me.

Also: spoilers ahead....



Police officers that say wow that person was so refreshingly honest even though her story doesn’t add up and the evidence is showing the contrary, but she was just so honest with me, she has to be innocent are just really bad at their jobs....

Flirting to Hurting in No Time Flat.
Two points of view equals one strange story.
Caroline is a wealthy socialite with a twenty year old marriage. Her husband Jason works in finance and they enjoy a lavish lifestyle. They have recently built their dream home on a Hampton beach. Jason has been very distant lately. One day Caroline notices a good looking young man watching her home from the beach she decides to confront him and that is when she meets Aidan.
Aidan Callahan is a down-on-his-luck local bartender. He has lived in town his whole life. He cannot get any kind of a decent break to his manslaughter charge in the death of his best friend years ago. Some in the town don’t like the fact that he got off easy because his brother is the chief of police. Aidan covets Caroline’s home especially since it is built upon land that was once owned by his grandfather. He formulates a plan to get close to Caroline.
After Jason shows up late to his and Caroline’s beach house party with another woman in tow, fights with his wife, then tells her to hire a divorce lawyer, Caroline gets together with Aidan.
From this point on point of view switches back and forth between Caroline and Aidan. We get two totally different accounts of one shared experience. One of the narratives is completely false.
Someone is lying but which one is it?
By the end of the story when the reader realizes what is going on, this reader has to say that this story is less a case of two separate points of view than one character being so totally misrepresented that nothing written was accurate. The fact that one character retained no redeeming qualities ruined the ending. The premise was good however I didn’t care for the way the story was constructed. I can only imagine that Campbell is trying too hard to stand out in a very popular genre.
BRB Rating: Skip It.

Great psychological thriller. This book kept me interested until the end. I would definitely recommend this book!

Do you have any auto-buy, auto-read authors? Michele Campbell has become one of those authors for me, so I was beyond thrilled to get a copy of her newest book, A Stranger on the Beach via @netgalley. This book doesn't come out until July. Of course, I have zero chill, so I threw my February TBR out the window and dropped everything to read this book.

Synopsis: Caroline has a spectacular new beach house, built for hosting expensive parties and vacationing with the family she thought she'd have. But her husband is lying to her and everything in her life is upside down, so when the stranger, Aidan, shows up as a bartender at the same party where Caroline and her husband have a very public fight, it doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary. As her marriage collapses around her and the lavish lifestyle she's built for herself starts to crumble, Caroline turns to Aidan for comfort...and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aidan's obsession with Caroline, her family, and her house grows more and more disturbing. And when Caroline's husband goes missing, her life descends into a nightmare that leaves her accused of her own husband's murder.


Review: This book was the perfect thriller for me! I love the way Campbell writes. She has a way of weaving a story together that leaves you guessing throughout the entire novel. The story alternates between Caroline and Aidan's point of view, and I didn't know who to trust. I love a juicy thriller with an unreliable narrator. Whenever you decide to pick this up, I would recommend doing it when you have time to read it in one sitting, because that is what you will want to do. The plot touches on so many themes including betrayal, envy, murder, the lifestyles of the rich, adultery, and much much more. Campbell's background as a lawyer and federal prosecutor shines through in her writing. A Stranger on the Beach would make the perfect beach read this summer, or if you're like me, the perfect thriller to curl up with on a weekend. Make sure you add this one to your TBR. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5!! Thank you @netgalley @michelecampbellbooks and @stmartinspress for this digital ARC!

A Stranger on the Beach is sure to make you shiver in spite of the heat this summer!

Oh, gosh, I’m not sure how to tell you how much I love this book without spoilers, but I’m gonna try! Caroline is living the good life until her husband’s mistress crashes the party at her new beach house. In a drunken fit she cheats with the local bartender setting off a fatal attraction style love affair.

Told in alternating points of view, you soon find that you’re not sure what’s true and what’s not—just how delusional is Aidan to have fallen in love after one night with Caroline? The deeper into the book you get, the more Aidan’s and Caroline’s stories diverge. And when the police start investigating a murder, the situation gets darker and more confusing.

I don’t think I can say much else, except that author Michelle Campbell’s plotting is masterful. You need to go into this mostly blind if you want to enjoy the twists and turns.

This book in 3 words: unreliable, tangled, intricate. Five stars!

A Stranger on the Beach grabbed me on the first page and never let go. It's written in alternating viewpoints, his and hers, telling the same story. The kicker is that the stories don't match up at all! Somebody's lying and you can't quite decide who it is. Is Aiden, the good looking bartender, mentally unstable and deluded? Is he seeing the world the way he wishes it were, rather than how it is? Is Caroline being stalked and threatened? By Aiden? Or someone else? And what about Caroline's husband, Jason? Why is he gone all the time? Did he really bring his cheap looking mistress to Caroline's elegant party at their new beach house?

Michele Campbell weaves in enough clues to keep the reader guessing until almost the very end. Then she wraps it up and ties a bow on it in a satisfying ending. Highly recommended!

Oh, I loved this book. It was on my AmaZon list for its release date, so I was thrilled to receive an ARC. I love an unreliable narrative, and this book had not one, but two. I don't want to give too much away, but this was well written and I couldn't put it down. Definitely worth the read.

I loved the beginning of this book. so many twists and turns but somewhere towards the ending it just went off the end and I couldn’t grasp it.

From the moment she saw him standing on the beach staring at her beach house, their fate was sealed.
Caroline and Jason are an “it” couple. They have an apartment in the city and a beautiful beach house on the ocean. They are both beautiful. And successful. And rich. Other than good looks, they are everything Aiden isn’t. And have everything Aiden doesn’t. Bitter about the big beach house built on his grandfather’s land, he still can’t help staring at the beautiful house longingly. But Aiden is an ex con who works as a bartender; he will never own a house like that.
But maybe part of that dream isn’t out of reach for him. Maybe he can’t have the house. But maybe, just maybe he could have the wife. Aiden can’t believe is luck when Caroline turns her attention his way. That perfect relationship Jason and Caroline have has developed a crack after their housewarming party turns ugly and soon after, Caroline finds her way into his bar to drown her sorrows and ends up with more than she was bargaining for. A moment of drunken revenge turns into a nightmare.
He’s desperate and obsessed with her. She’s mortified and frightened. And then two stories come into play. Same events are narrated by both Aiden and Caroline. But told entirely differently. Which is the truth? Or is it somewhere in the middle?
This story is so cleverly written. I was engaged throughout as I tried to figure out the truth. I didn’t want to put the book down while my head tried to wrap around what I thought was true and what I suspected. This book is full of suspense and intrigue and you will want to stay up until this one is finished.
4 1/2 stars for me.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me the privilege to read and review this book by sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you're looking for a great new thriller, this is it! Told by conflicting POV it kept me turning the pages all night. I could not tell who was lying. Great twists especially at the end! I've read other books by this author and she just keeps getting better.

A Stranger on the Beach is a twisted tale of what happens when love and marriage go wrong. Carolyn is about to have the housewarming party of her dreams, as she and her husband Jason are ready to move into an exclusive beach house. When Jason shows up to the party with another woman, it's apparent to everyone that he's having an affair, and he soon confirms that by walking out on Carolyn. Aiden is a bartender from the party, who is young and attractive, and could he possibly be flirting with Carolyn? When Carolyn has too much to drink, an innocent night of flirtation with Aiden turns into a one night stand. Suddenly, Aiden seems much more interested in it being more than Carolyn would like, and it's a question of what Carolyn has gotten herself into.

The story is told from Carolyn and Aiden's point of view. Aiden's obsession with Carolyn takes a dramatic turn for the dark side when Carolyn tries to break things off and reconcile with her husband. Could he be responsible for hurting Jason? The thing that pulled me in the most was the fact that both points of view were diametrically opposed. That's the question for me that kept me flipping pages, which one of these two is the unreliable narrator or are they both? It's hard to say much more about the story without giving something away, but I will say the story kept me engrossed from the first page to the last and I didn't see that ending coming.

I had a lot of thoughts as I was reading this one about what was really going on. I went back and forth between thinking that Aiden and Carolyn each were guilty, but I never figured out the whole plot. This book won't be published until July and I could definitely see it being a terrific beach read, though it held my attention on a cold January night. Kudos to the author, even after reading the final page and thinking about what I'd read, there were no obvious clues that I missed staring me in the face.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

I read a lot of these trailers, and I understand you have to come to them with suspension of disbelief, but I just cannot believe the last 20% of this book. It’s been an hour since I put it down and I’m still confused. Nothing about the first 3/4 of this book in anyway led up to that ending, and now I’m just irritated and I feel like my time has been wasted, which is a real shame as I had been loving it up to that point. I did the math, if the first 3/4 were four star and the last quarter was one star, that’s three stars on average. So, three unenthusiastic stars then

A Stranger on the Beach by Michele Campbell is a twisted story of two strangers on the beach meeting. A married woman pursuing a younger man and the fallout it entails.
But who killed her husband?
Fascinating and mind blowing!