Twisty, turny, quirky suspense. This was a good read with intriguing characters, all holding their own mystery and showing the complexity of human relationships. Characters you will love to hate.

4.5 stars!

Lillian is an obituary writer living with her teenage son and husband. When she discovers her husband is having an affair, she decides it's her turn to have some fun. When she meets David, she creates a new persona, spicing up her life. But when footage of David and Lillian is splashed onto social media, it is not just her secret that will be revealed....it seems everyone else is hiding something too. ⁣⁣

Wow, this book was absolutely wild!! It has the making of everything I love in a psychological thriller - multiple POV's, short gripping chapters and so many twists and turns that will leave you shocked to your core. Highly recommend this unputdownable thriller!

I have been such a huge fan of Torre!

What another crazy, wild, and unputdownable ride.

I thought this may have been another domestic suspense but damn Torre pulls those twists out of her pocket so nicely and she keeps you on the edge of your seat.

I have to say this isn't my favorite by her but it's another one that sucks you in and a fun edge of your seat book that will k eep you entertained.

Thank you so much to Amazon publishing for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 stars

I enjoyed this one. It wasn't my favorite story by this author but it read quickly and easily and kept me engaged the whole way through.

This had many aspects similar to my favorite thrillers; unreliable narrator, deceit, cheating spouse, and misdirection galore. The writing is fairly simplistic in it's style and it has multiple narrators though the primary narrator is Lillian, the female MC.

I'm trying to put my finger on what left me slightly unsatisfied at the finale and I think it's because I felt like someone who didn't deserve an okay ending got one and that tugs at me a bit. There is also a paranormal aspect that I didn't care for mostly because I felt like it didn't add anything to the story line other than to serve as an additional narrator when the story didn't need it at that point (also this particular element is all of a sudden popping up in multiple books I've read recently so I'm tired of it personally, but I think it's just a coincidence in the books I've been selecting lately.)

Overall, I enjoy books by this author and will continue to seek them out.

Torre always guarantees her readers sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense, and she doesn’t disappoint with A Familiar Stranger. What I like about her storytelling is she keeps you guessing. And ooh boy, did she get me with this one! From the beginning to the end, mystery abounds, and the thrill of this unconventional story is how I saw her heroine’s state of affairs and interpreted it. But Torre ensures that what one sees or believes is far from cut and dry.

Lillian Smith’s reality isn’t the norm. In a rut of sorts, her job writing obituaries and not such fabulous home life, I found surprisingly fascinating. I have a suspicion that she wouldn't think the same as me. Entertaining her followers by writing speculatively fun if not morbid Tweets is only the tip of the iceberg. Her quirky humour dampened when things backfire; I couldn’t have understood her frustration more.

Lillian slips easily into a habit that troubled me. Escapism at its worse, could she control it because I had certainly had my doubts. Doubts that led to the never expected blew my mind away. While this was going on, she trusted the circumstance. To me, it felt like watching a train wreck about to happen, and she had no blinking idea. However, I observed a happier woman who became more comfortable with herself, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the new sassy Lillian. Therefore I can’t help but raise my glass to her, and whatever conscious actions she’d chosen to do were fine by me.

Did her husband notice that change in his wife, who he’d been neglecting? Even bigger question. What was he hiding? And her best friend? Torre fooled me into believing the goodie was a baddie and vice versa. Well, there was one person I loved to bits. Whether they were a drinking partner or confidant, even someone to pass the time and let off steam, I was so grateful that Torre developed such a marvellous character.

Not only does Torre grab your attention from the word go, but she also challenges her readers. What was coming, I never envisaged for a minute, and that frustrated me as I like to think I can work out who the wrongdoer is. Her spectacular narrative makes for a psychological thriller that keeps you in a state of uncertainty, waiting for more. The finale! Quite brilliant. Simply bravo, Torre!

ARC gratefully received from Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for an honest review

Omg this book was perfect for buddyreading, Lily and Farah thank you for reading this together.

I enjoyed this mystery so much. The writing was so good, i felt on my skin every word. Past and present were perfectly mixed. And as well points of views. The only thing that I was not glad was a paranormal thing but I did not mind so much this time. Maybe it is a fave for someone.

I loved I was wrong about everything and wanted to be different with all my heart but as I said it was so great done I love it so much even was not perfect for my taste.

A story about a marriage with secrets and a lot of jelaosy around, missed chances, chances taken, in bad and worse, romance and thriller mixed in one.

A familiar stranger was a rollercoaster ride!

Right from the first chapter, I got so invested that I couldn’t put it down until the last page.

And while it was slow in the middle, I think it actually was worth the slow pace because it showed more of the characters’ traits and what they actually thought after her death.

I felt like the author intentionally made you want to like her and cheer her up in finding whatever her husband is hiding just so you get slapped in the face by the “stranger” situation.

I think this book will stay with me for a while because it is really unexpected and the twists and turns just kept coming with a new chapter.

I also think that with this book you either love it or hate it. And for me it is love it. So I’ll recommend it to any domestic thrillers lovers.

🆓📖Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy

2.5
Meet Lillian, a mother and wife with the career as an obituary writer-how unique! Especially when there is a death looming in this book!

I have really enjoyed previous Torre books and was hoping for the same from this one, but it felt very disjointed at about the half way point.

We meet all the main characters, learn about their quirks, faults and affairs....I was on track and curious about where we were going. There was a moment where Lillian straight up didn't remember anything from a specific day....interesting....then we get to a point where it wasn't all that valuable or even needed as part of the plot in the book. Once the "death" happens a bunch of crazy stuff goes down, with little to no development surrounding or supporting the reasons. It just wasn't set up well enough for me as the reader to be convinced by it.

I hung onto it to the very end hoping for some better answers but ended up disappointed and underwhelmed. It felt manufactured and unrealistic by the end. This said, I will read her next book! A. R. Torre does a great job of making reading easy!

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the advance e-copy in return for my honest review.

I enjoy A. R. Torre's originality. She always manages to create unusual plots that have clever twists to keep her readers guessing. She did not disappoint in A Familiar Stranger.

In this book, Lillian has marital issues, job problems and complicated relationships. There don't seem to be any areas of her life that she doesn't seem to be struggling. To make things even worse, there are things going on that aren't as they seem and Lillian hasn't even scratched the surface yet.

This book takes you down one path and then takes a hard right down another one. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to read and review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

3.5 stars!

A Familiar Stranger was a super quick and bingeable read. A typical domestic thriller with a twist 👀 I loved the short chapters and multiple POVs. This book is filled with drama, deceit, secrets and affairs.

I enjoyed the easy flow of this book thanks to the short chapters. And I definitely did not see the big twist coming, I don’t think anyone would 🫢

While I thought this was a great, quick read, the execution did not knock me off my feet nor wow me. This turned out to be a middle-of-the-road type of book and I just wished there was a bit more thrill and maybe complexity to it.

A Familiar Stranger by A.R. Torre is about Lillian Smith, a former celebrity obituary writer for the Times; she writes obituaries for everyday people and runs a murder-who did it blog on Twitter; she might have an obsession with death. Lillian is also suffering from depression-bipolar, and alcoholism. Her marriage to Mike is in tatters, and her teenage son, Jacob, ignores them. Lillian has a best friend, Sam Knight, who is a realtor and her confidant, so when she suspects her husband of infidelity, she confides in Sam. When Lillian addresses her suspensions to Mike about his affair, Mike admits it and says he will stop; it was just sex, not love. A few days later, Lillian finds herself in a cafe writing and staring at a handsome man David Laurent, deciding to take on a different persona and start an affair of her own. She's reckless and unpredictable; her lies mount up as she pulls away from her old life and into this new affair. Lillian is spinning out of control, and betrayal runs deeper than ever imagined; she's not the only person living a double life.

A Familiar Stranger is an enthralling, captivating, mindblowing read!

Lillian Smith is a writer, mother, and wife. She feels like she’s failing at life. In addition to being demoted at work, her distant husband is likely cheating, and her son is disconnected from the family. She wants more excitement from her boring life. So she borrows someone else’s life. But what if she isn’t the only one with a double life?

I was very pleasantly surprised by A Familiar Stranger! With its clever plot, multiple POVs, unexpected twists, and an extra helping of messiness, A Familiar Stranger kept me intrigued and turning the pages. While I figured out parts of the mystery, I enjoyed the overall unpredictability of this story, with surprises until the end.

Go in blind to best enjoy this thriller filled with scandal, deception, and lies!

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for an early copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I devoured this one. I simply couldn’t stop reading this and ignored all my other books for it.

I’m extremely picky about domestic thrillers. I haven’t had much success in finding titles that really, really work for me. This one almost completely worked for me - I didn’t need the dreaded suspension of disbelief that too many novels suffer from, and I didn’t guess the twist within a few chapters.

Regarding my "almost completely" comment, after reading this, I was still left with certain questions from two incidents in the book that didn’t seem to be addressed again or wrapped up. This didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the story, however.

Questions aside, I fully enjoyed this and plan on absolutely reading more of this author (this was my first book by Ms. Torre) 🙂

An interesting read with some twists and turns that has a few different points of views of the same events. Lillian has been feeling detached from her marriage and her life for some time, though the latter was not always obvious to her, so when her husbands activities come to light she makes some changes. Changes that may just become the beginning of the end. A good read that kept me interested and invested.

Thank you to the publishers for sending me this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review!

The synopsis of this book does not match up to the emphasis of the plot in the actual novel. That is to say, the points that are focused on in the synopsis are not particularly the main points focused on throughout the novel. The main faults to this story are the plot twists near the end. I did not like the turns that this book took. I believe there could have been a much better and more plausible way to end this story.

I strongly enjoyed the main character, Lillian. She had an intriguing thought process that led her to making many questionable decisions. Overall, I would mainly recommend this book to those who like morally gray/messed up characters, though I could not guarantee that anyone would enjoy the plot twists.

I went into this with high expectations since I really enjoy her books. This one started off really slow, and going into this book blind I didn’t know where this was going. Was it a “find yourself again trope” or what. The story didn’t pick up until 60% and after that I could not put it down.

Doesn't live up to its potential or the first half!

This was engaging, breezy and reminded me of why I fell in love with domestic thrillers in the first place. It gripped me from the start, had me wondering WTF was going on and kept me turning the pages! I was so invested.

Can't say the same about the second half of the book though! I didn't mind The Death itself and applaud the author for doing so, because it takes balls to execute. However, I didn't care for most of the POVs after that, including newly-introduced ones. They just felt so unnecessary and like cheap storytelling, especially when you add so much only when it's convenient to the author/story.

I also guessed the whodunit correctly very early on since the cast is so small, so that made everything even more disappointing for me despite some good surprises. Only giving this 3⭐ instead of 2⭐ because the last chapter was solid.

Overall, this is an okay read if you want something fast and easy, but it's not the most well-crafted or genius of thrillers.

Kudos to A. R. Torre for another thriller with so many twists and turns that the reader is bound to be thrown off track repeatedly. First of all, Lillian, a celebrity obituary writer, is a perfect catalyst for “what else can go wrong in someone’s life”. Her husband is a most evil man and her son is very distant. More and more bad luck befalls Lillian and then, just as things begin to get a little rosy for her…slam!
I love the way Lillian remains as the main character and Torre certainly makes you feel her utter frustration at what is happening around her.
Loved all the revelations and plot twists. Most of all I so appreciated Lillian’s connection with Marcella’s and his relevance to the storyline.
Many many thanks to A. R. Torre, Thomas & Mercer, and NetGalley for affording me the pleasure of reading an arc of this soon to be published book. Another great read from A. R. Torre.

A Familiar Stranger by A. R. Torre is a thriller about a wife Lillian, who writes obituaries and is tired of her inattentive husband. When she meets David at a coffee shop, she reinvents herself and ends up having an affair. But, she doesn't realize that there is a lot more going on with her husband and with David. What happens to Lillian? Who is David really? And what has her husband been hiding from her? This story was a quick read, but the characters were very one-dimensional, so I found that I really didn't care what happened to them. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Rated 4.5 Stars

What a story! My eyes were practically glued to my kindle as I devoured A Familiar Stranger in almost one sitting. It kept my attention effortlessly from the first page to the last. I really enjoyed this wild ride. It was interesting, intriguing and had me emotionally invested from the get. I highly recommend it. It was a great read!

Copy provided by publisher through Net Galley