Author: Shari Lapena
Publisher: Bantam Press
Publication date: July 2019
"This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out."
In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too.
Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets?
In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .
You never really know what people are capable of.
Someone We Know is a story about a neighborhood that is filled with horrible, indecent and very bad people. I was really disappointed in this one. Sometimes it's hard to read a book where not one character is likable. I found myself almost DNFing this book. Thankfully, it was a short book and it was over quickly. Now I don't have to like every character in a book, however, I do like to at least root for someone. I could not find one person in this book that I wanted to root for, except maybe the detectives.
The overall story was kind of meh. It was fairly short, so it had that going for it. The one thing that I did like was that I didn't call the killer or motive right away. That's about it. I wish I liked more. I really wouldn't recommend this one. This author has written better books.
Author: Shari Lapena
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Date of publication: July 2018
It's winter in the Catskills and Mitchell's Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing - maybe even romantic - weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge woodburning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery.
So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off all electricity - and all contact with the outside world - the guests settle in and try to make the best of it.
Soon, though, one of the guests turns up dead - it looks like an accident. But when a second guest dies, everyone starts to panic.
Within the snowed-in paradise, something - or someone - is picking off the guests one by one. And there's nothing they can do but hunker down and hope they can survive the storm - and one another.
I am on a roll lately with good thrillers. An Unwanted Guest was a random library pick that I flew through because I didn't want to put it down. The book follows a group of guests at a remote inn in the Catskills. They end up stranded there when a storm blows in. The first morning, a guest is discovered dead at the bottom of the stairs. It seems like an accident, until the next person person is discovered dead. I'll leave it at that since this is a book that it is better for the reader going in not knowing a lot ahead of time.
If you are a fan of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, you will enjoy this mystery. The only downside is that there was a large cast of characters that I did initially have a hard time keeping straight. The story is also told through multiple points of view. Which made it harder to figure out the killer. I wasn't sure which narrative I could trust. The setting created a feeling of claustrophobia and added to the creep factor. I was definitely kept guessing until the end. Well, I did call one thing, but that didn't diminish my surprise at what really happened. If you haven't picked this one up yet, I highly recommend it!
