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The Stranger Inside: Book summary and reviews of The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger

The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger X
The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger
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  • Published Sep 2019
    384 pages
    Genre: Thrillers

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Book Summary

Even good people are drawn to do evil things…

Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend's house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice—and killed him in cold blood.

Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends' abductor force Rain to revisit memories she's worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can't Rain just let it go?

Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes people deserve what comes to them.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Surviving a crime is the beginning of the story, not the end, in this astute, engrossing thriller." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Unger's well-honed craft shows in her unmasking the avenger early on and using the reveal to ratchet up suspense. She also squirrels away several startling trump cards for later. Fans of serial killer novels won't be disappointed." - Publishers Weekly

"A darkly thrilling tale of survival and obsession. Lisa Unger never disappoints." - Riley Sager, bestselling author of Lock Every Door

"It's not often that I'm stunned by the ending to a novel. But The Stranger Inside is rich with surprise from the very first page. It's a smart, taut thriller." - Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Midwives

This information about The Stranger Inside was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Techeditor

Not as great as most Lisa Unger books
Rain, whose real name is LAHraine but has also been known as Lara, was a journalist who is now trying to make it as a stay-at-home mom. Her husband is handsome, thoughtful, and all-forgiving, so much so that he seems unreal. Rain has a troubled past that affects her even now as an adult. When she was 12 her two friends Hank and Tess were abducted by a mentally unstable man, Kreskey, who seriously hurt Hank and murdered Tess. Rain was mauled by Kreskey's dog but escaped abduction.

THE STRANGER INSIDE moves among, essentially, three periods: the present, during and after the abduction, and the time of Kreskey's murder, all three sometimes in the same chapter. I didn't have a hard time following the story, but I can see how some people might. I did find a lot of repetition, though, which made me want to skip paragraphs.

As adults, both Hank and Rain seem to have a stranger inside. THE STRANGER INSIDE is about them and their strangers and how the four of them deal with their past.

It's a putdownable book. Not that it is bad; it just did not impress me the way many Lisa Unger books do.

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Author Information

Lisa Unger Author Biography

Photo: Tanya Sharkey

Lisa Unger is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of twenty novels, including Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six, Last Girl Ghosted, and Confessions on the 7:45 — now in development at Netflix, starring Jessica Alba. With books published in thirty-two languages and millions of copies sold worldwide, she is regarded as a master of suspense.

Unger's critically acclaimed novels have been featured on "Best Book" lists from the Today Show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, People, Amazon, Goodreads, L.A. Times, The Boston Globe, Sun Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times and many others. She has been nominated for, or won, numerous awards including the Strand Critics, Audie, Hammett, Macavity, ITW Thriller, and Goodreads Choice. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award ...

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