What a fantastic, fun read The Stranger is. I’d never read Harlan Coben until now, so his style of fast-paced suspense was new to me, and its different nature from so many other books I’ve read lately was welcome and refreshing.
As a mystery, this truly was a page-turner. The general premise brings a stranger to a person, interrupting his life by revealing a secret regarding a loved one. The one who learns this secret then must determine how to proceed with this new, usually tragically heartbreaking, knowledge. Why this is happening, to whom this is happening, and how this is happening are as interesting pieces of the story as is the book’s focus character, who early on learns shocking news about his wife and their marriage—news well beyond the mundane adultery that’s been told so many times.
I read the book quickly, wanting to read this at each opportunity I had. Of course, it’s written to a level that is easy to read and would work well as a beach weekend novel, but it also has great writing in its descriptive nature. That said, the book was much more about developing mystery and accompanying twists than it was about developing characters, but that is perhaps why it was so easy to move through quickly. But that was okay by me, as I did not need to know that much more about the characters to be satisfied with the entertainment aspect of the tale.
What stood out in the entertainment most was the story’s ability to turn in unexpected directions, delivering new layers to the story, layers I had not seen coming. Of course, some things were also clearly put in place early on in the book so as to help as the tale sorts out, but even in that sorting, surprises continued to spring from the pages, and twists were revealed. Never were they too far-fetched; they fit well within the grand scheme of the plot. These surprises and twists made the book such a delight to pick up each time that I did. And I heartily recommend that you pick it up too.