A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

The Perfect Stranger is Megan Miranda's follow up to All the Missing Girls .  I read and reviewed All the Missing Girls back in January.   The Perfect Stranger differs in structure to All the Missing Girls which largely unspooled its story backwards.  While  The Perfect Stranger follows a more traditional story structure, it is no less gripping. After Leah Stevens torches her career in Boston in pursuit of the truth, a seemingly chance encounter with her former, post-college roommate, Emmy Grey, spurs the two women to move to western Pennsylvania.  Both women are in search of a fresh start and while Leah finds hers as a high school English teacher, Emmy flounders in nameless, nondescript, dead end jobs.  When a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Leah is found left for dead on the shores of the nearby lake, Leah soon realizes that her roommate has been missing for an undetermined length of time.  And Leah realizes that it is the beginnin...

All the Missing Girls is Megan Miranda's first adult novel; she has previously written several YA novels.  However, I haven't read any of Miranda's YA novels.   All the Missing Girls is a thriller, a genre I don't read as often as I used to, and a page turner.  You won't be able to put it down, and you won't see many of the twists coming until they're right on top of you.  The story opens on day 1 and then flashes forward to day 15 and unspools backwards one day at a time back to day 1 before jumping forward again at the very end to wrap up the story.  It's a messy ending and it's probably not your stereotypical 'happy ending.' Nicolette's father is slowly succumbing to dementia and now that he's run out of money, Nicolette and her brother, Daniel, must sell the house to finance their father's upkeep at the convalescence home.  So Nicolette returns home to tiny Cooley Ridge, NC, for the summer to ready her father's house...