When a Stranger Comes…

When A Stranger Comes… is an extraordinary book about a former best-selling writer trying to come up with a new story but in a way failing. The turn of events after the lightning was unexpected for me. The suspense in this book never ends. It kept me guessing till the end and I absolutely adored it!

I really wanted to like this one a lot more than I did. To start, there’s the premise – fascinating (a mysterious lightning strike, a world turned upside down, fame and riches and evil all blended together, a writer whose creations seem to be coming to life). There’s the main characters – conceptually intriguing (I am fascinated by books about books and the people who write/create/publish them, plus there’s the whole evil/deal with the devil set of personalities, also usually intriguing to me). And there’s the larger questions about reality and wishes – do we make our reality? Is this real? Is she crazy? What are we really willing to give up to achieve our “dreams”? Does anyone EVER learn that you should be careful what you wish for?

Unfortunately, despite all of those positives, I struggled with this one… I really liked the beginning – the setup was intriguing, the characters seemed promising, the secrets and mysteries were thick on the ground. Then things started to slip sideways for me. Alexa veers between lovable neurotic successful writer and over-the-top scheming, greedy witch with surprising frequency as the story develops, and frankly it turned me off. One minute she just wants to write, the next she’s having random sex-fests and yelling at her friends and literally closing her eyes to everyone and everything around her that she doesn’t want to see. It felt manic, and not in a good, story-developing, way but in an “I’m not sure where to take this character” one…

At more than 50% through, I started skimming – I was still curious enough to see what would happen, but found that I couldn’t deal with Alexa and her vacillations over this situation of her own making on a word-by-word basis any more. I don’t have a problem with instability or weird occurrences in stories – read enough of my reviews and you’ll know that. But I did find myself annoyed, repeatedly, by the instability and weird occurrences here – I don’t know exactly why, although I suspect my fundamental dislike of Alexa is a big part of that. The writing here is generally engaging, and so I found myself (as I often do) sucked way in – even when I didn’t particularly want to be. To pull your readers in for the ride is a great thing – unless they don’t like the person they’re riding along with, then it’s a bit of a double-edged sword…

The skimming helped – the secret Alexa stumbles onto about half-way through turns out to be the main focus of the rest of the story, and I found it more engaging reading at that point, perhaps because it became somewhat more philosophical (I am a sucker for a good exegesis on the nature of evil) and Alexa seemed to find her focus along with her truth. The addition of the Kip reveal helped, as did the bits about Alexa’s mom. And in the end, things did all come together in a way that I found I quite enjoyed for their ambiguity and possibility. There was some head shaking, but it was with grudging admiration – the story came full circle in a way I didn’t anticipate, and I liked that even if it felt a little tidy.

Despite the positives in the last half, I still felt like the story meandered and wore on longer than I would have liked. On the whole, I’m a bit ambivalent on this one…

My review copy was provided by NetGalley.

I received this book for free. I am voluntarily posting this review and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

This book has an intriguing blurb – which I loved. I loved the beginning of the book, but unfortunately, not so much the MC Alexa. Then this book was sort of all over the place. At one point, Alexa understands what’s occurring and decides to fight against it but the next minute she is involved in a sex orgy. I just did not like the wishy-washyness of the MC. I also did not enjoy the information dumps which would occur periodically throughout the book. The villain, in a very long monologue, would provide an incredible amount of information – which after a while, you just sort of tune out. There were parts of this book which I really liked but overall, this was just okay for me.

The author is the narrator for this book. I usually do not like authors who narrate their own books. Narration is a skill and when done well will really elevate a book. While her narration was not awful, I wished she had used a professional narrator. At times the audio was muffled, her US northeastern accent was not completely fitting with this book, and she failed to raise the level of emotion required for this story. There were interesting bits throughout the book – such as speeding up and slowing down the narration for character effect which I thought were quite good.

When a Stranger Comes by Karen Bell tells the story of writer Alexa Wainwright a writer who had massive success with her first novel. Since then she’s struggled to write anything that comes close to that novel in content or success. As she stands looking out the window of her loft one day wishing to write another great novel she witnessed a bolt of lightening come out of a clear blue sky and hit the road in front of her. After that everything in her life takes on a strange quality and she fears she’s in some alternate universe.

Alexa is relentlessly recruited by a company called Trinity of Sixes. They want to publish her books and option them for movies. Resisting she is invited to meet the owner of the company King Blakemore. After that things keep getting stranger.

I really enjoyed this book. I had absolutely no idea what was going on in Alexa’s life. I didn’t know what was true, what was a dream or what was a flat out hallucination. As a reader I was completely lost (in a good way) and always had about six competing theories going on in my own mind.

If you have read The Memory Box by Eva Lesko Natiello and liked it you’ll love this novel. It has the same feel of being completely lost and off center without the manic qualities of that book. Although a totally different story it is a very similar psychological thriller in tone.

The story is really well written and flows well. Even when I read the truth of what was happening to Alexa I wasn’t convinced it actually was the truth. The author manages to lead the reader along easily even while they’re feeling completely off balance with the storyline. It’s a very tricky thing to do and it is done exceptionally well in this novel.

The character development was exceptional too. The reader spends a lot of time in Alexa’s mind and being there is a confusing and entertaining place to be. King reminded me of someone but I can’t quite put my finger on who. All other characters were equally well developed.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book for those who like psychological thrillers that keep you off balance and guessing. If you read and liked The Memory Box you’ll love this book. I offer one simple warning, make sure you have a few hours set aside before you pick it up because once you’re hooked this book is very hard to put down.