An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

Shari Lapena is just oh so wonderful, I was beyond myself when I got a copy of her latest book, An Unwanted Guest.

A huge thanks to Pamela Dorman Books and Viking Books for the book in exchange for my honest review.

Come to Mitchell’s Inn, where there are leather club chairs by the fireplace, a bar made entirely out of ice, old fancy wood paneling, a good company. Or so we assume? A large snow storm has hit Mitchell Inn and snowed in half the staff and the guests. They all get acquainted with one another during cocktail hour and converse over dinner. Every one eventually heads to bed, with not a trace of complaints when the next day, they awake to find a guest, the most gorgeous of them all, dead at the bottom of the staircase. This story takes place in three days where we learn more truth behind these guests and what truly happened. If you loved Clue, you’ll devour this one.

I adored this! I could not stop reading! Ironically enough, I read Lapena’s A Stranger In The House while rocking my newborn to sleep, and this while rocking that same child, now a teething one year old, to sleep. I was upset when she woke to say the least. It’s a fast paced read that captures your attention at each beckoning hour of their weekend snowed-in. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but Shari does an amazing job sharing such intricate details about their life where you won’t ever get lost. I love how the names are bolded every once in awhile when she switches focus of the story (that may just be in the advanced reader’s copy, but I hope it stays that way). It keeps you engaged with who’s who and what’s going on. I’m a super huge fan of the movie and board game Clue, so I completely and utterly bought in to this storyline and loved every minute of it. I can’t wait to read it again!

5/5 Stars

A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

This book will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart. I read this while rocking my newborn to sleep, and I literally read the entire thing while she took a massive nap. I’ve been thinking on this book a lot lately since my little one will be turning one in a little over two weeks!

Karen and Tom are the perfect married couple. They get along great, don’t have kids, and live in a beautiful picturesque neighborhood. Tom comes home from work one day to find that his wife Karen has gone missing. Not long after, the police knock on the door to inform him that his wife has been in a car accident. Tom goes to visit his wife at the hospital and learns that she can’t remember anything. The police think something suspicious is going on with Karen’s behavior. Tom is in full support of helping her out and trying to come to the bottom of this. Karen returns home, rests up to heal, and starts to realize that things in her house aren’t where they used to be.

This was a fast paced read that I could not put down. I was highly engaged the entire time and had to know the ending right away. Karen’s personality seems a little weak, but it left room for more mystery to what happened to her in the car crash and why she was there in the first place. I will admit, I figured out the twist about 3/4ths of the way through the book. It almost made me speed up the reading, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Despite figuring the mystery out, the ending still had a bitter taste that was all too good to read. This book will stick with you for sure, even a year later (speaking from personal experience). I love Shari and will continue reading her books. I highly recommend this read.

4.5/5 Stars

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

HA! I bet you can figure out by now what my go-to genre novels are, yes? Here’s one of them for sure.

Anne and Marco are visiting their neighbor next-door (it’s important to know they live in a townhouse and this is their neighbor directly next-door) for a dinner party one night. Their babysitter dropped out last second so they figured they could just bring the monitor over with them to keep an eye on their sleeping baby. Anne had a bit too much to drink and went home early to find their their baby Cora has gone missing. Was this an inside job or a result of an unlucky case of events? Is their marriage truly what it’s all cracked up to be?

I enjoyed the first half of this book. She grabbed my attention right away and kept me going along for the ride, up until when I totally figured out the rest of the story. By the middle of the novel, I had it all figured out and it just went downhill from there. I think the idea behind the novel and even the ending was fine, I was just hoping and expecting more of a sudden twist that I couldn’t see coming. This could be because I read a ton of mystery/thriller/suspense novels and they start to have a similar theme to them. I actually liked her newer novel “A Stranger in the House” a lot better. That one also had somewhat of a predictive ending, but it still was able to catch me off guard until the last few pages.

3.5/5 Stars