A Stranger In the House by Shari Lapena

(Spoilers Ahead)

I have read multiple books by Shari Lapena and A Stranger in the House was recently recommended to me by someone as another good one by her. I requested it from my library that day and finally picked the book up yesterday.  Just a short day later, I have finished and immediately had to pick up my computer to come write my review and my blog.  Mostly because I didn't want the details of how this book annoyed me to slip through my fingers.

Karen and Tom Krupp are set up as a normal couple, but you open thinking that maybe Tom has a secret.  He comes home and finds his wife missing and her phone and purse left behind and he starts worrying immediately. Not long after, the police show up at his door and tell them that his wife's car was involved in a single vehicle accident and they need him to come to the hospital to identify whether the injured driver is his wife. 

Upon arriving at the hospital, he confirms that it is and the story just runs away from there.  His wife, Karen, wakes with short term amnesia and has no memory of the night before or why she was driving so erratically.  Shortly after, a man is found shot to death in an abandoned restaurant and a pair of pink dishwashing gloves are found near the scene.  (I let it slide that this whole "glove" story line had too much of an OJ Simpson vibe.)

Along the way we meet Tom and Karen's immediately creepy neighbor, Brigid. She seems overly obsessed with Tom and Karen and just puts off this really weird, extremely nosy neighbor vibe. 

During the investigation, the police uncover that Karen is using a fake identity.  They are finally able to identify the dead man and realize that Karen is actually his wife who was presumed dead from suicide several years before.

While reading the parts of the story from Karen's point of view, you learn that she escaped an abusive husband by planning this faked suicide and getting away from him.  Karen seems genuinely in love with Tom and is still saying she has no memory from the night and can't imagine herself actually killing someone, although she finally admits to having bought a gun after she left him.

Flash forward, the cops get enough evidence to arrest Karen for murder.  However, they still have no murder weapon. That is because we find out that Brigid actually followed Karen on the night of the murder to the abandoned restaurant. Brigid says that she saw Karen go in to the restaurant, heard gunshots, then saw her run out.  What becomes known is that Brigid took the gun from the crime scene and she later plants it in Karen's garage and then reports an anonymous tip to the police.

Through fingerprints, the police discover that Brigid has been all over Tom and Karen's home and also at the restaurant.  Lastly they find her prints on the public phone where the anonymous tip comes in.  Brigid is obsessed with Tom (they had a brief affair before Tom met Karen) and what you quickly start to learn is that she is mentally unstable and willing to do anything to get Tom back, including making sure to seal Karen's fate as a murderer.

Because of Brigid's involvement in tampering with the gun, the case is just too murky and the District Attorney decides to drop the charges against Karen, realizing she will never get a conviction - too much reasonable doubt.

Here's where it starts to lose me.  From this point we flash forward just a little. Karen and Tom are figuring out how to move forward. They remain in their home (after changing the locks and getting a security system) and are working on being happy again.  Tom still thinks that maybe Karen killed her husband, but he understands why she would have, so he isn't afraid of her. 

Brigid is sitting across the street, staring out the window, angry and bitter that Karen got off on the murder charge.

Then we go back to Karen who is boarding the express train to NYC for a day trip.  During this trip, she reflects on some things. Her memory finally came back and she remembers shooting her husband (okay, that was expected).  But then she discloses how she finds it funny that she has fooled people into thinking that she was an abused woman. Apparently her husband was not abusive, but was laundering money.  Karen ran off with $2 million of this money and faked her suicide.  Her husband came back after her because he wanted the money and she killed him.  Karen says Tom is the first man she has ever really loved and she is thinking of starting a family and coming up with a story of how she came into money so they can actually spend it.  Karen is thankful for Brigid's obsession and involvement with the gun, because without that, Karen would have likely been convicted. 

Then we flip back to Brigid, who is obsessively knitting baby clothes and making promises that this is not over.  The assumption here is that she is pregnant with Tom's child and she is going to try to find a way in to his life.

The End.

Okay, so that whole reveal about Karen not really being abused and instead just stealing her husband's money sort of ruined the entire book for me.  I almost wish the author would have left the cliff hanger of not knowing whether Karen killed her husband or Brigid did it so she could frame Karen.  I felt like that "twist" was just forced.  It also makes you go from liking Karen, to really not liking her.  Considering all the victims of domestic violence who suffer and to portray her as a woman who utilized resources and made false allegations about this, really makes you dislike her as a person and felt like a betrayal.  Which I guess is a tactic for an author, just not one that sits well with me.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ ½
(Reluctantly, because I like the author. Otherwise would have probably been a 3 star book for me.)