It’s Monday, so you know what that means, Savvy Readers – it’s time for a new 50 Book Pledge Featured Read! With the sun shining and the temperatures finally climbing after a long, brutal winter, we’re about ready for some exhilarating reads, and this week’s selection certainly isn’t lacking in the thrills department.
Did you love The Woman in the Window? How about Sharp Objects or Gone Girl? If you said yes to either of those, or if you like your thrillers with a nice, heavy dose of spookiness to go along with a twistedly mind-bending story, then Sophie Draper‘s The Stranger In Our Home is definitely for you! (Seriously, the tagline for this book is “Have you been bad enough?”. If that doesn’t scream spooky, then I don’t know what does…)
When her stepmother dies unexpectedly, Caro returns to her childhood home in the rural English countryside. She hadn’t seen Elizabeth in years, but the remote farmhouse offers refuge from a bad relationship, and a chance to start again. (If books have taught me anything, it’s that we should all probably just avoid remote farmhouses from here on out, right?)
After arriving at the farmhouse, Caro begins to do the usual stuff after a person passes away. You know, the small, administrative stuff, like cleaning up the house, trying to figure out what possessions you should keep and what you should get rid of, etc. etc. etc. Sounds pretty standard, right? Well… maybe not so much. This is a thriller, after all. Because, as Caro is digging through Elizabeth’s belongings, she unearths some memories that Caro would rather stay buried…
What are these memories, you ask? Well, I’m not going to spoil anything, but they’re deeply troubling, and may or may not involve an old, twisted folktale. A folktale about two little girls and all the awful, terrible, no-good things that they do. You know, just your usual things you’d share with your stepdaughter.
And, just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Because a winter storms rolling in, and some heavy, heavy snow is about to trap Caro in the old village. Oh, and we forgot to mention – there are some peculiar neighbours that populate the rest of the village, and they’ve all started staring and whispering. Trapped in an isolated village with only the memories of her dead stepmother to keep her company (yikes), Caro begins to question why Elizabeth hated her so much, and what she was actually hiding… But maybe sometimes the truth is better left buried.
If you’re in the mood for a lightning quick read that will leave your jaw hanging wide open by the final twist, look no further than Sophie Draper‘s The Stranger In Our Home. Seriously, remote farmhouses in rural England, children, and folklore have never been so thrillingly, grippingly scary.
The Stranger In Our Home is this week’s 50 Book Pledge Featured Read! Be sure to add it to your shelf today!
Have you read it already? Let us know what you thought in the comments or on Twitter @SavvyReader!
Happy reading,
Jesse
Follow me on Twitter @JesseDorey15