So, without any further ado, let's get into quick mini reviews on both these books by Megan Miranda!
Book: The Perfect Stranger
Author: Megan Miranda
Pages: 339
Read on: Kindle
Read in: 3 hours
Plot Summary: Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.
Determined to find Emmy, Leah cooperates with Kyle Donovan, a handsome young police officer on the case. As they investigate her friend’s life for clues, Leah begins to wonder: did she ever really know Emmy at all? With no friends, family, or a digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Soon Leah’s credibility is at stake, and she is forced to revisit her past: the article that ruined her career. To save herself, Leah must uncover the truth about Emmy Grey—and along the way, confront her old demons, find out who she can really trust, and clear her own name.
Everyone in this rural Pennsylvanian town has something to hide—including Leah herself. How do you uncover the truth when you are busy hiding your own?
Review: This book has a very interesting premise around secrets and secret identities, which had me gripped from the very first chapter! Leah leaves Boston under a cloud, her career as an investigative journalist over due to some indiscretion that she committed. So, throughout the book, we gradually learn Leah's secret just as Leah starts deep-diving into Emmy's life and past. The juxtaposition of these two parallel mysteries keeps the book really interesting and intriguing.
The book also raises some important issues/ questions about friendship- how much do you really know your friends? How much can we take someone's stated past for granted? Leah struggles with who Emmy really is once Emmy goes missing and everything that Emmy had told Leah turns out to be a pack of lies!
This book is a quick, pacy read and the vein of fear and uncertainty in the book makes it a perfect rainy day read!
Rating: 4/5
Book: The Girl From Widow Hills
Author: Megan Miranda
Pages: 336
Read on: Kindle
Read in: 4 hours
Plot Summary: Everyone knows the story of “the girl from Widow Hills.”
Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Strangers and friends, neighbors and rescue workers, set up search parties and held vigils, praying for her safe return. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book. Fame followed. Fans and fan letters, creeps, and stalkers. And every year, the anniversary. It all became too much. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye.
Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden goes by Olivia. She’s managed to stay off the radar for the last few years. But with the twentieth anniversary of her rescue approaching, the media will inevitably renew its interest in Arden. Where is she now? Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows—from her previous life, as Arden Maynor.
And now, the girl from Widow Hills is about to become the center of the story, once again, in this propulsive page-turner from suspense master Megan Miranda.
Review: This was, again, a really interesting book that played with the juxtaposition of secrets from the past coming to haunt the protagonist! Arden has tried very hard to leave her past behind. Hailed as the girl, who miraculously survived three days and nights in a storm drain during a flood, she has lived her childhood and teenage years in the shadow of her fame and her mother's incessant desire to mint money from her tragedy! Arden, now Olivia, lives and works in a small town away from Widow Hills and just wants to live in peace with no reference to her past, when a man from her past is found dead outside of her home.
I liked how Olivia tries to come to terms with her past, especially, with skeptics, who wondered how a young girl of six could've survived three days and nights in an underground drain! Once again, the juxtaposition of the present danger Olivia is in and her past, which she questions and tries to remember on a daily basis makes this a very interesting book.
Rating: 4/5
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