Book Review: The Strangers We Know by Pip Drysdale #BRPreview

The Strangers We Know

by

Pip Drysdale

Imagine seeing your loving husband on a dating app. Now imagine that’s the best thing to happen to you all week …

Publisher: Simon and Schuster 
Publication date: 1st December 2019
Genre: Contemporary Fiction / Mystery Suspense
Pages: 336
RRP: $29.99 AU
Format read: Uncorrected trade paperback
Source: Courtesy of the publisher via Better Reading  

When Charlie sees a man who is the spitting image of her husband Oliver on a dating app, her heart stops. Her first desperate instinct is to tell herself she must be mistaken – after all, she only caught a glimpse from a distance as her friends were laughingly swiping through the men on offer. But no matter how much she tries to push her fears aside, she can’t because she took that photo. On their honeymoon. She just can’t let it go.

Suddenly other signs of betrayal begin to add up and so Charlie does the only thing she can think of to defend her position – she signs up to the app to catch Oliver in the act.

But Charlie soon discovers that infidelity is the least of her problems. Nothing is as it seems and nobody is who she thinks they are ...

I just devoured this twisty thriller. Charlie has discovered her husband is cheating when she inadvertently sees his photo on her friends dating app. Her perfect life starts to spiral downhill after her insecurities, old hurts and paranoia set in. Does she really know the man she has married?

Charlie signs up to the dating app, under a false name, and when she gets a message from Oliver she is shocked to the core by what she reads.

When everything seems lost and Charlie doesn’t know who to turn to she seeks out new friend, Brooke, who she met at her yoga class. She hasn’t been that honest with Brooke but Brooke has secrets of her own.

Even though some of the twists were predictable this didn’t take anything away from this tension-filled and well plotted mystery.

Narrated in the first person by Charlie, she is a relatable character and I could understand her trust issues and paranoia. The chapters are told in episodes, like a TV series which is fitting as Charlie is a low grade actress. She views life as if it were a movie script. The good guy should always win in the end. Shouldn’t he?

The Strangers We Know is twisty and tension filled, with a plot that is sure to hold your attention, making this a book that is impossible to put down.

 

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My rating   4/5

Pip Drysdale is a writer, actor and musician who grew up in Africa and Australia. 

At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theatre, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London where she dated some interesting men and played shows across Europe. 

Her first novel, The Sunday Girl, was a best seller. The Strangers we Know is her next book and she is working on a third.