The Stray Reader

Author:	Freida McFadden
Genre(s):	➡️ Psychological Thriller ➡️ Mystery ➡️ Suspense
Series?	❎ No
Goodreads Rating:	⭐ 4.08 (50.6k ratings; 7.4k reviews)
Personal Rating:	⭐ 5 / 5 Overall

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BLURB

Lesson #1: Trust no one.

Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…

Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.

Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says.

But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet…

Source: Goodreads

🌟Review (5/5) 🌟

Another great hit from my queen of psychological thriller!

I have read 14 of McFadden’s books last year and the majority of those were binged from November to December 2023. I have never found a book of hers that was worth less than 3 stars and, really, the only reason some of them went below than 4 stars is because once you’re already familiar with her writing style and read them one after another, the twists become less thrilling. It’s like experiencing a book burnout when you’ve read too many fantasy books or horror books in quick succession. So now that it’s been at least a month, I read her latest work ‘The Teacher’ and was once again blown away by how much McFadden pulls me in her stories.

Then tension in this story picks up faster than the other books. The number of characters with disturbing secrets also seem to have grown and I love that it threw me off because it made for a mind-blowing ending. Freida perfectly captures the emotions of her characters: a troubled lovesick teenager, an unhappy spouse, a narcissistic psychopath… she encapsulates them so well while dropping plot twists without resulting to lying in the narrative. It’s also interesting (and sickening) to see a manipulative narcissist at work from beginning to end from multiple perspectives. I couldn’t wait to find out who was the bad guy.

Recommendation

I really couldn’t put this book down! If you’re looking for a murder mystery with multiple suspicious characters driven by both the plot and the characters’ development (or regression?), I highly suggest picking up a copy of Freida McFadden’s ‘The Teacher.’ Best news is that it’s free to read through Kindle Unlimited!