A Stranger on the Beach
By Michele Campbell
ISBN# 9781250202536
Author’s Website: https://www.michelecampbellbooks.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Caroline Stark’s dreams were all coming true. The construction of her beautiful beach house in the Hamptons was finally complete and she was starting up her own interior design business. However, her husband, Jason, has been distant of late and seems to resent the beach house complaining about the work he has to do to pay for it!
It was finally the night of Caroline’s big party. A combined housewarming and birthday party for Jason. Except she didn’t even know if Jason was going to show up! She had told him how important it was to her and he said he’d try, but as the time ticked away, she felt less and less confident he’d come. However, when he did show, she wished he hadn’t! Not only did he show up, but so did his mistress! Now all the socialites were talking about them and their trouble in paradise! Her marriage is over and she’s left to drown her sorrows in the nearest bottle.
Caroline finds herself at a local bar flirting with a cute bartender, Aiden. She ends up taking him home with her for a steamy one night stand. But Caroline quickly discovers that Aiden doesn’t want one night, he wants forever. Now she fears for her safety as Aiden’s obsession grows. She’s trying to reconcile with Jason, and if he finds out about her infidelity it will ruin everything! But are keeping her secrets worth the lives of her and her loved ones?
Its summertime and I was in the mood for a beach-themed read. The synopsis of this one looked pretty good, so I decided to give it a try.
This was a decent read, and it did have a good flow to it, except you did get some scenes repeated showing both Aiden and Caroline’s points of view. Their versions of events were often vastly different. It reminded me of that saying about there being three sides to every story: mine, yours, and the truth. I quickly figured that either Aiden or Caroline was lying in their telling of events. I had a pretty good guess of who that was and ended up being right.
I actually liked Aiden. He seemed like a sweet guy, but came off as way too naïve for my liking. This story seemed like one that’s been told hundreds of times and it was just too predictable for me. I was able to figure out the big twist at the end long before it happened, which did suck some of the enjoyment out of it for me.
This wasn’t a bad story, but nothing about it really surprised me. I had expected more from it, but it came off as a stale rendition of the love triangle that wrecks a marriage with a murder mystery that wasn’t so mysterious thrown in.
