Title: The Stranger Diaries

Author: Elly Griffiths

Publisher: Mariner Books 2019

Genre: Mystery

Pages: 338

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she even teaches a course on him. But when one of Clare’s colleagues is found dead, with a line from Holland’s iconic story “The Stranger” left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with her favorite literature.

The police suspect the killer is someone Clare knows. Unsure whom to trust, she turns to her diary, the only outlet for her suspicions and fears. Then one day she notices something odd. Writing that isn't hers, left on the page of an old diary:

Hallo Clare. You don’t know me.

Clare becomes more certain than ever: “The Stranger” has come to terrifying life. But can the ending be rewritten in time?

I heard about this one from a book recommendation list from my library. They described it as a spooky mystery with lots of atmosphere. There was definitely some atmosphere and a few spooky scenes, but that’s really it. The book just didn’t live up to what I was expecting it to me. I wanted to be very creeped out by the book. I wanted the potential haunted school and study to be more of a thing. I wanted something more to be made of the old ghost stories. In the end, this was a very boilerplate murder mystery involving a stalker. I wasn’t that excited when we get to the end. Clare was an okay narrator to follow. Georgie tended to be very annoying and naive in her narration. Understandable given her age, but still not what I wanted to read. And Harbinder was just so incredibly surly all the time that I didn’t really want to attempt to connect with her. A middle of the road mystery.

Next up on the TBR pile: