A Stranger on the Beach: A Novel

Michele Campbell

Jul 2019 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

Parade's "10 Books Written by Women We Can't Wait to Read in 2019" | She Reads' "Most Anticipated Thillers of Summer 2019" | Pure Wow's "The Best Beach Reads of Summer 2019" | CrimeReads' "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of Summer"

From bestselling author Michele Campbell comes A Stranger on the Beach, an edge-of-your seat story of passion and intrigue that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Caroline Stark’s beach house was supposed to be her crowning achievement: a lavish, expensive space to showcase what she thought was her perfect family. But after a very public fight with her husband, she realizes things may not be as perfect as they seem: her husband is lying to her, the money is disappearing, and there’s a stranger on the beach outside her house.

As Caroline’s marriage and her carefully constructed lifestyle begin to collapse around her, she turns to Aidan, the stranger, for comfort...and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aidan’s infatuation with Caroline, her family, and her house becomes more and more destructive. But who is manipulating whom in this deadly game of obsession and control? Who will take the blame when someone ends up dead...and what is Caroline hiding?

Ratings and reviews

A Stranger on the Beach makes some pretty big promises in the blurb. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite deliver, especially on the claim to keep you guessing. I had most of it figured out from very early on, and the rest fell into place shortly after. Predictability aside, the whole story is just a little too far over the top for my tastes. The sheer number of things that would need to line up and fall into place was just too much, and that includes a convenient hurricane. Convenient for these characters at least. In the end, this one amounted to an eye-rollingly predictable story with unlikable characters and some serious lags in the second half of the book. From that point on, it was just too easy to set aside and too hard to pick back up.

About the author

A graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School, MICHELE CAMPBELL worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York City. She is the author of It's Always the Husband and She Was the Quiet One.