Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring a book I finished earlier this week, The Stranger Inside by Laura Benedict.  The excerpts shared are from an eBook borrowed from the library.

 

Beginning: Chapter One

The outcropping of limestone on which Michelle Hannon struck her head had been a part of the hillside for three thousand years, before there were trees in sight taller than a scrubby pine.  

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56% of eBook (approximately):  A few minutes before eight, she checked to make sure Kimber was still watching television with their parents and moved the upstairs phone into her room.  At exactly eight, she dialed the long-distance number and held her breath.

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My thoughts:  Kimber Hannon returns from a short camping retreat to find that her keys no longer open the doors to her home. Someone is living there without her consent, with unauthorized access to all of her belongings. Thus begins Kimber's living nightmare, and her troubles multiply as she attempts to uncover the identity of the squatter. Her inquiries lead Kimber down dark roads that test her relationships and threaten to expose the secrets of her past.

As Kimber confronts disturbing events from her childhood, she realizes that she doesn't know the full story of what actually occurred. Will these new revelations completely tear her apart, or will she find a way to come to terms with the truth and finally put the past behind her? This suspenseful novel with its unsettling premise is full of twists and turns that will keep readers off balance until its very end. 

 

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From Goodreads:  What if you came home to find a stranger living inside your house?  An "outstanding, ever-twisting, surprise-filled" psychological drama (Publishers Weekly), in the tradition of Shari Lapena and Liane Moriarty, from Edgar- and Thriller Award-nominated author Laura Benedict.

 

There's a stranger living in Kimber Hannon's house. He tells the police that he has every right to be there, and he has the paperwork to prove it. But Kimber definitely didn't invite this man to move in. He tells her that he knows something about her, and he wants everyone else to know it too.

"I was there. I saw what you did."

These words reveal a connection to Kimber's distant past, and dark secrets she'd long ago left buried. This trespasser isn't after anything as simple as her money or her charming Craftsman bungalow. He wants to move into her carefully orchestrated life--and destroy it.

 

 

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This Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution. Sharing this original post on Twitter with appropriate recognition is appreciated.