A review by jacki_f
Strangers by C.L. Taylor

3.0

I really need to write reviews of books like this immediately after I finish them. Now I'm two books down the line and I can't remember this one in much detail at all. I do know that it focuses on three different people in alternating chapters and they are all strangers to one another - the loose connection is that one manages a clothing shop in a shopping mall, one is a security guard at the mall and one sometimes shops (and shoplifts) in the mall. Also they all have dramas in their personal lives. The security guard has a mother with dementia and a workmate who is trying to blackmail him. The shoplifter is desperate for a place to live so settles for an odd set up with a creepy and secretive flatmate. The shop manager is being stalked. Oh and there's a potentially a serial killer in the area.

You know the formula: you spend most of the group trying to guess how these three will come together and what the connections will be. The suspense gets strung along until very close to the end, but the waiting got a bit tiresome and the revelations felt somewhat ridiculous. There were a lot of sub-plots to keep up the drama but they got wound up as an afterthought.

It was perfectly okay, but not sufficiently gripping or surprising to merit more than 3 stars.