The Stranger Inside has a weird and highly unlikely premise but I am not an attorney or a police officer so who am I to say, maybe this shit really happens? Here’s the scene: Kimber comes home from a retreat and discovers she cannot get into her own damn home. Someone has changed the locks and the squatter claims he has a lease that Kimber signed and basically makes her appear like she’s lost all of her marbles, then he whispers something sinister in her ear. The police won’t help her and her elderly neighbor friend claims that she saw her let the guy in so she is pretty much screwed. She leaves and goes to stay with her only other friend and calls up her ex (an attorney she dumped) to help her out of this oddly unrealistic bind. Gabriel AKA the Ex Who Still Loves Her For Some Bizarre Reason eagerly agrees even though their break-up was rough on him. A murder may or may not happen.

Kimber plots and does her own investigating and attempts to get back into her home all the while learning more about the man inside her house. The man who is probably wearing her underwear at this point (ahhh). Her digging leads to the eventual discovery of many secrets but it takes a while to get there. First there are reveals about Kimber’s guilty past, told in flashbacks in a separate timeline, her shady relationships (shady on her end because she is an AWFUL and terrible person) and a bunch of other things that I’m not going to reveal.

I basically threw my brain out the window and went with the flow after that wild setup. I’d advise you to do the same here. The twists and turns defy all logic and the emotional entanglements are a tad over the top but it’s never, ever a boring read. I have to give it that.

Most of my notes about this story are about Kimber and are not something I’d like to expose the rest of you to. Kimber is one of the most unlikable main characters I have read in a good long while. You can’t get on her side because she is such an AWFUL person in both timelines. The more I learned about her, the less I liked about her. Her only redeeming quality to me was her kindness to a sad little dog, everything else about her was selfish and just full of ugh. But I can’t lie, I found her horribleness fascinating. What made her this way? I had to know and I had to keep reading!

In the end I was left feeling a wee bit disappointed with some of the revelations but the telling of the story was compelling and it grabbed me even if I wanted Kimber to sit on a porcupine for the rest of her life when I turned the last page.

The Stranger Inside has an interesting premise and starts out well enough with Kimber returning home to find the locks changed and a stranger living in her house. From there, it goes downhill at a rapid pace. Now, going into this one, I expected it to require at least some degree of suspension of disbelief, but this goes way beyond that. As far as plot twists, this one has them in spades, and there's no shortage of suspects either. The problem is that there is so much crammed into the conclusion that it just becomes convoluted. I think I would've liked the ending better had it just stuck with the person in the house and his reason for being there rather than going over the top the way it did. All that aside, my biggest problem with this story was Kimber. She has to be one of the most unlikable protagonists that I've ever come across. I'm all for flawed characters and unreliable narrators, but this woman has absolutely no redeemable qualities. There wasn't a single thing about her to inspire even an ounce of empathy. In fact, I spent a good portion of this one feeling like karma was finally going to get its ounce of flesh from this character. Instead, it goes an entirely different direction. In the end, I can't say that I liked anything about this one after the first couple of chapters. I'm sure many will enjoy this story, but I definitely am not one of them. 

The more I read of this book the more I felt that the main character, Kimber, deserved what was happening to her. I didn't like Kimber as a child, she was an annoying and selfish brat. As an adult I also found her to be a selfish brat. I do have to say that Kimber finally grew on me when everything started to be revealed towards the end. I can't say that I didn't see some of the twists coming but I was still overall surprised with what happened towards the end and what Kimber ended up finding out. I am going to leave this as a bare bones review because I don't want to spoil anything but I would recommend reading this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley.<!--/data/user/0/com.samsung.android.app.notes/files/share/clipdata_190108_213649_094.sdoc-->

There is no bliss to be found in Bliss House.

In Old Gate, Virginia, stands a grand house built by Randolph Bliss, a charming New York carpetbagger who, in 1878, shook off dire warnings to build his home elsewhere. For the ground beneath Bliss House is tainted with the kind of tragedy that curses generations, seeping through the foundation and sowing madness in its wake. His first and second wives, and his young Japanese mistress, Kiku, bear witness to Randolph’s growing insanity with stories of his cruel manipulations and their desperate struggles to find happiness for themselves and their children.

Their desire to live and love and even take revenge also fills the house, triumphing even over death. Spanning half a century, The Abandoned Heart is the prequel to Charlotte’s Story and Bliss House, forming a trilogy of southern Gothic novels in which one haunted house begets haunted lives that echo over centuries. A haunting so powerful that even Bliss House’s destruction cannot kill it.

To say that I've been eagerly awaiting to read this book is an understatement. I have read and loved the previous two books in this series and I have been waiting for what it feels like a long time for this book to be released.

You don't have to have read the previous two books in this series since the stories in these books take place after this book. To be honest, now I feel like re-reading those two books since I have the back-story to everything that is wrong with the Bliss house. The Abandoned Heart retells the building of Bliss house and how even before the house was built it was a place cursed. And, now Randolph Bliss moves his family there and it doesn't take a long time until tragedy strike.

I liked this book however, I do feel that the previous books stories were a bit more interesting and thrilling to read. This one felt like more an explanation to everything with less thrilling parts. Still, it's an awfully good book. I came to like Kiku very much and was really moved by her tragic story. There was a moment towards the end of the book when I was really taken back when something I had not expected was revealed in a letter. This is the kind of book that I don't want to reveal too much of what's going on instead I want to say that it's like the previous two books well-written and engrossing to read.  

The Bliss House series is a marvelous trilogy and I recommend it warmly if you like books about haunted houses.

I want to thank Pegasus Books for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review! 

I read Charlotte's Story a little while ago and was so enthralled by that book that I immediately bought this book; the first book in the trilogy. Charlotte's Story took place in the 50s and this book story takes place in present time and that means that some, not many, characters from Charlotte's Story are in this book. I also know that the Bliss House, and that the men from the Bliss house aren't really to trust.

In this book, we get to follow Rainey Bliss Adams and her daughter Ariel that have moved to the house after Rainey bought it back to the Bliss family after it's been sold by Charlotte Bliss after her son Michael disappeared around 30 years before. Rainey hopes that this will be good for her and Ariel. They need a new start after losing Ariels father to a fire that also disfigured Ariel. But they hardly settle in the house before the first person dies and then it's just a matter of time before the next one dies...

I really like the haunted house genre, and the Bliss House is really creepy. I'm mean the house isn't creepy to look at, it's lovely, it's just got an atmosphere that is creepy and it has its fair share of mysterious deaths. Like the previous owner who killed his wife with an ax in the woods outside the house. But, a house can not be evil, can it? 

Laura Benedict has written a book that is hard to put down when you really get into the story and is both engaging and disturbing to read and I thought I had most of it all figured out when she turned the table on me with a very good twist. I was not really surprised about some of the things that happened, and that's thanks to reading Charlotte's Story before I read this one. That gave me an advantage since I had my suspicions on some people in this book.

One thing, I was a bit annoyed towards the end when Ariel did something really stupid, I mean I understand her to a certain limit, but at the same time I was really irritated because I didn't think that she would after all she had been through before would do that. But then again it leads to a very fitting ending for the Bliss House. 

All and all a truly good book. What I really like is that it doesn't rush anything, everything takes it times, that can be a bit frustrating sometimes, but the reward is a well-written book.