The Intruder by Freida McFadden

Description from Amazon:

Who knows what the storm will blow in…

Casey’s cabin in the wilderness is not built for a hurricane. Her roof shakes, the lights flicker, and the tree outside her front door sways ominously in the wind. But she’s a lot more worried about the girl she discovers lurking outside her kitchen window.

She’s young. She’s alone. And she’s covered in blood.

The girl won’t explain where she came from or loosen her grip on the knife in her right hand. And when Casey makes a disturbing discovery in the middle of the night, things take a turn for the worse.

The girl has a dark secret. One she’ll kill to keep. And if Casey gets too close to the truth, she may not live to see the morning.

 

I figured since I’d given Deaver and Colter Shaw a second chance, I’d do the same for Freida McFadden. Unfortunately, it just solidified that I do not gel with her writing! I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who love her stories, but this book did not do it for me.

 

I read it in about two hours, and it had a good start with an interesting book description. But...

It’s not a thriller as you would expect. It’s a psychological drama with childhood abuse and an unreliable narrator. And deals with themes of hoarding and trauma shaped by unhinged parents.

So in the midst of this crazy storm in the description, Casey finds this young girl with a knife. And the girl is threatening her. But Casey still invites her in for cookies. That struck me as very weird. Yes, the child is obviously running from something, but Casey has no means of communication with the outside world due to the storm so why does she feel comfortable enough to do this? Okay, let’s just chalk it up to Casey being a good person.

Now, she is in the woods, with a next-door neighbour who she thought she felt attracted to but is not sure about and a creepy landlord who is hitting on her. And this storm is so bad it’s threatening to bring down a huge tree on her house and take her roof off. And she still wants to take care of a girl who has literally told her she will harm her.

However, the story starts with a young girl who lives with her unhinged hoarder mother and the girl is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Granted, her choices are not the best, but she is young and has no other way of doing things. Her mom is pretty awful and locks her in the closet whenever she has male companionship – sounds like a great way to raise a kid, right?

The girl makes friends with an unlikely schoolmate and they form an unconventional but very close friendship. Something accidental but extremely serious puts paid to that.

Now I have to say that there are some *spoilers* coming up. It’s difficult to describe the book without them. I’ve tried not to give it away, but you could read into them.

The narrator is not who you think it is. And Freida has tried too hard to run parallel lives explaining the story. The odds of people who have experienced almost the same things finding each other in those circumstances are so slim (even with the explanation offered), and without them the whole story falls apart. Besides that, you have people who have literally given up their lives to keep an eye on someone based on a promise. Sweet, but no.

It caught me in the beginning, let me down in the end, and shows that she and I don’t mesh. You may have your legion of fans, but shoving “infinity promise” down my throat that many times made us break up. Sorry, Freida!