ARC Review – The Second Stranger

From Goodreads:

Remie Yorke has one shift left at the Mackinnon Hotel in the remote Scottish Highlands before she leaves for good. Then Storm Ezra hits.

As temperatures plummet and phone lines go down, an injured man stumbles inside. PC Don Gaines was in a terrible accident on the mountain road. The only other survivor: the prisoner his team was transporting.

When a second stranger arrives, Remie reluctantly lets him in from the blizzard. He, too, is hurt. He claims to be a police officer. His name is also Don Gaines. Someone is lying and, with no means of escape, Remie must work out who. If the cold doesn’t kill her, one of these men will get there first . . .*

I have to be honest from the blurb and the cover I had a slight fear this was going to be a And Then There Were None style mystery. I had recently read a few books that had taken that trope and ran with in and I was getting a little bored with them. I was pleasantly surprised that this book went in a completely different direction.

It is filled with suspicious characters and completely manages to gaslight the reader all the way through. I found myself second guessing everything and loved it. Remie our narrator character is extremely unreliable and just on the wrong side of the law yet I found myself routing for her 100%. Her story was so interesting, as we got to know her and about her brother. Following her as she watches her hopes of escaping her humdrum life slipping further and further away as the world around her gets more and more dramatic was just so well done.

The tension of not knowing which of the PC Don Gaines was the right Gaines was just so well written and had me guessing and double guessing and completely unsure all at once. The style just really kept me on my toes and I really enjoyed it.

I loved the ending, how it all played out. I was glad I couldn’t really predict how it was going to end. It felt like a style of mystery I hadn’t read before.