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Nov 03, 2014artemishi rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Don't Talk to Strangers leaves me torn. I pretty well disliked the narrator, but enjoyed the plot. Keye Street uses simile way, way, WAY too often. She also talks about her recovering alcoholism so often, in the same repeated phrases, that it became whinging. And she overlooked some pretty obvious things (to me, anyway), although I'm happy to put that down to basic human error. On the positive side of things, the killer ended up being a surprise to me until Chapter 43 or so. I was convinced it was a specific person, and even when that person was ruled out, I was convinced Keye just hadn't dug far enough. So I was pleasantly surprised to be surprised! I wouldn't call this thrilling, not until the very end anyway. It was like watching an episode of NCIS, if one person handled everything (including the boy scout 1-dimensional sheriff). It was probably more realistic than most ex-FBI criminal psychologist-based crime novels, given that Keye relied heavily on a hacker, the sheriff's department doing all the physical labor, and what seemed to me like a common sense approach to how a killer might think. I'd recommend it for fans of non-traditional crime novels, serial killer thrillers, diversity in novels, and hardboiled/noir novels. And if you find Keye annoying, like I did- stick with it. It gets better.