Editor: How dumb do you want your intended audience?
Author Elle Marr: Yes.

Thus begins this magnificently boring saga of wannabe true crime. Complete with:

- An amateur sleuth who can't decide whether investigating her medical history > investigating her mother's death or vice versa;
- An FBI agent whose intellectual capacity rivals that of said amateur sleuth;
- A star reporter whose reporting skills consist of "disappearance = murder", with a dash of assault and battery;
- A seasoned serial killer who somehow gets taken out by an old woman;
- A small town plagued by said serial killer, which observes a curfew out of fear but doesn't need to lock their doors;
- A rich family that especially doesn't need to lock their mansion doors, except when kicking out unwanted relatives;
- A knockoff Manson Family cult taken straight from the Walmart shelves;
- Doctors who don't know how to diagnose lupus;
- And last but not least, a cop-out plot twist (a supposed murder which didn't happen!) that will test how long you can roll your eyes without stopping.

And that's all for the low low price of $2.98 on Kindle or $14.36 on paperback. What a steal.

As with most indie-authored crime novels (which I'm quickly starting to lose faith in), I really wanted to like this. I gave the first 1/3 of it a good and honest shot before I started skimming to save my life.


Our MC Ivy starts off as a relatively down-to-earth woman, growing up in an adoptive family with undiagnosed health problems that she suspects comes from her biological parents. She submits her DNA for analysis and comes up with a biological cousin, Lottie, who she seems to hit it off with. But she also gets approached by an FBI agent telling her she might be related to a serial killer (in public, where they discuss rather sensitive info, already kinda sketchy, but I thought that was the last of it). Then, Ivy goes out of state to visit her biological family, who helped build the same small town where the killer is known to operate. Here's where things get funky:

- She immediately agrees to stay with her biological cousin despite only having talked to her over the phone.

- THEY DON'T LOCK THEIR DOORS IN THIS TOWN! EVEN WITH A SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE! CAN I SAY THIS ENOUGH!?

- And day 1, a man angrily comes into their house late at night and tries to get into Ivy's bedroom. But no matter. Just an angry relative. No big deal. Let me continue to stick around and ask my relatives very obvious and sometimes incriminating questions about their past, expecting straight answers every time.

- The next third of the book proceeds in this manner. Ivy is slow to gather answers and the whole "investigation" reads like a sleep-deprived high-schooler's attempt to finish a research project, complete with cringy interviews. Also, if you suspect your supposed relative Mr. Serial Killer might be after you, why would you go around telling even complete strangers who you were?

- Ivy's interactions with the killer had me rolling. She meets him at a bar, believes his mega-fake story about why he's there, and proceeds to tell him HER. WHOLE. LIFE. STORY. Then, when he tries to strangle her and she manages to escape with her life (because her elderly grandmother took out this full-grown man without suffering a single scratch) she's STILL left wondering who the killer is. His MO is strangling, so hello?

- But oh yeah, we're expected to believe it's not him, because our aforementioned star reporter claimed that his MO was strangling AND poison. So in what order might that have happened? Strangling the victim after they had died of poisoning? Or poisoning the victim after they had died from strangulation? I have no other words there.

- Finally, the ending. It turns out that Ivy's mother Tatum never died, but was threatened by a fellow family member (a cult member) and went into hiding with her husband. Somehow, the two never tried to reach out to their daughter more than once over the next twenty-eight years, which astonishes me.

- And given the above, the whole suspense buildup of switching between Tatum's and Samson's (the killer's) POV seems pointless after the fact, given that they never even ran into each other! If we were expected to see the family as an additional threat along with the killer, why not give some of their points of view to balance things out? Oh well. Apparently this wasn't necessary from an editor's standpoint. I'm just a dumb reader, right? Right.



I'm glad to say that I only got this book for free from the Amazon Prime monthly list. Can't get back the time I spent on it, but at least I'm learning more about how NOT to write a crime novel. ( )

FROM AMAZON: The search for a serial killer leads a woman into the twisted tangle of her own family tree in a chilling novel by the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Missing Sister and Lies We Bury.

Adopted when she was only days old, Ivy Hon knows little about her lineage. But when she’s stricken with a mystery illness, the results of a genetic test to identify the cause attract the FBI. According to Ivy’s DNA, she’s related to the Full Moon Killer, who has terrorized the Pacific Northwest for decades. Ivy is the FBI’s hope to stop the enigmatic predator from killing again.

When an online search connects Ivy with her younger cousin, she heads to rural Rock Island, Washington, to meet the woman. Motivated by a secret desire to unmask a murderous relative, Ivy reaches out to what’s left of a family of strangers.

Discovering her mother’s tragic fate and her father’s disappearance is just the beginning. As Ivy ventures into a serial killer’s home territory, she realizes that she may be the next victim of poisonous blood ties.

I picked up “Strangers We Know” as my monthly Prime freebie and was quickly hooked. An FBI agent meets with adoptee Ivy Hon to tell her that her recent DNA test proves she’s related to a serial killer at large.

It also connects her to a biological cousin who might be able to give context to her recent health issues, so she heads to her familial home in the Pacific Northwest where she learns her birth mother’s true cause of death and is encouraged to investigate further.

The premise is great. I’m excited about an amateur sleuth mystery based on genetic genealogy, but that’s not what this is. Instead, it’s a story about a mysterious illness that is barely fleshed out, about the issues with adoption, the morality of single motherhood, a cult called One Family, and a bit of cat and mouse told in multiple viewpoints that I hoped would be more cohesive.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters. The plot and its resolution feel haphazard. The last chapter seems like an afterthought, and there’s one too many poorly-executed twists. Despite the strong start, I walk away from this one disappointed. ( )

Our narrator is a young woman who was adopted at birth & has an undiagnosed medical condition. We follow her as she tries to learn about her birth family and the local serial killer. The story is a little contrived with some unlikely behavior by the characters, making it difficult to buy into. Having said that, it was interesting enough for me to keep going and read to the end. But I only finished the book a few days ago and have already forgotten about it.
I won a free copy of this book (thanks to the author & publisher!) and am voluntarily providing an honest review. ( )

Good story well told ( )