Just finished reading this today!

What a page turner! I finished this in one day whilst working and balancing coursework so it's safe to say I definitely enjoyed it.

Freya and Phil have been married for two years when a vehicle collision leaves him without memories of that time. This is a mystery thriller which copes primarily with abusive relationships.

This was well written and well paced with plenty to keep you interested. The characters were believable, apart from one scene in a kitchen in which one character let's the whole thing down a bit by almost breaking the fourth wall the dialogue was so unnatural in the context (feel free to message me if you picked up on this too!)

I actually work up 3 hours early from work to keep reading this when I should have been sleeping 😂 I've rated it 4/5, there were a few places in the book where some more twists and turns would have been great but overall an excellent read!

Thank you Netgalley, Karen King and Bookouture
For the opportunity to read early! This comes out in just a couple of weeks and isn't one to be missed!

-K 🐝

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for an advanced copy!

It took me a bit to get sucked in to the characters. They seemed a little one-dimensional, but once I got past that fact, I just decided to go with the story and read to just read. It was a rather quick read, but felt that the alternating chapters were so drastically different between points of view of the situation that I never got a good idea of whose side was the truth until the end. I almost didn't care and I think that goes back to the characters weren't as developed as I usually like. Regardless, once I decided to just sit back and enjoy it, it moved rather quickly and was still a good read.

A new author to me, this is Karen King’s first psychological thriller after publishing Romance novels
You are abused by your partner, you’ve had enough and pack your case to leave, getting as far as putting it in your car when the Police arrive and inform you your husband, your abuser, is in a life threatening state after his car was in a terrible accident
Dutifully you go to the hospital and wait by his bed, he improves, you are free to leave BUT then he has amnesia, he remembers nothing of the previous 2 years ( conveniently has to be said the amount of time they had been married ) and you wonder if your marriage can be saved, will this have changed him
So you stay
The book then charts his recovery and their next few weeks/months together as little by little secrets raise their ugly head and people from the past come hurtling back, and the accident, well it was no accident, someone wanted Phil dead, Freya has some major decisions to make but has she left it too long
My main first thought as Freya goes back through the abusive marriage is that she was mad to stay with such a manipulative bloke and time and again he abused, she cried, he apologised, she forgave BUT love isn’t as simple as that I guess so once got over that this was a good, readable, well written and easy to get into thriller with quite a few shocks and surprises to keep your interest, Freya does natter on a bit in her thoughts and at times I thought ‘get on with it then’ but being more charitable she did have a lot to cope with
Well played characters, not ones to love have to say but ones that suited the context of the book
A great beginning that had you from page 1 and a good ending, although maybe a tad rushed and then an epilogue with an eyebrow raising last sentence
Yep a good psychological read, some of the content is regularly done in books but this was all brought together and done well

8/10
4 Stars

This book was okay, it was a bit slow but still enjoyable to read. It was easy to follow, twisty and turny.

* I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Mysteries and lost memories are some of my favorite tropes. I so wanted to love this book. I did enjoy it, but parts just fell a bit flat. The "big twist" at the end was pretty predictable. I did love the shifting narrators throughout the story. I always enjoy when a story gets told from different points of view. That really added to this story as it tried to keep the reader on their toes about which characters they could trust. Overall, I enjoyed this story but wanted a little more out of the "twists".

A new author for me and a domestic noir thriller. A slow burner but I just had to keep on reading. Freya is an abusive marriage and finally decides to leave. As she is packing she receives a phone call, her husband has been hurt in an accident. He is in hospital and is in a coma. How can she leave now. When he comes round he has no memory of the last two years or does he? Freya really thinks things are better. But we all know that a leopard cannot change its spots. I wanted to shake Freya so much while reading this book. It was good but did not grab me. Saying that I am sure other readers will enjoy it more just not for me.
Thanks to Bookouture and Netgalley for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for this Gripping read!!! This book kept me on my seat most of the time. I really Enjoyed the characters and the plot was a Real good one. You think you figured it out, then you rethought it and then again it wasn't always what you thought. Enjoy this Thriller of a Ride Book!!!!!

This book was given to me by Netgalley as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Freya’s husband has a car accident on the night that she’s planning to leave him and it wipes out the memory of their two year marriage, can she forget their life together so easily though?

This book started out a little bit slow for me, it took me quite a few chapters to really get into it but once I did and the pace picked up it was definitely worth sticking with. I liked how the chapters jumped back and forth between Freya and Phil, the author has a great way of letting you view things through that characters eyes and it does make the whole story shift a bit. I found myself having completely different views on what might be happening all the time through the book. The ending wasn’t necessarily as shocking as some books but it was a highly enjoyable read!

When Freya first met Phil, she thought he was the man of her dreams. He bought her roses and showed her affection like she’d never experienced before. But over time the dream had become a violent nightmare.

Finally, when Freya decides it’s time she escaped their increasingly broken marriage, she gets a visit from the police. Phil’s been in a horrific car crash and when he regains conscious, he remembers nothing since their blissful honeymoon two years before, back when their relationship was perfect. All he wants is to be happily married again.

Freya knows giving him another chance could be dangerous but Phil needs her. Can they start over again?

This is a suspenseful read with a few twists in the plot.

It was interesting concept which gets you thinking about Phil’s changed personality and memory loss after the accident. Coming to Freya’s predicament, on one hand she needs to be there for Phil as his wife especially since he remembers only the good memories but on the other hand, she can’t actually forget nor forgive his past actions because there is no guarantee that it won’t happen again in the future. Personally, I felt that she should have just gone ahead and left him because he seemed as quite a shady character right from the start.

The plot was well narrated through the viewpoints of both Freya and Phil. Even though the reveal at the end was good, the overall conclusion was slightly rushed. While it was an easy read, it wasn’t as exciting or thrilling as I had hoped it would be.

Thank You NetGalley and Bookouture for this ARC!

The Stranger in My Bed is a domestic psychological thriller revolving around married couple Freya and Paul. As the result of a bad car accident, Paul has lost his memories from the past 2 years - his and Freya's entire married life. The last thing he remembers is them coming back from their honeymoon. Paul thinks he and Freya must have a great marriage since, as far as he remembers, they were head over heels in love with each other. Freya, however, knows the truth of the past two years. Living every day afraid of Paul's sudden bursts of anger and him lashing out at her for the smallest reasons. With his memories gone, Paul is the man Freya fell in love with and the question she must ask herself is: should she give him another chance?

The first thing I want to mention is a trigger warning for domestic violence. There are multiple scenes, both in the present story as well as in flashbacks, where the domestic violence is on the page and we are experiencing it right alongside Freya. It ranges from emotional, verbal, to physical abuse. I've never been in a domestic violence situation, but I didn't find the scenes to be overly gratuitous with the descriptions. I didn't get the feeling that the scenes were included for shock value or anything like that. The scenes really built up the tension in the story and were the cause of a lot of the internal tension in Freya. From what I know from reading other real-accounts from domestic abuse survivors is that the infractions often start out small, and the perpetrator of the violence will then shower the other person with apologies, love, promises to never do it again - all of which are included in this book. The book is split perspective mostly between Freya and Paul and the violence scenes were all from Freya's point of view so I never felt sympathy for Paul because we didn't hear his internal rationalizations for why he was doing these things to Freya. And when Paul was apologizing to Freya, we could hear her internal thoughts about how conflicted she was about accepting his apology. I think this book is a very powerful look at the cycle of domestic violence and how it can affect relationships of all kinds. I really wanted to mention this right at the beginning because the description of the book really doesn't do justice, I feel, to how much on the page abuse the reader will encounter.

I think the strongest part of this novel was, by far, the writing. It was very clean and concise which is exactly how I like my thriller prose to be. The split POV was also really well handled, each character had their own voice and there were some times where I would be reading along, a new chapter would start, and I wouldn't pay attention to whose perspective we were in but I could tell within a few sentences. I thought the additional POVs that we get sprinkled in throughout the book were also well done and they helped fill in some narrative gaps in the story in an easy and non-convoluted way. The descriptions given of both people and places were just descriptive enough that I could get a picture in my mind without King going on and on for paragraphs at a time. After re-reading a few passages, I think King does an excellent job of picking out key, grounding details to give to the reader and then she let's us fill in the finer details on our own.

The biggest let down of the book for me was the thriller aspects, which was a bummer considering this was labeled a domestic psychological thriller which are normally home runs for me. Now maybe people who haven't read as many thrillers as I have wouldn't have these issues with the book, and since all of this will be vague as to avoid spoilers, maybe take my opinions with a grain of salt. So, first of all, it wasn't that the thriller aspects were bad or mishandled. Quite the opposite, in fact, I will say I didn't see the final twist coming (I did call the earlier ones though) and the tension and sense of danger that Freya was in was very well crafted and kept me flipping pages as fast as I could. However, I found the overall thriller aspects to be very surface level and if King had just turned up the dial a bit, I think this book could have been fantastic. To start, I've read a few amnesia thrillers where the woman in the story is the one who lost her memories and she has to spend the whole book getting them back, only to find that someone she trusted the whole time was actually lying to her. I thought that this book would be following that same sort of story line except it was the man who had lost his memory and it would be the woman's turn to get revenge or manipulate him in some way to her benefit since we know from the summary that their marriage is abusive. This was not what happened and I was bummed about it, but, again, not everyone will have those expectations if they didn't read those previous books. Also, there was some set up in Paul's POV for Freya to be an unreliable narrator as he questions her motives and what her true intentions are (which, if these thoughts had been paired with her actually manipulating him in revenge like I was expecting, would have been awesome). However, the reader never sees Freya as anything other than 100% trustworthy. We are immediately sympathetic to her situation and everyone in her life that we're introduced to supports her. She doesn't have any sort of mysterious past like we get with Paul so when Paul starts to question her motives, I basically immediately dismissed them and I never got a build up of tension trying to figure out who is right that I think the story was going for.

The ending of this story I found really great. Again, no spoilers, but any time the final twist in a thriller gets revealed and verbally react when I'm reading is a sign of an excellent twist. I especially liked the final twist because I had guessed that X happened, then X was dismissed in the narrative, but then the final twist was given and X turned out to be true, but not in the way I had initially thought. There also was a good amount of resolution time after the final confrontation, which I always appreciate.

Overall, a pretty decent surface level thriller with dual POV. Decent twist on the amnesia-thriller trope. Writing was great, very tight, and kept the tension high throughout the book. Trigger warning for on-page domestic violence.

295 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for providing the ARC. This book will be published on November 23, 2020.

I really liked the unreliable narrator aspect of the book. I know every other mystery/thriller pulls that trick, but I really didn't know who was telling the truth until well into the book. So I liked it for the most part, although I thought the ending was a bit tidy.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.

Enjoyed this book though couldn’t bring myself to feel even a tiny bit sorry for Phil.

The Stranger in My Bed is one of the best thrillers I have read this year. Freya and Phil's marriage is on a scary course of violence that will leave readers on the edge of their seats.

On the outside Freya and Phil have a perfect marriage. Good looking, sexy, and loving, Phil is everything Freya has dreamed about in a husband. But not the violence. He has a temper, acts irrationally and jealously. She is at her breaking point and is ready to leave.

Until Phil is in an accident that almost kills him. The police realize his car has been tampered with. While he's in a coma, Freya has to make a choice - does she stay and help him or does she go? When Phil comes out of the coma and can't remember their entire marriage - or the violence - Freya decides to stay and help him recuperate.

Phil can't trust anyone but Freya - he's shocked that his car has been tampered with and doesn't know anyone who would want to hurt him. It's scary and painful missing out on two years of his memory. Can he really trust his own wife?

Told from multiple points of view, The Stranger in My Bed is a spine-tingling thriller that will leave you guessing. I was hooked from the first few pages. Grab this book!

Can amnesia really change someone?

An accident, or a deliberate act of malice?

A crash, and two years lost, could you manage? The last thing that could be remembered, getting off the plane from their honeymoon.

What would you do? Question, worry, try to piece things together?

A dark hidden past and actions any normal person would have more than kittens at, if they were them.

This, is a little gem. It holds your interest and draws you ever deeper in to the plot the more that you read. The characters are strong and well shaped. Developed and with strong histories, as both past and present are interwind.

Would I recommend this book? Yes without a doubt.


Status: Completed

Rating: 4.7/5.0

This is the first time I have read anything from Karen King. The Stranger in My Bed seemed like it would be a good read. It's a story of a husband that was in an accident that caused him to have amnesia. He can't remember 2 years of his life. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way. There was no character in the story I liked not Phil, Freya, Daisy nor Mark. In the end, it seemed as if the story would start picking up my disappointingly it ended as soon as the story got interesting.

Thanks #NetGalley for allowing me to read #TheStrangerinMyBed by #KarenKing

Thank you to Karen King and Netgalley for this ARC

This was a really good story, I enjoyed the new concept of the crash causing amnesia on the guilty party and his wife deciding to change him.

I thought there was suitable intrigue and mystery. What was missing for me was "thriller" aspects.
I didn't sense a twist and in essence there wasn't really one, I didn't feel like any action happened or the pace quickened.

It was a very tame thriller but very enjoyable all the same.

The Stranger in My Bed is a slow burning psychological thriller that kept me turning the pages to find out more.
I read a lot of psychological thrillers and the ending didn’t totally shock me but the author certainly did keep me on my toes. A story full of secrets, lies and manipulation, this is an enjoyable read for all those interested in the thriller genre.

The Stranger in my Bed is the first of two psychological thrillers from writer Karen King.
It’s a change from her usual romantic comedies and from the blurb I knew immediately I would enjoy this.
Freya, who is about to leave Phil, a man given to unpredictable moods and outbursts of violence, is told he has been in an RTA and is in a coma in hospital. When he wakes up he has no recollection of the last two years of his life – the time they have been married. Freya wonders whether this lack of memory might give her back the man she fell in love with. She is caught between staying or going, but eventually decides to take a chance, hopeful of a new beginning. The story is then split between Phil and Freya’s viewpoint packed with their inner thoughts which I felt gave a lot of information but slowed things down slightly. However, the whole thing moved up a notch when the police reported the car brakes had been tampered with. Who had a grudge against Phil and are they the same person who has been accessing the family home and leaving threatening messages? That’s the part of the story when things should have become interesting but they didn’t and eventually discovering the perpetrator for me was a bit of an anti-climax. So all in all a little disappointed.but at the end of the day it's all down to the individual reader and I'm sure fans of Karen's will enjoy this new direction in her writing.

Freya and Phil have been married for 2 years, a tumultuous relationship, due to Phil’s explosive temper and controlling nature. They met and quickly fell in love, without Freya getting the chance to meet his family.

After yet another fight, Phil storms out and Freya is determined that she’s ready to leave him. But, he has a bad car accident, which leaves him hospitalized with broken ribs and memory loss. He can remember everything except the last 2 years of his life.

Memory loss takes a toll on Phil and leaves him vulnerable. Freya is having second thoughts of leaving him while he’s in a vulnerable state. Soon, Phil’s temper starts to flare again, along with Phil receiving threatening notes. Someone set out to get him, but who could it have been?

This book was really entertaining; I really liked how the amnesia aspect put a different spin on the story and how Phil was paranoid of who or what to trust because he couldn’t rely on his own memory.

I didn’t, however, like the fact that no matter how Phil’s rage escalated she still stayed and justified his behavior by saying, “it’s only me that makes him so angry”. Seriously? I had really hoped that more of Phil’s recent memory would return so we’d get a glimpse of all the crap he was involved in. Especially the university scandal. Some of this felt a bit repetitive, but I still enjoyed the story. The ending was full of surprises that raised my brow!

If I had a quarter for every sentence in this book that ends with a question mark, I swear I'd have enough money to replace the roof on our house. Good grief!

Both Freya and her husband of a couple of years, Phil, are facing uncertainties; for personal reasons, Freya has made the decision to leave Phil - or so she says in the beginning. But then Phil is seriously injured in an auto accident that's left him with no memory of anything prior to the return from what he recalls as a happy honeymoon. As she sits with Phil next to his hospital bed, Freya starts to question her motives for leaving and whether she should give the marriage another shot. For his part, Phil seems to have undergone a personality change for the better, but as he begins to learn what he was like pre-accident, he, too, begins to question what will happen from here on out.

And question. And question. Some paragraphs, in fact, are comprised of nothing but questions as chapters switch from the perspectives of the main characters. It's a never-ending string of woulda, coulda, shoulda, what ifs and if onlys that have no real answers until the very end, when the true story is revealed.

But make no mistake: There IS a story here - quite an intriguing and meaningful one, in fact, that highlights a couple of important social issues. Readers learn that there's much more going on that it appears at first blush, with Freya, Phil and, occasionally, Freya's older sister Daisy, all of whom are frustrated to some degree or other by Phil's inability to remember (especially things that don't jibe with the way he sees himself now). But for readers - and the characters themselves - it's hard to determine who is to be believed. Each new chapter adds details that build suspense, if predictably (with the exception of one detail at the very end).

As far as I'm concerned, what woulda shoulda happened - not long after the honeymoon - is that Freya kept that suitcase packed and carried it, and herself, as far away from Phil as she could get with no forwarding address (it was clear early on that something was amiss in their marriage). Not that she's a very relatable character, mind you - none of them is, as far as I'm concerned - but of the lot, she seemed to have the most going for her. It just took her far too long for her to come to that conclusion as well.

Honestly, this book doesn't get a really high score from me, but that's almost entirely because of those incessant questions. I'd love to see the same story told in a more straightforward manor - those above-mentioned issues deserve to be told and retold until they're no longer issues. Meantime, thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review it.