Strangers by Ursula Archer, Arno Strobel 4 stars #bookreview #thriller @StMartinsPress @MinotaurBooks
Title: Strangers
Author: Ursula Archer and Arno Strobel
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Expected publication: January 9th 2018
Page Count: 320
My rating: 4 stars
About the book:
Ursula Archer’s and Arno Strobel’s internationally bestselling Strangers is a shocking thriller and mind-bending must-read. It explores what happens when mysterious foul play causes a woman not to recognize or remember her fiancé, but forces the couple to trust each other and fight the odds.
Trust or die.
Imagine you’re home alone. Suddenly a man stands before you. He claims to be your fiancé. But you have no idea who he is. And nothing in your home suggests that someone lives with you. He’s talking to you, but nothing makes sense. You’re afraid. And you feel the irresistible urge to attack. Take a knife. Are you crazy?
Imagine you come home and your fiancée doesn’t recognize you. She thinks you’re a burglar. Worse, a rapist. You just want to protect her, but she defends herself against your perceived threat and barricades herself behind a door. She claims she’s never seen you before. She obviously thinks you’re crazy. Are you?
A woman. A man. The more they try to understand the situation, the more confusing it becomes. Soon they must realize that they are in deadly danger. And there’s only one chance for survival: they must trust each other.
My review:
Strangers begins as Joanna is home alone finishing up her shower when someone is at the door but she ignores it only to hear someone moving inside her home. When confronting the stranger in her home, Erik, he claims to actually be Joanna’s fiance all the while she is sure that she does not know him and he must be some kind of stalker that is after her or her father’s money.
Just these opening pages alone completely hooked me into this book to where I did not want to put it down at all. Who is lying and who is telling the truth? Strangers by Ursula Archer and Arno Strobel is a psychological thriller that became intense on the opening pages and never let up the action and excitement. The story is told by switching the point of view between the characters so you get to see what both are thinking and feeling at any given time.
Joanna and Erik both come across as believable as the story starts and in a way I couldn’t help but feel for them both which made it hard to guess what the truth would end up being. Midway through the book the action picked up even more to toss the pace into high octane overdrive as the twists send the story into another gear. An addictive and hard to put down read but possibly crossing into the unrealistic but still entertaining side at that point. This is definitely one I’d recommend to those that like a fast pace and a lot of action in their thrillers.
I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
Ah what the heck? Who needs realism if it’s still entertaining! I’m so glad you liked this Carrie. I have the eARC too so now I’m really looking forward to it. Awesome review!
This is off topic, but have you been contacted by WP regarding the book tours you do? They just suspended Dani’s blog and they’re saying it’s because of her book tours.
Thanks! I’ll look forward to seeing what you think of this one, I didn’t want to put it down myself. 🙂
And eek! What? That makes no sense. I’ve been working with some of these tour companies for years and have never had a problem and tons of bloggers share the same things. Why in the world would those posts be a problem? Heck I do way more of them than she does even.
Yeah. I don’t understand this at all. She’s just devastated.
I’ve been scratching my head over the problems she’s been having. I understand needing to slow down on commenting because lots of people have posted they started going to spam before but the other things don’t make sense. The publicity posts are shared by tons of bloggers out there all the time in the book world so why they would be a problem for one person doesn’t make a lick of sense.
I don’t even understand the commenting bit. Are they saying you can only comment a certain number of times before your flagged as spam? I had this problem last year, but when they fixed it they never told me what exactly caused it. And as far as the book tours go, it makes no sense to me.
Yes, I believe when you comment a lot all at once it flags you as a spammer. I also get to where I do too many likes all at once and it shuts that off for a few hours and won’t let me do that. I’m always trying to keep up with posts a little at a time so I don’t get myself in wordpress jail for those things. But I have no clue what she meant with the follow button the other day either since when I first signed up I followed tons of blogs all at once, doesn’t everyone?? And the materials she’s been sharing are coming from publicity companies that go out to lots of bloggers so there would be a ton of people out of business if we aren’t allowed to share.
Good grief! I’ve been blogging for 3 1/2 years and I never had a clue about all these restrictions! I’m not sure what Dani meant about the follow button either. I did click on a link someone provided to an article posted in 2014 about WordPress treating blog tours as spam. But it seemed that the issue was if that’s all the blogger was doing instead of of balancing them with book reviews and other personal posts. I guess they see it as a form of advertising. Dani does participate in a lot of blog tours, but she also writes book reviews etc. I’m flummoxed as to why they’ve targeted her. And also, why didn’t they contact her first and tell her there was a problem?
But here’s the thing…. aren’t you allowed to sell on WordPress? I was reading in the terms of about setting up sites like that so what is the difference between a user opening a blog to run a shop or readers advertising books for the publishers? I mean technically we aren’t even the ones profiting and are sharing simply because we want to let others know what is out there to read. I know I follow some that are sharing the same things that read a heck of a lot slower than I do and I’ve never noticed them to have problems either so it still makes no sense. And yes it would be nice if someone gets reported or flagged in some way if a tech would send a warning before taking action.
I guess you have to be on a different plan(?) And I agree. When you participate in book tours you’re not getting paid for it. The most you get is an eARC. This whole mess is the most bizarre thing I’ve seen happen on WP.
I thought Dani had said she was paying for hers though? In that case I’d think it would be even less likely to be a problem to share book ads if other users are allowed to say sell their Avon or Tupperware or something.
I think she was, which makes this even more confusing.🤷🏻♀️
Scanning the TOS yet again this is the only line I can find that would seem to apply “Send spam or bulk unsolicited messages.” Um, real clear there on what you would consider spam folks, really. To me I love seeing people share book info whether it’s tours, reveals, blitzes or reviews. If I did not like to see that type of thing then there’s always the unfollow button.
Yeah. Talk about vague! I just got an email from Dani and she said that first they told her she’d have to pay $100 to self host, which she did although she had to use some Christmas money a relative gave her, and then they sent her an email saying that the whole thing was a big mistake. So now the poor girl is totally lost. I did just check and it looks like her original blog is back, so I emailed her to tell her. Now hopefully they’ll quickly refund her money.😒
I read that post about wordpress considering the tours spam because they are being shared by many and basically advertising but it sounds more along the lines to me that someone would have to object to it. Now if it were me and I objected to seeing those posts then I’d unfollow the blog instead of complaining about what they are doing. And it’s not exactly fair that bloggers everywhere share this content and it seems fine and dandy but then someone gets in trouble because of a grouch if it’s not clearly in the TOS that book tours are spam, because they aren’t!
Anyway I hope everything gets completely sorted for her.
Exactly Carrie. This sounds like a real goof on their part.
Sounds like someone reported and they hit the button and are now oops, our fault once they got around to looking into it.
Grrr. It would have been nice if they had done that before they put her through hell!🤬
Honestly it all still boggles my mind. You would think if that type of post is a problem then they would word that in the TOS or send out warnings because I see them all the time and companies like Expresso are in business just for that purpose.
It’s horrible Carrie. They put her through Hell and she already wasn’t feeling well. And now it’s going to take up to a week for them to refund her money.😠
So I take it that now they are saying those posts are OK?? I mean it seems to me that perhaps some people out there don’t like them and would think of it as spam but then why follow book bloggers that do them if that’s the case. If it’s really not allowed at all then it needs to be clearly stated….. and then I’d go cry because I do like them! 🙁
I guess so? If you’re right and they did this because someone complained, that was really cruel. Like you said, if you don’t like blog tours, cover reveals or book blitzes, don’t follow the blogger who does them.
I guess I’m from the generation that logic like that makes sense though. If I’ve ever not liked a page or something someone has shared I move on with my life and wouldn’t think to complain. Just like books, there’s someone out there somewhere that will like it and someone else that won’t. But these days apparently if one person doesn’t like something they feel the need to get it banned from anyone anywhere ever seeing it.
Stupid, bloody, judgemental, sanctimonious…😠
I suppose I’m still guessing but that’s what it sounds like to me, one person’s spam is another’s informative post.
My idea of spamming would be repeating the same post over and over and then over again too. Sharing it once hardly to a blog hardly seems spam even if a thousand others shared the same. If that’s the case that we can’t share the same then get rid of the reblog button.
Exactly Carrie!
Hey ladies!!! I loved all the support and discussion you guys had when I was kicked off but I am going to try and really break down all that happened. First I was cut off and I contacted support they didn’t tell me anything besides I had spam behavior and if it happens again I will be permanently deleted then I wrote back and was like WTF? because the dude was rude and it didn’t explain anything so I get a response after that, that I should not use the follow button as a promotional item and this is spam behavior! Then I am really freaking confused because I followed less than 5 people so then since I have no idea still what I did wrong I unfollow inactive users because I think this may be the problem now this gets me kicked off from doing anything but my blog is still active then the guys says well you unfollowed too many people so you were being a spammer and so I had to explain to him that I unfollowed inactive users! They respond rudely saying well there is nothing they can do because I am being a spammer. After explaining everything again another person comes back and says well you told us why you unfollowed these people so we unflagged your account and we made sure to put a note that this doesn’t happen again. Within 24 hours I was commenting back and forth with Kim and commenting on everyone’s blog and it starts disappearing and sent me to the spam , on everyone’s blog. Then I write tech and they say it’s just a temporary thing and I can still post. So I catch up on scheduling my book blitzes and schedule them. I get done head over to your page Carrie to write a comment and a warning pops up that my account has been suspended!! I contact tech they sent me to talk to actual wordpress and said I would have priority because I am a paying customer. The first response I get is pretty much that I dont follow the guidelines and I am considered spam and have to self host and can use WordPress.org. I explain that my blog means everything to me and that Im a mother of 3 and bedridden so the blogging community has been a big support they say well let us know if you need help setting it up. I got christmas money from my dad which is rare that I was going to use for kids so I figured I could use that and do a side job online to make it up because the cheapest was 100$ I went and set up the account and had no idea how the self hosting worked. They told me that I would even keep my followers if I switched but once I did everything was gone and I had to pay another 100?!!? to keep my followers and stats! So I asked them why did they tell me everything would be exported and I would keep everything and then its all gone and the message I get back is We reviewed your blog and we see that you do have original content as well as blog tours and its not exclusive to tours. For the inconvenience we put a 48$ credit on WordPress that you can use next year to keep your domain or whatever. I’m like seriously what the FUCK!! So then I ask if they can give me my money back for the self host and they said I had to go through the host company so I had to then wait on the phone for an hour then cancel and they tell me it will be atleast a week before my money is back in the account… I know this is a lot to read but wanted to give you gals the run down because of reading all of your questions and confusion!😒😒😒
On a lighter note, Fantastic Review Carrie! This looks awesome and I really love the new review set up you got going on! I have been working on changing things around on my blog as well. I’m rambling on again but this looks like a great read and definitely going on the TBR!😊
Also your right Carrie I only post the book blitzes with Xpresso! I even talked to Giselle about the mess and she tried to explain and help !e figure it out. It was a big mess. Oh they also said that I had too many computer generated publicity posts?!? I was like huhhhh I used my kindle and I put everything in manually! Like WTF?!
What a mess! I’m praying this NEVER happens again Dani!
Thanks so much Kim! I hope so too! I know it’s a lot to read but was just trying to run it all down in one comment. Lol. But yeah it was rather insane. Hopefully y’all dont ever go through this either! *fingers crossed*
*Shudder*
I just found this online!!! Crapola! Makes no sense people promote their businesses online all the time!!! http://booksbonesbuffy.com/2014/11/14/blog-interrupted-or-how-i-got-kicked-off-wordpress-com-and-ended-up-on-wordpress-org/ All because people are sharing giveaways???
One of my followers was just suspended as well! I don’t know if I should even keep doing blitzes even though they told me I had enough original content! I don’t want to lose it all but I love being a host! When I talked to Giselle at Xpresso she said that she recommends self hosting and weebly but I told her my followers and stats are finally booming and I love everything… Gosh this is such craziness
Oh yikes! I follow Tammy, but I had no idea this happened to her as well.😒
It just happened to one of my followers named Mia. Her site is now suspended. I really don’t know what to do about this. I don’t understand what’s wrong with sharing a giveaway! People advertise everything on here!
Wow. “Happiness Engineers”? Really?🤬
I think I’m still confused but just happy that you got it sorted out and back on. Sounds a bit fishy to say tours are spam but ok as long as you do other posts??? Huh?? If those posts are spam then a lot of companies would be out of business organizing them and lots and lots of folks take part.
Thanks! It’s all a bit more work but figured it would help to put more on each review in case people didn’t notice they could click over to goodreads. Of course then I’ve been busy and didn’t take time to write any today. Ah well. LOL
I know, I just don’t get it!😒 I’m scared they are going to suspend my service again.😟
It still sounds to me like someone complained and they jumped the gun but I have no clue why someone would complain about what you share instead of just unfollowing you if they don’t like those posts. Some people really like seeing all the new books.
Well shit happens but now I am scared I am going to lose my account because of the blitzes! I put a link up and had a follower get suspended! So I really don’t know what to do! I enjoy being on Xpressos master list and promoting new books!
This is kind of ridiculous since I read over the TOS the other night and saw nothing about tours in there now.
Half the people I follow do giveaways, promo posts or tours etc. Heck from those rules even linking a review to Amazon or Goodreads is directing away…. none of it makes sense.
I couldn’t help but cringe at that one.
I just don’t get it!!😟 Is there a new one?
It’s insane Carrie and I don’t know if I should stop them or not because I really don’t want to lose everything, I worked so hard for!😟
Where did that person get that paragraph about blog tours? There’s nothing in WordPress.com TOS that says anything like that.
I am always nice to everyone! I don’t get it! They told me no one complained that it’s like a credit card and at certain times it can be flagged but I don’t understand.😟
I still don’t see any of that posted in the TOS though and so many book bloggers are doing this that if it’s against the rules it needs to be clear somewhere.