A Family of Strangers

by Emilie Richards

June 25, 2019 · MIRA

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I absolutely loved A Family of Strangers by Emilie Richards. It’s a beautifully executed mystery with a lovely second-chance romance subplot. It also offers a depiction of what living with chronic pain can look like, and as someone who has Fibromyalgia, that was really meaningful to me.

I do want to caution potential readers that this book does contain child abuse, specifically

and some violence, so if that’s a trigger for you, you’ll want to steer clear. There is also an instance of homophobia which I’ll address later in the review.

The book opens with Ryan Gracey getting a strange phone call from her sister, Wendy. Wendy has been traveling for work and she tells Ryan that she’s about to be wrongly implicated in a murder. She needs Ryan to go take care of her two young daughters while she figures things out. Ryan and Wendy aren’t especially close–Ryan was a “change of life baby,” so Wendy was already out of the house when she was growing up. Ryan has also struggled to live up to Wendy’s example; she’s a perfect wife, mother and businesswoman whereas Ryan has always been more of a free spirit.

Obviously concerned by the phone call, Ryan packs her things and heads to Wendy’s place to take care of her nieces. She keeps the nature of the phone call from their parents, who are worried about why their normally dependable oldest daughter would suddenly “take some time off” and leave her kids with Ryan.

Ryan is a true crime podcaster, and she’s not the type of person to leave things alone. She can’t get ahold of her sister for more information, so she and one of her researchers start digging up information about recent murders where Wendy supposedly was. Then someone tries to break into Wendy’s house, and Ryan doesn’t believe it’s coincidence.

The more she digs, the more Ryan realizes her sister isn’t the person she thought she was, and that her family has been living with a series of complicated lies. Every clue that’s revealed perfectly builds to the resolution of the mystery of where Wendy is and what she’s involved with. Ryan is a dogged investigator, and it was genuinely fun unraveling the mystery through her POV.

Ryan’s family situation is complicated and even as she searches for answers about Wendy, she has to navigate a precarious place with her parents and nieces. Ryan’s father recently had a heart attack and she’s concerned that the truth about Wendy’s extended “vacation” could set his health back. Ryan’s discoveries about Wendy also make her view her typically cold and judgmental mother in a new light, and as the mystery unfurls, her relationship with her mother shifts in interesting ways.

Ryan’s nieces, Holly and Noelle, also play a significant role in this book. They’re both still very young, and both are clearly traumatized by their mother’s disappearance. They behave in ways that make sense given their situation (alternately clinging to Ryan, acting out, and being wary of her) and are not perfect plot moppets.

Added to all of this was a really lovely second-chance romance. When someone tries to break into Wendy’s house, Ryan contacts her ex-boyfriend, a former cop named Teo. Teo loans Ryan his German Shepherd, Bismark, to deter anymore intruders, and he and Ryan start to reconnect.

Before she was podcasting, Ryan was an investigative journalist, and she and Teo were both entangled in a nasty case. I don’t want to spoil too many details about it, but it ended in a shooting that resulted in Teo needing one leg amputated below the knee. He was forced into early retirement and went on to train dogs for security and protection. Unable to get over the trauma they both suffered, Teo and Ryan broke up.

The romance blends nicely into the mystery. Teo helps Ryan search for her sister, and in the process they are able to re-evaluate their relationship from a more mature perspective and realize that they still have feelings for each other. They’ve both clearly grown in the years they’ve been apart, and understand that they have things they need to work on in order to be a couple.

There was also a scene in this book that was especially powerful for me as a reader. At one point Teo and Ryan travel in their search for Wendy. Teo is clearly struggling during their flight and when they finally reach their hotel, he collapses in pain and exhaustion. He has chronic pain in the leg that was partially amputated, and the stress of travel has exacerbated it. He’s crabby and miserable and he doesn’t want Ryan to see him that way. Ryan deals with it like a pro, and is able to help him gain some comfort.

The depiction of Teo’s pain felt very similar to what I experience during a fibro flare-up (which sometimes come on due to travel and airplane pressure changes). It’s feeling awful and being crabby about it and not wanting the people around you to see you feeling brittle and weak. Often when I read depictions of a person suffering from chronic pain or illness, the element of emotional exhaustion is left out. The way Ryan helped him, with compassion but not coddling, was perfect.

I do want to make potential readers aware of a homophobic comment that appears in the beginning of the book. At first I marked it down it down as something problematic to be addressed, but then further along it made more sense as to why it appeared. It does spoil the mystery a bit so:

A Family of Strangers was pretty much the perfect book for me. It gave me a really compelling mystery that I was able to solve along with the heroine, a nuanced and engaging romance subplot, and a hero whose pain I could relate it. It’s only June, but I suspect this might be book of the summer for me.