Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - The Strangers

I've been trying to think about how I feel about this book and I'm just so conflicted. It's so, so depressing and draining -- at the beginning, the author mentions she tried to cram as much love and hope as she could but I really struggled to find it. Of course, this story is about intergenerational trauma and the long-lasting impacts of colonialism so I wasn't expecting a necessarily happy story but I really felt like there was not really any structure. There were so many characters and family relatives it was hard to keep track of names, the timelines jumped all over the place and there was a lot of missing information that I found out was revealed in The Break (the author's previous book, wish I had known that before reading but oh well). The thing about telling a story from multiple perspectives is that there are always some characters you end up liking more. I really did like how each of the perspectives had their own distinct voice and the palpable emotions we can feel in their words. I was so anxious the whole time and worried about what the characters would do, and some chapters ended up "cliffhangers" that aren't really revealed??? It's a heavy, exhausting read but after hundreds of pages of despair it ends up becoming quite numbing.

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soobooksalot's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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alisonburnis's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The Strangers doesn’t hold back, laying bare trauma, substance use, abuse, assault, incarceration, foster care, and even more pain. Loosely connected to Vermette’s novel The Break, this is a companion, diving more into the life of Phoenix from the first book, and her family.

Vermette is excellent at taking trauma and tragedy and making it a story of love and hope. The Strangers isn’t as tight as The Break, and it touches on the pandemic in a way that didn’t work for me (possibly because I’m not ready yet), but it is still a solid book, asking questions about trauma and evading simple judgment or providing answers.

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ferrgus19's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Strangers picks up where The Break left off.

It starts with Phoenix Stranger pregnant and in jail. The scenes of Phoenix handcuffed to the bed while giving birth and then having to give up her newborn son after holding him briefly are some of the most harrowing I've read. The book then follows the ups and mostly downs of the rest of the Stranger family: Phoenix's drug-addicted mother, Elsie, ever hopeful of turning her life around and having a family with her daughters; her tough, emotionally distant, and secretly long-suffering grandmother, Margaret; and her studious younger sister, Cedar, who spends time in foster homes and eventually moves in with her father's second family.

It's pretty bleak, but there are some glimmers of hope at the end.

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