I wish I had liked this book, especially because I love the home invasion trope and have been looking for a book lately with that theme that would hit the spot for me... but this wasn't it. While the gore and violence were fairly intense at times, I never felt like the events playing out were "high stakes" enough because I couldn't bring myself to be bothered by anything bad happening to any of the characters (especially Jerry, the father and main character).

While some of the problems I had with Strangers revolved around the writing and the unlikable characters, the major issue I had was with each family member's big "secret" that the Killer was essentially punishing them for. The dad's secret was played out way too long for a very predictable reveal, the son's secret was not that big of a deal comparatively, and the daughter's secret was steeped in so much misogyny it made me cringe. I won't spoil it, but Jerry's reaction to his daughter's secret was honestly repulsive (even to the point of him thinking about how he doesn't love his daughter anymore due to a COMPLETELY HARMLESS secret) and made me hate his character so much. #Justice4Sheri please.

Oh, and the mom's secret and how she reacts to basically everything in that scene? Genuinely the most unrealistic, ridiculous thing I've read in a long time. I'm sorry, but I honestly don't think 99.9% of mothers would make the mistakes that she makes in that moment (IYKYK) and I wasn't able to suspend disbelief at all during any of it.

I hate to sound so negative because I've been wanting to read this author's work for a while, he seems like such a nice guy and SO many of his books' plots sound awesome, but this was just an all-around terrible reading experience. That said, Goodreads says Strangers was one of Collings' first books, so I'm absolutely going to give a newer release of his a chance in hopes that I'll enjoy his more recent work better. As far as this book goes, I sadly cannot recommend it.