Review 85: The Stranger Game

The Stranger Game by Peter Gadol
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Since I was reading a couple of non-fiction serious books I needed something easy and light to read before bed. I found this book lingering on my bookshelves. The writing is definitely easy to read, simple language and sentences. The main character is a woman that I found not quite believable in the character, she just didn’t ring true. Also her on again, off again boyfriend of many years didn’t feel fully male, and I don’t think the author was trying for gender displacement or anything, just they weren’t written well.

The story, the plot, was based around this weird game that takes over Los Angeles area, called The Stranger Game. It is about following and making connections with a stranger, but never approaching them directly. It is about stalking, but randomly and not pursing very far. Until the game changes, and keeps changing. The ultimate goal in the plot seems to be about who is in on the game, and why would people end up attempting murder.

The book sounds creepy, and in parts it achieves it, but not entirely. It should be. Perhaps the writing style is too simplistic, or the tension isn’t drawn out just right.

What I found appealing in the book was looking at how isolated everyone is in their lives. How this isolation makes people do extreme things, like constantly following strangers. At one point it is observed that couples play the game together, then they seem to be letting go and finding some childishness, like skinny dipping in a stranger’s pool. Yet this isn’t fully explored in the text either.

Overall it is a simple book, that falls short of the goals, but it’s a quick read and was quite a counter to the other serious non-fiction books I was reading at the time.


Book rating: 2.5 stars


I received a free copy of this book at a library conference. I was not required to write a review, but felt like it and, of course, the above opinions are my own.