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    A Stranger Like You: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A Stranger Like You: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A Stranger Like You: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    A Stranger Like You: A Novel

    Written by Elizabeth Brundage

    Narrated by Robert Petkoff and Ellen Archer

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A taut and terrifying thriller about the lengths to which we'll go to make our dreams come true.

    Hedda Chase is a top-flight executive producer at Gladiator Films, fast-tracked in the business since she graduated from Yale. An aggressive businesswoman, she recently pulled the plug on a film project initiated by one of her predecessors.

    The screenwriter on the project was Hugh Waters, a wannabe with a dead-end marriage and a day job at an insurance company. This script was his ticket out - until Hedda tampered with his plans, claiming his violence was over the top, his premise not credible, and his ending implausible.

    Hugh decides to prove otherwise by staging his script's ending and casting Hedda Chase as the victim. He flies to Los Angeles and finds Hedda, kidnaps her, and locks her in the trunk of her vintage BMW in the parking lot at LAX. He leaves the keys in the ignition, the parking ticket on the dash, and lets "destiny" take its course.

    Brundage's Los Angeles is a casual battleground that trades carelessly in lives and dreams. As always, her characters are complicated, surprising, and intense in this high velocity, provocative novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 5, 2010
    ISBN9781101222270
    Unavailable
    A Stranger Like You: A Novel
    Author

    Elizabeth Brundage

    Elizabeth Brundage is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned an MFA in fiction and a James Michener award. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness Magazine, and New Letters, and she contributed to the anthology Thicker Than Blood: I’ve Always Meant to Tell You, Letters to Our Mothers.

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    Reviews for A Stranger Like You

    3/5

    38 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Should have been written as a short story. Part one was good but after that it was slow, with boring characters, and a slow, and wandering storyline. I also did not bond with any of the characters in the book, as they were just not that likable. I have no doubt some people will enjoy it, I did not.
    • 3/5
      Book Club Read February 2012 -Interesting read, good build up to a climax about half way thru the book.. then it took a nose dive and never recovered.. left feeling empty. Not sure what really happened in the end. After about 80 pages really got thrilling.. but just didn't deliver feels like she added too many opinions on current issues that lost track of what the topic was then ran out of time and had to finish for print. Disappointment for sure!
    • 3/5
      There was every reason to like this book - I'd heard Ms. Brundage at reading a few years back and found her articulate and engaging.  I liked her earlier 'Somebody Else's Daughter.' The backdrop of Hollywood, screenwriting, large studios, and the Iraqi War was intriguing.  Sadly for me, the story line of the frustrated would-be screenwriter kidnapping the studio executive was just too brutal for me to enjoy. This would definitely be a great book for someone less squeamish than I. Brundage's own background at NYU's Film School, as well as a screenwriter with the American Film Institute, is evident.  Her pacing and plotting are assured and fast-moving.  The tension levels rarely drop.  She is also a fabulous writer, crafting beautiful sentences and dialogue.  Some people might find her shifting from the third to second persons in perspective hard to follow.  I thought voicing the kidnapped woman in the second person gave it even more immediacy.  Wish I could have carried this book through to the end.  Violence against women is a hard topic for some, me included.
    • 1/5
      This seemed like it would be right up my alley - a thriller with shades of The Day of the Locust. Not so much. I tried four times before I gave up.
    • 5/5
      I was completely surprised and impressed with this novel - but it's not a quick read and it's not easy reading. It's a book for readers who enjoy literary novels and I don't think it was marketed very well, which is a shame for the author. The book looks at Hollywood in a very critical light, as well as the war in Iraq. A very worthwhile book for readers who like an intellectual challenge.
    • 3/5
      won this book thru Library Thing and found it a little hard to follow at times. Although, I do like the suspense in the book and the characters are very strong, this is very mediocre. I felt as if it was lacking in something, I am not sure what that is. It was a very quick read and I do like that she writes with the different characters points of view.
    • 1/5
      I can't even finish this book. It feels like I have been reading it for years. It just keeps going on and on and on and on. I'm about two thirds of the way through the book and find there is no way I can finish the last third. I don't care if/how Hedda Chase was discovered in the trunk of the car. I don't care if Hugh Waters is caught. I don't care about Denny's crappy childhood or his difficulty in dealing with PTSD. I also do not like how Hedda's viewpoint is told entirely in the second person. Plus, there was a couple of spots in Denny's viewpoint that switched back and forth between second and third person. I found it very hard to read. I generally like to finish every book I read but seeing as how this one has taken me nearly two months to get through a little more than half, I'm putting it down. I'm done so I can move on to the towering stack of books I've aquired in the last two months and haven't been able to start.
    • 4/5
      A dark psychological thriller about the kidnapping of a female Hollywood excutive. The story is told through three main perspectives: the kidnapper, the victim, and the not-completely-innocent bystander who gets swept into the case. A Stranger Like You is well-crafted, with several layers contributing to the overall experience. It's more literate, and more "psychological", than a typical plot-driven crime thriller. But it has all the action and twists that make a thriller appealing.
    • 5/5
      Brundage's novel reminded me of a James Patterson novel, which I love! I really enjoyed it. The story was great, jumping from each characters lives and thoughts. It was hard to tell who was the "bad guy", until clearly in the end, which is even debatable. You really have to make your own opinion and judgment on the characters and decide for yourself who to love or hate. At first, I was sympathetic towards Hugh, then i became disgusted with his actions, thoughts, and sexual behavior. He was just a pig! I loved how the story unfolded. It was like a movie within a movie. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a little action, mystery, and drama.
    • 3/5
      For a person who generally doesn't enjoy thrillers or suspense, I really, really enjoyed this book. The characters were masterfully stitched together: believable, terrifying, complicated. Brundage asks questions of humanity, but refuses to answer them for the reader. The story evolves unexpectedly, and it sticks with you. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      The best description I can give for this book is one word: Meh. It is neither good nor bad, enthralling nor boring. Just right there in the middle. The premise for the novel has so much potential to be an exciting mystery/thriller but I simply felt empty when I finished reading. So many things are left unresolved, it seems almost a half-hearted book: a half-hearted mystery, thriller, romance, feminist lecture, social commentary, you name it, it was in there--part way. The characters are a bright spot in this quagmire. They are engaging, and most are well developed for the role they fill in the storyline.