THE STRANGER GAME

The Stranger Game is a dark, suspenseful, and twisty YA novel about fifteen-year-old Nico Walker, who questions whether the girl who has returned home after a three-year disappearance is really her sister.

Although she would never admit it, Nico Walker was somewhat relieved when her older sister Sarah disappeared three years ago. After all, Sarah had always been very abusive toward Nico. So while Nico’s parents did everything they could to find their missing daughter, Nico settled into life as an only child.

Then years later, the impossible happens: Sarah is found, safe and sound, at a youth center in another state and returned to her family. Nico is not sure how to feel. Even though she is no longer the girl her sister once brutally criticized – she lost her baby fat and gained some popularity – she is far from ready to suffer her sister’s torture again. However, Nico is surprised to discover that Sarah has also changed a lot since her disappearance. Her retrograde amnesia has caused her to forget almost everything about her family, friends, and herself – and perhaps the biggest thing she has forgotten is how much she once hated Nico.

But as the weeks pass, Nico notices more differences between this Sarah and the one that went missing. Clothes that do not fit Sarah anymore. Scars she never had. Everyone is quick to ignore these changes, but something feels off to Nico. As much as she wants to believe that Sarah is her sister, she cannot shake the suspicion that there may be a stranger living in their house....

Not only is The Stranger Game a breathless and genuinely creepy read but also like Gone Girl it has an unreliable narrator in Nico. Plus it has a shocking ending you will never see coming!
Cylin was inspired to write this book after reading about a 1997 case of a young French confidence trickster, who claimed to a grieving Texas family that he was their sixteen-year-old son who had been missing for three years.

Cylin Busby is the author of numerous articles and several teen books, including the acclaimed memoir The Year We Disappeared and the novel Blink Once. A former editor with Teen magazine, she now lives in Los Angeles with her family. You can visit her online at www.cylinbusby.com.