The Lodger - Valerie Keogh

Reading Challenge Category: Free ARC from NetGalley

Official Blurb:

She’s in your home…
Leigh Simons can’t say for sure what made her do it. A moment of madness, perhaps, but when the young, loud and gorgeous waitress at her favorite coffee shop reveals she is homeless, Leigh offers her the empty room in her house.
In your head…
Gina is the perfect lodger; Leigh, lonely and frustrated with her life, becomes infatuated with the woman – her boldness, her zeal. If only Leigh could be more like Gina…
And missing without trace.
So when Leigh returns from a work trip she’s shocked to find Gina missing. Where could the young woman have gone…and why?
Leigh fears that something terrible has happened - why else would Gina leave her?
But as she sets out to find her missing lodger, what Leigh discovers changes everything she knows about Gina….and her own life, too.

My Thoughts:

This is what I would class as a chewing-gum-for-the-brain book. It didn’t require much thought; you could get through it at a decent pace, leaving you pleasantly satisfied at the end. It was the exact book I was looking for at this moment in time.
If I’d read it at any other time wanting something more detailed or a story that would blow me away, this would have disappointed me. However, as it stands, it was the perfect book for the mood I was in.
Leigh is your typical protagonist of one of these types of books, screaming for someone to take her seriously. These types of characters can be annoying, but in this book, she didn’t bother me, and I was getting frustrated on her behalf. She did have more gumption than the main characters of this elk usually has. She was able to make decisions and often tried to get her life in order, only to have it derailed by events beyond her control.
The story is relatively slow-paced, but I did get through it at a gentle speed. At one point, I found myself wanting to throw off all responsibilities and get back to reading. This is always a good sign that I am enjoying a book.
The ending and the conclusion to everything that had happened was a little bit of a letdown. Leigh had been through a lot, and there was much to tie up, but I felt a bit meh when she got the answers. I think something cleverer was needed as a way of her discovering all the facts. The last paragraph, though, was brilliant and made up for the slightly disappointing prelude to this decision.
A solid four-star book, not too intense but enough to keep you gripped and turning those pages!