Readers Guide to The Intruder

Before: Medford MA

Ella is in eighth grade and lives with her single mother. She’s caught stealing another student’s lunch. Outside the principal’s office she meets the class bad boy, Anton.

Ella’s mom has mental health issues, an alcohol abuse disorder, and a severe hoarding problem. She locks Ella in the closet as a punishment. (Child abuse will be a big thing in this book, just FYI.)

One day, Ella saves Anton from a bully (by smashing the guy’s head with a rock!) and they become friends. He goes to her house, and she goes to his and meets his younger brother Bradley.

Ella tries to find her father

She finds her birth certificate with her father’s name: John Carter. There’s a Brittany Carter in her class who has a father named John. Ella goes to see him, but he says he isn’t her father. He takes her home and tells her mom to make sure she leaves him alone.

When Anton locks his brother Brad in the closet, Ella freaks out. So Anton teaches Ella to pick locks with a paper clip. He also gives her a silver chain.

One day, Brittany teases Ella about the dad mix-up and mocks her relationship with Anton. The two girls get in a physical cuffle and Anton bashes Brittany over the head. He’s sent to juvenile hall.

The school calls Ella’s mother to pick her up. Her mother is furious and locks her in the closet.

Ella picks the lock and sets the house on fire, killing her mother

(But not explicit lol…)

In present day New Hampshire:

Casey lives in a cabin in rural New Hampshire. She’s worried about her roof, and about an old tree on her property, as there’s a storm coming. 

Casey’s landlord Rudy shrugs her concerns off. When he makes a pass at her, she throws him on the ground. She’s doing storm prep when she sees a face outside the window.

Casey convinces herself she imagined it and is reassured by a visit from her neighbor, Lee.

After that, Casey sees someone outside with a flashlight and gets her gun before heading outside. She opens the tool shed and sees a girl in a gray hoodie, holding a knife.

The wet, bedraggled girl looks like a young teenager and has red hair. She has a backpack that’s also leaking blood. Casey sees cigarette burns on the arms of the girl, who says her name is Eleanor.

Casey asks Eleanor where she’s going and offers to give her a ride after the storm has passed. Eleanor says no thanks, she’s “almost there.”

The power goes out. Casey lights candles and offers Eleanor her bed and sleeps on the couch. She finds a piece of paper that belongs to Eleanor and is shocked: Eleanor drew a map which leads right to Casey.

Casey then looks in Eleanor’s backpack and finds bloody clothing and a notebook

Casey looks at the notebook which has picture of Casey being tortured. She realizes she left her gun in the bedroom with Eleanor. Casey sneaks into the bedroom and Eleanor is holding her gun. 

Eleanor is pointing the gun at her when they hear a crash. The tree fell on the shed where Eleanor had been hiding. Eleanor asks Casey to get duct tape. She tapes Casey’s hands behind her back. 

Eleanor says she is there “for justice.”

She asks for her notebook back.  She then cuts Casey loose and leaves the house. Casey gets her hands free and decides the woman in the pictures is NOT her after all. She finds something in the notebook that explains EVERYTHING.

Casey realizes that Eleanor was headed to Lee’s house. She is convinced that Lee is Eleanor’s father and Casey is going to kill Lee. 

The Two Narrative Converges in the Reveal:

Back in the past, Ella tells the paramedic her name: Elizabeth Casey.

YES, not surprisingly Ella is Casey.

In the present, Casey goes to Lee’s house and confronts Eleanor. Lee denies being Eleanor’s father. He asks her name. It is Eleanor “Nell” Kettering, and her mother is Jolene.

Lee says that his brother is Eleanor’s father, and he died in a car accident before she was born.

Ella thinks her mother is dead after a fight with Jax, her mom’s boyfriend. She’s afraid of going to jail.

Back in the past, Ella is with her social worker who is taking her to meet her father. When she’s seventeen she tells him about her mother’s abuse of her. She learns he ended up in prison after killing a man who slept with Desiree, her mother.

Casey discloses that she got fired for trying to help an abused girl. She smashed up the girl’s father’s car with a baseball bat.

Casey now goes to talk to Eleanor/Nell’s mom. Jolene, is bleeding from a stab wound. Casey takes one of Jolene’s cigarettes and smokes it, then burns her arm with it.

Casey retuned to Lee’s cabin, telling him that Jolene is dead

Lee says Eleanor/Nell can live with him.

Rudy the landlord comes over to check on Casey. He asks why she and Lee don’t move in together. Given that he asked so many questions about “Elizabeth Casey” when he moved in. 

Casey goes to see Lee who figured out that she killed Jolene. He offers to alibi her. When he slips up and calls her Ella, she decides he looks familiar. 

Nell shows Casey a picture of her dad and it’s Anton

Lee is Anton’s little brother Brad. He goes to visit Anton is prison, bringing pictures of Nell. Anton is in prison for murdering his abusive father who was abusing Brad. Anton asked Brad/Lee to keep an eye on Ella/Casey.

While Lee is also in love with Casey, he can’t betray his brother by acting on his feelings.

My Questions About The Intruder

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments. Let’s discuss!

What was with the introduction?

Freida McFadden says that there is no explicit violence in her books, but … really?

It certainly wasn’t a cozy!

If I Had to Describe The Intruder in Two Words:

Violent Vengeance. It should have called The Abuse Avengers.

Casey killed her mother.

She also trashed the car of her student Karisa’s father.

Then she burned Eleanor/Nell’s mother with cigarettes and killed her.

Anton killed his abusive father to protect his brother, Brad.

Jolene was stabbed by Jax after a fight over his cheating.

Casey’s father killed a guy who was sleeping with Desiree.

Were the character names just to confuse us?

Eleanor/Nell/Ella/Elizabeth? I had a feeling that either Casey was Ella or possibly Eleanor (which was maybe a bit of misdirection. But it got confusing.

Then Bradley is Lee.

Eleanor had red hair. Did Anton have red hair but dyed it green to throw us off.

Why Was Casey’s Behavior So Inconsistent?

Quite a few people on Goodreads complained about this. She was afraid of the storm, the falling tree, and Eleanor. Yet she had a gun and killed two women (yes, they were child abusers.)