The House Across the Lake Review

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.

Casey was a little frustrating as a character. I had a feeling she wasn’t telling the whole story in regards to what happened with her husband so in the end when that twist was revealed I wasn’t that shocked. I was just overall confused as to why she was so adamant in finding out what happened to Katherine. She had only just met this woman and had maybe two interactions with her before her disappearance and she is just soo invested in figuring out this mystery.

Boone I was wary of at the start, I usually always mistrust all the characters in mystery/thriller book but Boone seemed a little too good to be true which is kind of an obvious sign that he’s a red herring. I liked the fact that he has his own secrets and we get to learn quite a bit about character and how he ended up at Lake Green. I would of liked a few more interactions and nights of surveillance between him and Casey to build up a little more of a rapport.

Tom and Katherine honestly were kind of bland. We don’t have enough context about them, their relationship and their mannerisms before that night Katherine disappeared. We weren’t shown any of the conflicts between them we sort of just have to take Katherine’s word and believe a drunk Casey that she’s seeing what she thinks she’s seeing. They just weren’t interesting enough for this whole book to be centered around them.

There were some pretty interesting twists and turns throughout the majority of this book, I was surprised a few times and I liked the format of the book with the dual timelines. I just think the supernatural element came out of nowhere and was a bit of a cop out. There was nothing in the book before then that indicated that there was any otherworldly phenomenon happening to it was hard for me to take it seriously, I was kind of just like wtf…

⭐️2/5 stars a little too unbelievable

Buzzword Reading Challenge

If you are unaware what the Buzzword Readathon/Challenge is see my prior post HERE. Last month the buzzword prompt was to pick a book with the word all  in the title and I ended up completing All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman which was pretty good! For July the prompt is ‘book‘ related words (e.g. library, paper, writing, pages etc) and my options are:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

Book of Night by Holly Black

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Anticipated Releases 2022 Update

It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday!

This week the prompt is my most anticipated new releases for the second half of 2022 and they are:

All of Our Demise by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman (expected publication: August 30th 2022)

Belladonna by Adalyn Grace (expected publication: August 30th 2022)

The It Girl by Ruth Ware (expected publication: July 12th 2022)

The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda (expected publication: July 26th 2022)

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo (expected publication: October 25th 2022)

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (expected publication: July 12th 2022)

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey (expected publication: July 19th 2022)

Wild is the Witch by Rachel Griffin (expected publication: August 2nd 2022)

Upgrade by Blake Crouch (expected publication: July 12th 2022)

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (expected publication: September 27th 2022)

Quarterly Reading Recommendation

I can’t believe it’s already been another three months since my last recommendation post! This is going to be my second instalment for 2022 and this month I only picked 5 books to list since I didn’t read as much during those three months and these were the only books I wanted to recommend. If you want to check out my first quarterly reading recommendations click HERE!

My recommendations for April – May – June are:

All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

Well Matched by Jen DeLuca

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune