A review by kpaigestiles
The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

📖: Borrowed
🗣️: Jessica
📚: Hardback
#️⃣: 37

This is my second Sager read, and I love how he writes! Super easy to absorb and digest and the twists that his brain comes up with are wild - makes it really hard to guess the ending. 

Casey is a widowed actress and alcoholic who is grieving the death of her husband and failing career while hiding out at her childhood lake home in VT and drinking herself into oblivion. She befriends a former model, Katherine, from the home across the lake after having to save her from a drowning incident. With Casey’s loneliness and boredom, she picks up a set of binoculars and starts spying on Katherine and Tom in their glass mansion, witnessing red flag moments. After observing an altercation and hearing a scream, Katherine goes missing and Casey turns everything into a DIY investigation while trying to pin Tom for her disappearance as well as the murders of 3 local girls. 

Lots of high-stress moments making this a page turner. Then fairly abruptly, it turns paranormal, and that’s when my rating started to decrease. It worked, but I wish the presence of paranormal activity was present from the beginning. This felt like a genre flip too far in the story.