Synopsis: An actress hides at her lake house after the untimely death of her husband. She rescues a woman from drowning and starts to fear that the woman in question is in danger.

My rating: 4/5

This book had a slow start for me and I struggled to get through the beginning of it but it did pick up and when it did I couldn't put it down.

This book has some neat twists and turns. A few I saw coming but several I did not.

I found I really enjoyed the setting more than I expected to. It felt isolated and desolate as it is the off season at the lake where most residents are only there seasonally. The lake is clearly shown as ominous and I liked the way it was used both in the plot and the mood of the book.

One of my biggest struggles with this book was that I didn't like any of the characters. Our narrator was unsympathetic, partially due to her alcoholism, and right off the bat I didn't feel like we could trust her.
Throughout the book she makes really bad decisions and so many times I was just growling at her character in frustration.

My lack of attachment to any of the characters made me minimally invested in the things that were happening to them.

At the end of the day I liked the setting and plot but didn't care about any of the characters. The twists were fun and unexpected but also I wasn't prepared for them (though if I had read more from this author I probably would have been).

I am not sure who the right audience for this book is. Maybe people who like Stephen King books. ( )

Ummm...well....this is a suspense thriller sort of story, told in first person present tense "Now" sections, and first person past tense "Before" sections. It includes a fair amount of misdirection and convenient omissions by our unreliable narrator, an actress who has been banished by her mother to the family's house on a secluded lake in Vermont, where she's supposed to stay out of the public eye and get a handle on her drinking. Her husband drowned in this lake a little over a year ago, and it seems an extremely cruel and probably hopeless situation she's been railroaded into. Still, she has no intention of giving up the booze, and routinely lies to her mother about it. In fact, she lies a fair bit to other people too, so it's no surprise to discovery she's lying to the reader...but what's the TRUTH, then? I had several quibbles with the writing style here--a lot of repetition and belaboring the obvious. There's a decent psychological mystery embedded in there, though, and a few quite clever bits of clue-dropping, but the whole thing just didn't work well for me. I never got lost in the story the way one really should with this kind of tale. YMMV. ( )

2.5⭐

After a drunken debacle causes her to lose her latest role and earns her bad press, 35-year-old actress, Casey Fletcher retreats to her family’s vacation home on Greene Lake in Vermont. A little over a year ago, Casey's husband drowned in the lake which seems to have triggered her alcohol dependence. Haunted by her memories, she spends most of her time in an alcohol-induced haze and spying on her neighbors with her late husband’s binoculars. The “house across the lake” is owned by a power couple - tech entrepreneur Tom and his wife Katherine, a famous model. After saving Katherine from drowning in the lake, Casey and Katherine become friendly. Casey witnesses ( with her binoculars, of course) what she thinks is a disagreement between the couple ( very “Rear Window”, which coincidentally was her and her late husband's favorite movie), and when Katherine disappears, Casey suspects that Tom had something to do with it. As Casey tries to find out what happened to Katherine, she seeks the help of Boone Conrad, an ex-cop who is temporarily staying in the neighborhood while doing some work on another resident’s home, who also has secrets of his own. Will Casey be able to find Katherine before it is too late?

To be honest, up to the 70% mark, the story seemed formulaic –alcoholic protagonist/unreliable narrator, Rear Window style snooping into a neighbor’s window witnessing an altercation of sorts between a couple in a presumably troubled marriage, the wife goes missing and then alcoholic nosy neighbor becomes alcoholic super sleuth et cetera et cetera. Long-drawn and overly descriptive, I found the first half of the novel more than a tad boring. But then, everything I predicted turned out to be WRONG! Usually, I love being proved wrong but in this case, I would have preferred a predictable ending. While the initial 70% was boring and unoriginal but readable, the final segment and the major twist made things worse. Given the time I had already invested in the book, I forced myself to finish it. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the weird direction the story took but yes, I was surprised as all my theories got tossed into the lake! Though not quite original in concept, Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake is suspenseful and twisty and I can see how it might appeal to others but unfortunately, it did not work for me! ( )

I’ve been a Riley Sager fan for a long time but this was one of the strangest books I ever read. It truly is not one of his best books. ( )

This was my least favorite Riley Sager novel by far. I like when thrillers are believable or at least possible. The twists in this were ridiculous. ( )