Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into another Riley Sager mystery thriller The House Across the Lake. Filled with sketchy characters, suspenseful moments, and paranormal elements, this is definitely a good summer read. I wouldn’t say The House Across the Lake is my favourite of his (the man has a lot of good books can you blame me?) but it definitely tops Lock Every Door which still remains my least favourite of all of his books I have read thus far.
Main Characters:
- Casey Fletcher: A retired Broadway and on-screen actress who after a traumatic event with her husband has decided to return back to her family cabin in Lake Greene to get out of the media eye, she meets her new neighbours the Royce’s, starts to become suspicious that something is going on in the home and when Katherine the wife goes missing gets thrown into a vat of secrets that threaten to expose her own in the process
- Len: Casey’s husband accidentally drowned in Lake Greene after going fishing by himself one early morning, his passing affects his wife’s emotional state heavily
- Katherine Royce: A well-known model who after purchasing a vacation home with her husband makes friends with Casey, when she goes missing Casey becomes heavily worried and leads the charge to find out what happened
- Tom Royce: Katherine’s husband who owns a popular social media company, Casey becomes suspicious of him when Katherine goes missing leading to confrontations between the two
- Boone: Is working and staying at a cabin on the lake near Casey’s cabin, and becomes Casey’s partner of sorts in the search for Katherine
- Eli: Long time and the only permanent resident on Lake Greene, knows everything that’s going on and is always there to lend a helping hand
My Review
As I said before I didn’t find The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager to be his best book but it’s definitely a good one and the plot was just so weird and interesting in this book that I had a hard time putting it down. I loved the characters, especially Casey, for how real and raw she was. I didn’t find myself getting lost in who was who since each character brought something different and interesting to the story. It’s definitely a bit of a theatrical thriller, but I really enjoyed the direction the book went in and it’s just a crazy story from start to finish so the theatrical bits fit well with how the plot plays out.
I was struggling with how to rate The House Across the Lake and ended up landing on a 7.5/10. I was heavily leaning to an 8 but there were parts to the second half of the book that I didn’t enjoy as much as the first half so I landed on rating it a bit lower. The House Across the Lake follows Casey Fletcher a once famous on-screen and on-ticket actress Casey seemed to live up to her popular family name. After losing her husband Len in a traumatic fashion Casey takes up drinking to self-medicate the pain she feels. The drinking led to her being at the top of the media headlines when she was caught working drunk and proceeded to go out and drink in front of the cameras. Due to her downfall being heavily publicized her family ships her out to their secluded cabin on Lake Greene where she is bound to be undisturbed… so they think. The further issue? Lake Greene is where Len died so it’s not exactly the happiest place for her. Expecting her to sober up Casey drowns herself the entire time she’s at the cabin, that’s until something new starts up around the lake. With few cabins around Lake Greene, it’s big news when Tom and Katherine Royce move into the luxurious cabin across the way. Casey makes her acquaintance by saving Kathrine from drowning, and she thinks she’s made some new friends, Casey soon gets swept up in the marital issues of the Royce’s when she starts watching their home from across the lake. Soon threatening to expose her own deep secrets Casey is forced to question if saving Katherine or keeping her own skeletons hidden is more important.
I thought the setting for the book was super interesting. On the surface, it seems like what would be a kind of boring setting. This luxurious lakefront cabin site that only the rich and famous can afford. It quickly becomes clear though through the interesting characters that this setting while luxurious is defiantly not quiet. As I said before I really like Casey as a character. She’s clearly an alcohol addict and I felt like she played a very real addict. The whole reason her family sent her to spend time out at the lake is one so she can’t get snapped by the paparazzi anymore and two to dry her up. Like a classic addict who is being forced to do something she doesn’t want to do Casey finds ways to get her alcohol and proceeds to stay wasted the entire time she’s at the lake. Her being an addict played a role in questioning whether or not the things she was seeing were true or not, and for me as the reader it often made me question her as a narrator. Don’t get me wrong I am not judging her for being an addict but she is drunk in large portions of the book, so how often is a drunk perspective an accurate one? She’s super fiery and a bit of a bitch and I liked her for it. I felt like this was super strong in the first half and got a bit lost in the second. There were some things she does later on in the book that just made me go ‘Why!’ it was just really weird decisions she was making and didn’t really fit the Casey we got in the first half. I mean it does fit how her character plays out in the rest of the book but the direction just wasn’t my favourite.
As mentioned earlier there is this paranormal element to the book that I wasn’t expecting at all going into it. I personally felt like there was a bit too much going on in this book the paranormal aspect, then the missing girls thing (there to add this suspicious tone to the book), then the domestic thing with Tom and Katherine, and then Casey’s addiction. It was just a lot. I really liked what the paranormal element added to the book although some parts of it weren’t totally my favourite I thought it was a really interesting direction to take the book in. It did however take the book in a much more theatrical direction than I originally thought it would go. Again wasn’t bad just wasn’t expecting it.
I found the book overall to be very thrilling and twisty and there’s is this big twist in the book that I totally didn’t see coming and when it dropped it was one of those ‘you have to be kidding me’ moments. It got me for sure! I think after the big twist though the book kind of drops and after it dropped the book should have maybe moved on a bit quicker. It just felt like it lagged a bit and at this point was focusing on things that I didn’t really care about anymore now that we had this news. There isn’t a ton of twists in the book but the ones that are there are super enjoyable and a lot of fun to pull apart.
I would definitely recommend checking this one out if you have read other Riley Sager books before and enjoyed them. I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is but he just brings this quality to each of his books that just makes them hard to put down, and each book has these amazing characters that you don’t want to pull away from. As I said this definitely wasn’t a favorite of his reads for me but it’s still definitely up there with the good ones.
Has anyone else read The House Across the Lake before, or any other Riley Sager books? What did you think?
*** Don’t go any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
Okay was anyone else totally shocked by the whole Len, Casey’s dead husband being the one to murder all those young girls! And that she killed him and then essentially covered up the fact that he did it? I just totally hadn’t seen this coming at all and when it was dropped I was shocked because I just felt like Casey seemed so much better than this. Maybe I was just over-sympathetic for her due to her addiction but I just didn’t see this twisted side to her coming out. I mean yeah she eventually tries to make things right but it just really didn’t make up for the fact of everything she did. I did appreciate however her acknowledgement of the fact she was aware she fucked up big time. I mean I guess I can also preach that I would be much better if I found out the love of my life was a disgusting murderer but then again I haven’t been in that situation so I can’t really speak to what I would do.
I got why the paranormal aspect was in the book so that Casey could see that the only way to clear her conscious was to find out where Len put the bodies and then tell the police, but it was just so odd how it played out. I think I would have preferred Len being a ghost rather than him being able to embody people with his spirit and take over. That ends up being the whole thing with Katherine going missing, that Len takes over her body when Casey saves her and then Tom freaks out and ties her up unsure of what to do. Once Casey realizes it’s Len and that he wants his revenge on her for killing him she does what she can to try and get Katherine her body back.
I mean the book ends nicely with everyone alive, Casey being able to give closure to those girl’s families, and Len’s spirit stuck in the lake. I just hated how for lack of a better way of putting it, lame Casey became in the second half. I mean like I said before though it may have just been that I was more sympathetic to her when I thought her addiction was based on grief and not guilt. Once it became guilt I just saw her in this different light and then everything that made her badass and strong before just kind of seemed like a cover.
Thank you for checking out this review, I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to check out my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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