Voyeuristic Suspense Coming Your Way! 👀 || Thank you, Dutton Books, for the gifted copy of The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager! {partner}

Genre: Psychological Suspense
Format: 📖
Pub Date: 6.21.2022
Star Rating: ☆☆☆.5

Summary:

“It looks like a familiar story: A woman reeling from a great loss with too much time on her hands and too much booze in her glass watches her neighbors, sees things she shouldn’t see, and starts to suspect the worst. But looks can be deceiving. . . .

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to 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 living in the house across the lake.

Everything about the Royces seems perfect. Their marriage. Their house. The bucolic lake it sits beside. But when Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she discovers the darker truths lurking just beneath the surface of the Royces’ picture-perfect marriage. Truths no suspicious voyeur could begin to imagine–even with a few drinks under her belt.

Like Casey, you’ll think you know where this story is headed.Think again.

Because once you open the door to obsession, you never know what you might find on the other side.”

Book Review:

Sigh… I honestly don’t know where to begin with this review. Riley Sager is one of my first “bookstagram made me do it,” I loved Home Before Dark, Final Girls, and The Last Time I Lied. But I’ve been thoroughly let down by his latest books, and I can’t quite put my finger on why.

I think I’m just bored with the whole female protagonist with a drinking problem theme that so often goes with this genre. I also understand that Sager typically has some sort of theatrically influence on his books — for The House Across the Lake, it was Rear Window. He even references it in the novel, which is fine. I can deal with that, I don’t love it, but I’ll deal with it. At one point, Sager is writing from the perspective of the female MC and has her say something along the lines of “this is what being a man must feel like.” And, I don’t know, that whole line rubbed me the wrong way. It just felt icky coming from him. Again, just my opinion.

Now that I have reviewed what didn’t work for me, let’s move on to what I did enjoy about this story. I love a good story that doesn’t leave me feeling like the wool had been pulled over my eyes for 75% of the book (I call it the Scooby-Doo effect. Sometimes it’s nice to be appropriately scared without the author providing an easy explanation.

If you were wondering, here’s a breakdown of my ranking on each Sager books.

Home Before Dark
Final Girls
Last Time I Lied
House Across the Lake
Lock Every Door
Survive the Night

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BOOK INFO
Format: 368 pages, Hardback
Published: June 2022 by Dutton Books
Free review copy provided by publisher, Dutton Books, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and in no way influenced.