The House Across the Lake

This one just felt churned out from a formula. I also don't think in general he writes women very well. 75% of the book was boring and then at the end they threw everything but the kitchen sink at it. This could have been just as good as Home Before Dark which is the book I've enjoyed the most, but I think they got so caught up in trying to have a twist that they forgot to just write an engaging story. The elements were there but it wasn't brought together.

this book really surprised me because it leaned in a way that riley sager has hinted at in previous books but never fully went into. i don't normally like this type of thriller but riley never disappoints tbh.

in this book we follow casey fletcher who is a semi-famous actress mostly known for smaller roles in tv shows and movies as well as playing the lead in a pretty popular thriller broadway show. there are multiple timelines throughout this book but in the main timeline begins with casey in her familys cabin on lake greene that was built in the 1800s. casey was sent there by her even more famous mother due to a scandal casey got wrapped into. casey tried to perform her broadway show drunk and was thus fired. casey's mother hopes sending her to the cabin will help solve her daughter's alcoholism but throughout the book alcohol is a huge part of the plot which makes casey an unreliable narrator. i wouldn't recommend this book if you'd find that annoying or triggering. casey's drinking started about 14 months prior to the main timeline after the death of her husband because he drowned in the same lake that casey is now forced to reside on by her mother.

while casey is at the lake she ends up saving one of her new neighbors katherine from drowning in lake greene and prevented her from facing a similar fate as her husband. katherine and her husband tom just moved into the house across the lake which is mostly made of glass windows. katherine and casey begin to strike up a friendship after this event over the following couple days after her accident. casey also finds a pair of binoculars her husband left behind and she uses them to spy on her new neighbors thorugh their giant windows. she starts seeing suspicious behavior over the following days between the couple and then suddenly katherine disappears without warning. she begins trying to figure out what exactly happened to katherine and if her husband, tom, had anything to do with it.

while some are definietly going to find casey annoying, i really thought she was just a flawed charatcer who was dealing with real human struggles. sometimes there types of characters can grate on my nerves but this one just didn't. i personally also really enjoy having unriable narrators in thrillers. compared to the main character in riley sager's last release, survive the night, who many people also thought was annoying mostly in part to her unreliableness, i would say casey is less annoying than her for sure. i enjoyed a lot of the side charatcers like boone and eli who are both neighbors of casey—one newer and one a family friend. boone and casey do have a slight romance throughout the story so if you don't like that in your thrillers, i wouldn't necessarily recommend this one but it's not a huge part of the plot. katherine and tome were very interesting to me in the way the really felt like fractions of people since both were celebrities—katherine an ex model and tom a billionaire tech guru who created a new social media app. we also only saw them through casey eyes and what she gathered by spying on them which really helped to create the illusion of not knowing whats's going on.

the writing was the same riley sager, descriptive but not overly distracting, and very digestiable. this book is slightly more lsower paced than osme of his novels but i feel like most of his books tend to be slow until th first 60-70% where the main character is just invesitgating without anything major occuring. then in the last third of the book he generally packs in a lot of action and plot twists and this book was no exception. riley sager's endings always have me shaking in my boots because i absoutly never see them coming but they always click into place perfectly. as stated this one went in a bit of a different route than most of his other books but the vibes were a combination of the last time i lied and home before dark with the unriable narraotr aspect of survive the night. those happened to be my top 3 from him before this book.

overall, while this book was slightly slower paced than some of his others and also went in a different direction, this still had the classic sager intrigue and twists that make his books so consuming and shocking. i don't think this is going to be one that everybody loves but i had an amazing time reading this and i genuinely never wanted to put it down and when i had to, i kept thinking about it all day.

thank you to penguin group dutton, riley sager, and netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
 

first it was boring, almost dnf it but decided to keep reading just to see if i could be proven wrong, if anything interesting would happen

then it got fucking stupid, un plot twist tiré par les cheveux built en induisant le lecteur en erreur & plain out deception, THATS THE LAZIEST TYPE OF PLOT TWIST

then it got even more stupid, to the point of it being ridiculous, like nothing makes sense at all. there's just too much going on PICK ONE

im annoyed

DNF at about 20%-ish.

God, is this book bad. I've read something else by this same author previous and found that book stupid as well, but I was willing to give him another chance.

I have zero issue with a man writing a woman character (or vice versa). I have an issue with authors who feel like they have to go with the lowest hanging fruit to make you feel like they totally get what they are doing and they care so much. No, a male author who just has two women meet 2 minutes ago in a situation where one of them almost died and has them talk about “UGH, objectification” is not doing a good job. Nobody cares he knows jargon like that.
I read the end of the book to know what really happened. He does at least one more round of trying to tell us that he knows women, because he makes his female character say that we all live in constant fear. Men who think that is empowering, us being told we must be nothing but fearful wrecks... they are not helpful, they are fucking annoying. Stop performatively pitying women. It's not productive, it's not a good look and I'm tired of it.

Other than that, in the roughly 20% of this novel that I've read, I had to realise that some authors are not clever enough to write suspense and whodunnit mysteries. What do I mean?
At one point, the protagonist is surprised that another character is going swimming in a very deep natural lake, not wearing her wedding ring. She finds it suspicious and we are supposed to take it as a big thing. Ignoring the fact that if you drop your jewellery in one of those lakes, they are gone forever. Maybe she just didn't want that? I would be careful as well, because I don't want to be Kim Kardashian screeching about losing a diamond earring in the sea. Totally understandable sentiment.
Another moment is when the protagonist is observing this same character talking on the phone. She is leaving a message, which you can determine by how she is just talking without stopping for an answer. Which... again, what sort of a shitty Sherlock Holmes is this? Sometimes one person can just talk for an extended time, explaining something. Especially funny as the author says that the woman is covering her mouth with her hand. How do you know she is still speaking? Some of us can speak without our whole entire head moving???????

All in all, I will never understand why people like these books. The author does bogus stuff with the “investigation” that don't even make sense. He is condescending and very 2022 Tiktok feminist about his characters. It all has this half-baked feel.
So yeah, I don't think I will keep trying with him. Just pick something else.

This will be the fourth book of Sager's that I have read and this reminded me exactly why he is one of my favourite authors.

“I make jokes because it's easier to pretend I'm not feeling what I'm feeling than to actually feel it.”

I appreciated this story and maybe not for reasons that others might. Grief is an overwhelming and heartbreaking thing to go through, everyone deals with it in their own ways, some ways are unhealthy. Reading about Casey's way of dealing with her grief and feelings made me feel seen as I have turned to her similar way of coping before.

I don't what it is about Sager's books that hold me captive every time. I can never find the strength to put the book down once I've started them.

When I tell you that I genuinely gasped so loudly reading this.... The noise that left my mouth wasn't human.

“During those sixty seconds, I feel bright and wildly alive and finally in charge of the situation.This, I think, is what being a man must feel like.”

The reason why I didn't give this 5 stars is purely because one of the plot lines came from completely left field and I was left confused for a moment. Overall, I enjoyed this and recommend it.

Lately I've been loving the hated books, and hating the loved books. The hype or lack thereof really impacts my rating. Went in with really low expectations because of the awful things I've heard about this, and once again left the pleasantly surprised similar to Survive the Night. I read this all in a day and really enjoyed it. Yes, the constant mentioning of Casey's drinking problem was annoying. Yes, the book felt very tropey. Yes, the twist was stupid. But still, it was not expected. I've learned to just go along with the ride and don't take Riley Sager books too seriously. They always blow me away. I pictured this as a dumb Blumhouse movie, and in movie form this would be a dark comedy it's exactly like grown-up Freaky set at a lake house! It was mysterious, and I loved the lake vibes. While it wasn't my favorite of his, Riley Sager has yet to miss for me. 

This is my second Riley Sager book and I was waiting for the hard left and twists Survive The Night took. This did not disappoint!

It starts off as expected. Then, wham! At first, I rolled my eyes at the element brought in. I'm trying to avoid any spoilers. But, it ended up working with the story. I kinda forgot about it and went along for the ride.

I'm off to my Goodreads list to pick my next Riley Sager!

Must Read

It is a high pace thriller, that will leave you on the edge of your seat through the whole story. Plot twist after plot twist your mind will be blown.
Sager's writing stile is somehow able to draw a perfect picture of what is happening without boring us with endless descriptions. He also manages to write a compelling and fully fleshed story in on of the most boring settings ever.
His writing stile is simply addicting, you will power through this book in no time.