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The House Across the Lake
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.
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.
349 pages, Hardcover
First published June 21, 2022
About the author
Riley Sager
19 books39.9k followersRiley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, most recently THE ONLY ONE LEFT and THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE. His first thriller, FINAL GIRLS, won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel and has been published in more than thirty-five countries. His latest novel, MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, will be published in June.
A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. When he's not writing, he enjoys reading, cooking and going to the movies as much as possible. His favorite film is "Rear Window." Or maybe "Jaws." But probably, if he's being honest, "Mary Poppins."
A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. When he's not writing, he enjoys reading, cooking and going to the movies as much as possible. His favorite film is "Rear Window." Or maybe "Jaws." But probably, if he's being honest, "Mary Poppins."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36,574 reviews
July 14, 2024
**4.5-stars rounded up**
Casey Fletcher is a NYC-based actress, who having grown up in the industry, is used to a lot of drama.
Unfortunately for Casey, after suffering a personal tragedy, she makes a mistake many people have made before her. She turns to the bottle to numb her pain.
Initially, she's still able to function somewhat, but she's spiraling fast, head-first into the NYC pavement. Luckily, the paparazzi is there to capture her descent for the whole world to see. ((read with heavy sarcasm))
Casey's mother, in an ill-advised effort to help her daughter, ships her off to their Vermont lake house, because we all know being secluded in the middle of nowhere on a lake will make you quit drinking.
Frankly, Casey could use a break from the city anyway, so she doesn't put up much of a fight. Her mother thinks since Casey doesn't have a car there, she won't be able to get alcohol, but the friendly neighbor who is making her grocery runs keeps her fully stocked.
At the lake house, Casey struggles just as much as in the city. It is the last place she was with her husband and the root of her misery.
Drinking her days away, Casey is obviously not in a good head space. She struggles to concentrate on anything, or remain focused, that is until she begins to utilize the family binoculars.
Across the lake is a massive modern home recently purchased by an uber-wealthy couple, Tom and Katherine Royce. Tom, a successful businessman and Katherine, a stunning former model, give Casey plenty to focus on.
After a shocking encounter on the lake brings Casey and Katherine together, the two women begin a tentative friendship. The more the women chat and get to know one another, the more clear it becomes to Casey that all is not well in the Royce household.
Not long after, Katherine suddenly vanishes. Casey, having witnessed some very suspicious behaviors from the couple before, thinks violence may have been involved. She doesn't believe Katherine just up and left of her own volition.
Casey becomes obsessed with revealing the truth, but at what cost?
Y'all know, I have been itching to get my hands on this release and it did not disappoint. With his signature-style, Riley Sager has spun another web of intrigue so delicious even Alfred Hitchcock would be giving it two thumbs up!
I loved the modern-Rear Window vibes and the setting was fantastic. Having Casey being on her own, in the house that literally haunted her just by being there, it felt so claustrophobic and unsettling.
It can be tough sometimes being on your own, but Casey being alone at that house was taking it to a whole new level of isolation. Sager paced out the reveals of the before perfectly, in my opinion. It kept me so interested.
I also really enjoyed, not just Casey as a main character, but all her interactions and musings involving the Royces. They certainly kept her mind occupied, at least for a little while.
There were additional side characters, two men in particular, that added a lot to the story as well. They were also residing on the lake at the time that Casey was there and I felt they both added in their own way to the drama unfolding. One was a solid presence, who it felt good to have around, the other, I wasn't so sure about.
The ending of this is completely over-the-top and caught me by surprise. It's definitely one of his more memorable conclusions. Trust me when I say, it's a wild ride.
We started in one direction and ended in another. It was jolting and f*ing enjoyable as heck!!
I really had a phenomenal time reading this. I know that not every Reader is going to love Casey as a protagonist as much as I did, but I found her relatable and even charming in her own clunky way.
This was my most anticipated release of the year and I'm so happy that I was given the opportunity to get to it a little early. Thank you so much to the publisher, Dutton, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
Casey Fletcher is a NYC-based actress, who having grown up in the industry, is used to a lot of drama.
Unfortunately for Casey, after suffering a personal tragedy, she makes a mistake many people have made before her. She turns to the bottle to numb her pain.
Initially, she's still able to function somewhat, but she's spiraling fast, head-first into the NYC pavement. Luckily, the paparazzi is there to capture her descent for the whole world to see. ((read with heavy sarcasm))
Casey's mother, in an ill-advised effort to help her daughter, ships her off to their Vermont lake house, because we all know being secluded in the middle of nowhere on a lake will make you quit drinking.
Frankly, Casey could use a break from the city anyway, so she doesn't put up much of a fight. Her mother thinks since Casey doesn't have a car there, she won't be able to get alcohol, but the friendly neighbor who is making her grocery runs keeps her fully stocked.
At the lake house, Casey struggles just as much as in the city. It is the last place she was with her husband and the root of her misery.
Drinking her days away, Casey is obviously not in a good head space. She struggles to concentrate on anything, or remain focused, that is until she begins to utilize the family binoculars.
Across the lake is a massive modern home recently purchased by an uber-wealthy couple, Tom and Katherine Royce. Tom, a successful businessman and Katherine, a stunning former model, give Casey plenty to focus on.
After a shocking encounter on the lake brings Casey and Katherine together, the two women begin a tentative friendship. The more the women chat and get to know one another, the more clear it becomes to Casey that all is not well in the Royce household.
Not long after, Katherine suddenly vanishes. Casey, having witnessed some very suspicious behaviors from the couple before, thinks violence may have been involved. She doesn't believe Katherine just up and left of her own volition.
Casey becomes obsessed with revealing the truth, but at what cost?
Y'all know, I have been itching to get my hands on this release and it did not disappoint. With his signature-style, Riley Sager has spun another web of intrigue so delicious even Alfred Hitchcock would be giving it two thumbs up!
I loved the modern-Rear Window vibes and the setting was fantastic. Having Casey being on her own, in the house that literally haunted her just by being there, it felt so claustrophobic and unsettling.
It can be tough sometimes being on your own, but Casey being alone at that house was taking it to a whole new level of isolation. Sager paced out the reveals of the before perfectly, in my opinion. It kept me so interested.
I also really enjoyed, not just Casey as a main character, but all her interactions and musings involving the Royces. They certainly kept her mind occupied, at least for a little while.
There were additional side characters, two men in particular, that added a lot to the story as well. They were also residing on the lake at the time that Casey was there and I felt they both added in their own way to the drama unfolding. One was a solid presence, who it felt good to have around, the other, I wasn't so sure about.
The ending of this is completely over-the-top and caught me by surprise. It's definitely one of his more memorable conclusions. Trust me when I say, it's a wild ride.
We started in one direction and ended in another. It was jolting and f*ing enjoyable as heck!!
I really had a phenomenal time reading this. I know that not every Reader is going to love Casey as a protagonist as much as I did, but I found her relatable and even charming in her own clunky way.
This was my most anticipated release of the year and I'm so happy that I was given the opportunity to get to it a little early. Thank you so much to the publisher, Dutton, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
December 21, 2022
I’ve officially learned my lesson. This will be my last book by the author.
Pro: The cover is pretty.
Cons: Where do I even begin…
This book feels like 3 different ones shoved together. Badly.
It started with an overused trope. Alcoholic nosy woman spying on the neighbours.
The author cannot write a convincing female character. This time she was reading into the fact that the wife leaving in the house across the lake would go swim without her wedding ring. Clearly a sign there are issues in her marriage. Did no editor tell him that plenty of people remove them to swim in a lake?
Ended with an unnecessary romance (again).
*Made it to my worst books of 2022: https://youtu.be/jOcHnWSUOEw
Pro: The cover is pretty.
Cons: Where do I even begin…
This book feels like 3 different ones shoved together. Badly.
It started with an overused trope. Alcoholic nosy woman spying on the neighbours.
The author cannot write a convincing female character. This time she was reading into the fact that the wife leaving in the house across the lake would go swim without her wedding ring. Clearly a sign there are issues in her marriage. Did no editor tell him that plenty of people remove them to swim in a lake?
Ended with an unnecessary romance (again).
*Made it to my worst books of 2022: https://youtu.be/jOcHnWSUOEw
July 30, 2022
1.5 stars— There really are no words that can adequately describe this book. The first 2/3 of the book was basically A J Finn’s “The Woman in the Window” but set at a lake house to shake things up. Much like “The Woman in the Window” and “The Girl on The Train” the woman who observes what she believes to be a crime in this book is drunk 24/7. (**Note to authors : from here on out sober witnesses only, thank you, drunks have run their course).
The final 1/3 of “The House Across the Lake” is a cross between “The Exorcist” and the Meryl Streep movie “Death Becomes Her” . … This is not meant as a compliment. Needless to say I did not enjoy this book but kept reading it just to find out how the author would tie it all together for a happy ending. And amazingly enough, somehow he did. So if you are in the mood to read about a crazy, nosey murdering alcoholic helping a possessed neighbor who is in danger of being killed by her husband who is later possessed before being killed by a woman who was formerly possessed by the spirit of her ex husband who she also killed, have at it. For me, I am moving on to a better book while I recover from Covid.
**Note if this review sounds like delusional ramblings, remember I have Covid and my oxygen levels might be off
The final 1/3 of “The House Across the Lake” is a cross between “The Exorcist” and the Meryl Streep movie “Death Becomes Her” . … This is not meant as a compliment. Needless to say I did not enjoy this book but kept reading it just to find out how the author would tie it all together for a happy ending. And amazingly enough, somehow he did. So if you are in the mood to read about a crazy, nosey murdering alcoholic helping a possessed neighbor who is in danger of being killed by her husband who is later possessed before being killed by a woman who was formerly possessed by the spirit of her ex husband who she also killed, have at it. For me, I am moving on to a better book while I recover from Covid.
**Note if this review sounds like delusional ramblings, remember I have Covid and my oxygen levels might be off
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 14, 2022
I AM SHOCKED THAT NOT EVERYONE IS GIVING THIS 5 STARS?!?!?! HELLO?!? DID WE READ THE SAME BOOK!?!?!? READ THIS NOW
March 6, 2024
Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake is another doozy.
The plotline sounds so promising, interesting. Casey Fletcher is a 35-year-old woman who is from a famous family. She is reeling from the recent death of her husband, drowning her sorrows in the warm arms of alcohol. After having a publicity nightmare, Casey’s famous mother sends Casey to their family lake house to lie low. While relaxing and drinking to the max, Casey spies her new neighbor Katherine, also a famous actress, in a swimming mishap. Casey jumps at the chance to rescue Katherine, and the two strike up a quick friendship.
However, Katherine disappears. What happened to her? And who is responsible?
The first 50% of the book is boring, and the last half of the book is eye-rollingly bad. At the beginning of the book, there is an information dump of Casey’s background. No subtle discoveries here.
Casey also uses her binoculars to spy on her neighbors. This could have been a very promising storyline, but it wasn’t. The spying neighbor would have been better with some steam. Sager does try to write some of it as steamy but the attempt falls flat.
Contributing to this miss is the narrator. Although the narrator, Bernadette Dunne, is acclaimed, she is the wrong choice for The House Across the Lake. As mentioned earlier, Casey Fletcher is 35 years old. For reference, Megan Fox is 36 years old. However, Bernadette Dunne is around 60 years old (according to my internet sleuthing).
Just to be clear, Dunne is a terrific narrator, and she has credits under her belt such as Memoirs of a Geisha (which I loved). I just had an extremely difficult time matching this narrator’s voice to our main character.
The storytelling is just off in this book. Recently, I was reading a book, Daemon Voices, a collection of essays about storytelling by my favorite author, Philip Pullman. In one of his essays, he set the scene as storytellers standing on corners, telling their stories. With every sentence, the author has to try to keep the people entertained, enraptured, or else the audience will get bored and go listen to another story. In this case, I feel that Sager should have worked more on his storytelling skills, because The House Across the Lake did not hold my attention.
In Daemon Voices, Pullman stated that he wrote about a dozen different version of His Dark Materials. He has a commitment to quality. I would like that same commitment to quality from Riley Sager. He needs to fire his editor and get some additional beta readers. This book makes me really sad because 1) I feel a bit cheated out of my money and 2) Riley Sager is capable of so much more. He does need to get rid of the “yes” people on this team though.
Overall, this book is boring and gets worse from there.
2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities
Connect With Me!
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The plotline sounds so promising, interesting. Casey Fletcher is a 35-year-old woman who is from a famous family. She is reeling from the recent death of her husband, drowning her sorrows in the warm arms of alcohol. After having a publicity nightmare, Casey’s famous mother sends Casey to their family lake house to lie low. While relaxing and drinking to the max, Casey spies her new neighbor Katherine, also a famous actress, in a swimming mishap. Casey jumps at the chance to rescue Katherine, and the two strike up a quick friendship.
However, Katherine disappears. What happened to her? And who is responsible?
The first 50% of the book is boring, and the last half of the book is eye-rollingly bad. At the beginning of the book, there is an information dump of Casey’s background. No subtle discoveries here.
Casey also uses her binoculars to spy on her neighbors. This could have been a very promising storyline, but it wasn’t. The spying neighbor would have been better with some steam. Sager does try to write some of it as steamy but the attempt falls flat.
Contributing to this miss is the narrator. Although the narrator, Bernadette Dunne, is acclaimed, she is the wrong choice for The House Across the Lake. As mentioned earlier, Casey Fletcher is 35 years old. For reference, Megan Fox is 36 years old. However, Bernadette Dunne is around 60 years old (according to my internet sleuthing).
Just to be clear, Dunne is a terrific narrator, and she has credits under her belt such as Memoirs of a Geisha (which I loved). I just had an extremely difficult time matching this narrator’s voice to our main character.
The storytelling is just off in this book. Recently, I was reading a book, Daemon Voices, a collection of essays about storytelling by my favorite author, Philip Pullman. In one of his essays, he set the scene as storytellers standing on corners, telling their stories. With every sentence, the author has to try to keep the people entertained, enraptured, or else the audience will get bored and go listen to another story. In this case, I feel that Sager should have worked more on his storytelling skills, because The House Across the Lake did not hold my attention.
In Daemon Voices, Pullman stated that he wrote about a dozen different version of His Dark Materials. He has a commitment to quality. I would like that same commitment to quality from Riley Sager. He needs to fire his editor and get some additional beta readers. This book makes me really sad because 1) I feel a bit cheated out of my money and 2) Riley Sager is capable of so much more. He does need to get rid of the “yes” people on this team though.
Overall, this book is boring and gets worse from there.
2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities
Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta
July 2, 2022
3 ½ * rounded down to a 3
I am a huge fan of Mr. Sager and I have been ruminating on this review for 2 days now. All of his previous books have been 4 and even a 5* for me. I’m sorry to say that this one was a disappointment.
Casey Fletcher was a successful film and then theater star until her husband’s death about a year ago. This set off months of binge drinking which left her fired from her last production. Social media has been cruel and photos have appeared everywhere of her drinking and acting in all manner of inappropriate ways. Neither her best friend, her sister or mother have been able to help get her back on track.
Her mother, a film star in her own right, has given Casey a choice. Enter rehab or spend time at their secluded lake house in Vermont. Casey chose the latter. Being alone however has only made her drink more and she finds herself bored and spending time on her porch staring out at the dark surface of Lake Green. When she finds her husband’s binoculars which he used for birding, she begins to spy on her neighbors across the lake. They are a famous couple, Katherine is a supermodel and her husband Tom is pioneering a tech company.
One morning Casey sees a body floating on the lake. She takes action quickly and ends up saving Katherine from drowning. They become friends but Casey becomes more and more convinced that something is not right with their marriage.
This sends Casey off in a myriad of ways, trying to discover what is really going on in the house across the lake.
I HAD A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THIS BOOK!!
First off, so much of the first half of the book seemed like a rehash of “The Woman In The Window”, I kept waiting for the pace to pick up but that didn’t happen until 60% into the book.
The characters seemed very flat to me, so unlike Riley’s other books. I didn’t really feel engaged with any of them and Casey’s actions were just downright juvenile and reckless. The amount of alcohol she is said to drink would surely leave her beyond reasoning in any competent way.
There were lots of twists, but they all came at the end, one right after the other and mostly unbelievable. That’s o.k. I still had hopes for a stellar ending!!
NOPE THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN!! What I read felt like a combination of folklore, fantasy , supernatural or the feeling of “WHAT THE HECK DID I JUST READ”.
I’m still giving this a 3* because I enjoy Sager’s style of writing and this could have been more engaging if the twists had been more well placed throughout instead of all left until the end!
So far I am the outlier for this one so give it a try, you may love it!!l I will continue to be a fan of this author and will be on the lookout for his next novel.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.
I am a huge fan of Mr. Sager and I have been ruminating on this review for 2 days now. All of his previous books have been 4 and even a 5* for me. I’m sorry to say that this one was a disappointment.
Casey Fletcher was a successful film and then theater star until her husband’s death about a year ago. This set off months of binge drinking which left her fired from her last production. Social media has been cruel and photos have appeared everywhere of her drinking and acting in all manner of inappropriate ways. Neither her best friend, her sister or mother have been able to help get her back on track.
Her mother, a film star in her own right, has given Casey a choice. Enter rehab or spend time at their secluded lake house in Vermont. Casey chose the latter. Being alone however has only made her drink more and she finds herself bored and spending time on her porch staring out at the dark surface of Lake Green. When she finds her husband’s binoculars which he used for birding, she begins to spy on her neighbors across the lake. They are a famous couple, Katherine is a supermodel and her husband Tom is pioneering a tech company.
One morning Casey sees a body floating on the lake. She takes action quickly and ends up saving Katherine from drowning. They become friends but Casey becomes more and more convinced that something is not right with their marriage.
This sends Casey off in a myriad of ways, trying to discover what is really going on in the house across the lake.
I HAD A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THIS BOOK!!
First off, so much of the first half of the book seemed like a rehash of “The Woman In The Window”, I kept waiting for the pace to pick up but that didn’t happen until 60% into the book.
The characters seemed very flat to me, so unlike Riley’s other books. I didn’t really feel engaged with any of them and Casey’s actions were just downright juvenile and reckless. The amount of alcohol she is said to drink would surely leave her beyond reasoning in any competent way.
There were lots of twists, but they all came at the end, one right after the other and mostly unbelievable. That’s o.k. I still had hopes for a stellar ending!!
NOPE THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN!! What I read felt like a combination of folklore, fantasy , supernatural or the feeling of “WHAT THE HECK DID I JUST READ”.
I’m still giving this a 3* because I enjoy Sager’s style of writing and this could have been more engaging if the twists had been more well placed throughout instead of all left until the end!
So far I am the outlier for this one so give it a try, you may love it!!l I will continue to be a fan of this author and will be on the lookout for his next novel.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.
October 31, 2022
THE ENDING WAS WILD and I never saw it coming. My first Riley Sager book and I will definitely be reading more!!
July 14, 2022
GOODLUCK EVERYONE. BOOK IS NOW PUBLISHED
TW: Alcoholism, toxic parent relationship, drugs, death of spouse, domestic abuse, child abuse, suicide
*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of 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 who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.
One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.
Release Date: 06/21/2022
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 368
Rating: ⭐
Read: March 20th, 2022
What I Liked:
• The cover
• The writing has gotten better
What I Didn't Like:
• Across the lake is mentioned a ton
• The plot feels like something we've read/watched 1, 000 times before
• Troup of broke husband married to rich woman
• 183 mentions to the word water
• The "twist" ending
• The ending
• Another female lead
Overall Thoughts:This is the first time I've ever received a disclaimer (**Please note: this book has some major surprises and we encourage you to keep reviews SPOILER-FREE to preserve the reading experience for everyone**) for a book before. Does it make me want to listen? No. There was a study done that when people are told NOT to do something it makes them want to. It feels weird to be told to review a book honestly but not talk about spoilers. So no one ever should write a review that talks about it? That's not me so here's my SPOILER review.
If you're like me you don't expect much from Riley Sager, so when I was sent this book for review I was eager to jump right in. In typical Sager fashion, we have a woman as our main character who is alone. For me, the conversations between the characters always feel so cheap and fake. Like there is something off about it.
Why is there always some kind of actor in his books? The last one was a girl who dreamed of movies and now this one is an actress.
His books always remind me of when you fall asleep to one movie but wake up to another movie. He always mixes one movie with another movie. In this case, it's Rear Window. The descriptions to the window and how they travel seamlessly through each room that's Hitchcock's Rear Window aká It Had to Be Murder for which Hitchcock based Rear Window. The author even mentions how what she is doing is like Rear Window.
Riley Sager has this way of writing situations with women that on a normal day would make them feel uncomfortable, yet he acts like it's normal. Maybe because he's a man he can't get what it's like for a female. There's a part where Casey is watching the neighbors across the lake with binoculars and a man she doesn't know asks her if she's enjoying the view. Does Casey act so startled that she acts in a normal way? No, she is calm and jokes back with him. Like no no no! A woman alone in the middle of the woods would NOT just act all happy and think this stranger is cute. She would think this strange man just showed up out of nowhere at my house while I am alone and he could hurt me. That's where he always loses me. The women don't react to normal dangers.
Yay..... Another HOT handyman 🥴Now you know you're in a Riley Sager book
How is she seeing this much going on with the binoculars at nighttime in the dark? She can see him smiling while he is on the water. She mentions that last night was foggy. How did she see across the lake? How did she see so clearly everything that Boone was doing? So did her husband really use these binoculars to look at birds or to stalk women?
I love that in this book the abuse that Katherine did to Tom (punching him in his face) is his fault because he grabbed her first. Imagine if roles were reversed... If Tom hit Katherine because she grabbed his arm. Our dear binocular-watching stalker would have been on the phone with the police. Agh.
The women in these books are always so ridiculous. There is so outlandish and jump to conclusions so fast it's insane. I love how she's had like three conversations with this Katherine lady and suddenly she knows that she's been murdered by her husband because she's not returning her phone call.
How did she not hear Boone open the door when he said he heard the scream? Earlier she had mentioned that she was able to hear the screen door squeak when it was open I doubt very much he was being quiet when he opened the screen door and stepped out this time since he heard a scream. Wouldn't he have checked on the neighbor to see if she was okay?
I love how calm she is when Boone is in her house. She remembers him showing up in her house when all the doors were locked. She wakes up the next morning and has breakfast with him because he made her food. The other thing that's annoying is when a man tells her to do something and she obeys and then finds out that he's right. Boone tells her to eat food and she'll feel better - she does - and now she is shoveling the food down.
Why does every Riley Sager book have to have some stupid man whose quote sexy show up in this girl's life and always have to save her in some way?
Every drink Ellie has seems to give her superpowers. She has like 8 or 12 drinks and she's able to tow across a lake during a storm that's turned the water choppy. Being that wasted I would assume she couldn't do much other than pass out. It's mentioned before she's had 6 drinks and passed out on the porch chair all night, but here she is being a superhero.
Was Riley Sager drunk when he came up with that weird plot twist of Katherine being possessed by Len's body 🤔
Was easy to guess Len was the killer as the murders stopped almost exactly up to the point he died. Plus hasn't it been the boyfriend a few times in his books? If he knew he had the licenses in the tackle box why oh why would he be cool with her getting the lighter? You're going to tell me he forgot about them in there. Then she's gone long enough that she can call two hotels to find out about if he stayed there and he briefly questions her being gone so long to get a lighter.... Also how RIDICULOUS is it that she finds out he is a killer and decided at that moment that she is just going to kill him, comes up with a plan in 10 minutes, and is he is dead in a few hours. Not sure how no one on this quiet lake that had people in the house on a summer night heard anything.
How Riley sager assumes people are reading his book
and how I'm reading it 
when I got to the twist.
I've watched a lot of interviews with killers and so I think it's odd how much Len is saying he did all of this because of his messed-up childhood. Most times killers just talk about how it's a feeling that they get I can't really recall many of them blaming their childhoods. I'm sure there are a few but he just sounds the opposite of a killer. Killers love taking the blame for their murders and he seems like he's making an excuse to dissociate from them.
Nowhere in this book up this point did it even hint at a supernatural element. It's out of the blue that now there's a possession. What a dumb ending. So no one swam in the lake for 18 months that he could have possessed? At first, I thought it had to be someone that had died but he was able to possess Casey so anyone swimming could have been possessed.
Riley sager treats alcoholism as though it's something you can switch on and off. She just manages to forget she hasn't had a drink in hours or days when before she was getting shaky not having it. She then purges the house of all the alcohol like it's nothing.
It's never explained why Katherine was on the laptop and turned around startled when Tom caught her. Or why she wasn't allowed on the phone with Boone when she rushed off the phone when Tom caught her.
Boone's wife killed herself by throwing herself down the stairs??? What? Who kills themselves in such a weird way? Seriously someone give me one person who has killed themself in this way.
Not sure why Casey is suddenly now worried about where the bodies are at when before she didn't care at all before.
They come up with a plan to tell the police that Katherine was just found coming out of the woods lost. What about the rope burns on her wrists? There's no evidence that she was out in the elements for days.
Oh, then we find out Tom is trying to kill her for real. He shows up at Casey's house doing this
but with a wine bottle because what couldn't be a whiter thing to do. I kept laughing picturing him getting in a boat with a wine bottle to look so threatening. How did he know right at that moment that she was going to remember the drug residue on the glass that broke when she never mentioned it to him before? It doesn't make any sense for Len to talk to Tom about what Casey did because he was still in love with her. It's so stupid that he still wants to go through with killing his wife when not 2 days ago they all were suspecting him! Oh and he wants to kill Casey too because she knows the truth. Dude, everyone is going to notice she's missing after all this weird shit went down. Casey manages to kill him with the wine bottle. What a weird and desperate twist the author tried to insert here. It was so cheesy and misplaced. How did Tom get to the other side of the lake that she never noticed and no one saw him?
PS - the storm turns out to be nothing than a small rain storm 🤷🏻♀️. This whole time it's talked about and it goes flat.
Final Thoughts: The whole time I wanted it to be Katherine and Boone having an affair and trying to bump off Tom because she didn't want to share her money with him anymore. Oh, Eli was working with Len and they murdered those girls. Sad that the ending he gave was the best he had going for him.
This book was odd. It feels like he's running out of ideas. I'd tell the author to take some time off and come back with a book that's not rushed.
IG | Blog
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Previous review: I hope this one is about a girl who makes stupid mistakes, constantly puts herself into danger, and falls in love with the killer but doesn't know it despite all the warning signs being there.
TW: Alcoholism, toxic parent relationship, drugs, death of spouse, domestic abuse, child abuse, suicide
*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of 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 who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.
One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.
Release Date: 06/21/2022
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 368
Rating: ⭐
Read: March 20th, 2022
What I Liked:
• The cover
• The writing has gotten better
What I Didn't Like:
• Across the lake is mentioned a ton
• The plot feels like something we've read/watched 1, 000 times before
• Troup of broke husband married to rich woman
• 183 mentions to the word water
• The "twist" ending
• The ending
• Another female lead
Overall Thoughts:This is the first time I've ever received a disclaimer (**Please note: this book has some major surprises and we encourage you to keep reviews SPOILER-FREE to preserve the reading experience for everyone**) for a book before. Does it make me want to listen? No. There was a study done that when people are told NOT to do something it makes them want to. It feels weird to be told to review a book honestly but not talk about spoilers. So no one ever should write a review that talks about it? That's not me so here's my SPOILER review.
If you're like me you don't expect much from Riley Sager, so when I was sent this book for review I was eager to jump right in. In typical Sager fashion, we have a woman as our main character who is alone. For me, the conversations between the characters always feel so cheap and fake. Like there is something off about it.
Why is there always some kind of actor in his books? The last one was a girl who dreamed of movies and now this one is an actress.
His books always remind me of when you fall asleep to one movie but wake up to another movie. He always mixes one movie with another movie. In this case, it's Rear Window. The descriptions to the window and how they travel seamlessly through each room that's Hitchcock's Rear Window aká It Had to Be Murder for which Hitchcock based Rear Window. The author even mentions how what she is doing is like Rear Window.
Riley Sager has this way of writing situations with women that on a normal day would make them feel uncomfortable, yet he acts like it's normal. Maybe because he's a man he can't get what it's like for a female. There's a part where Casey is watching the neighbors across the lake with binoculars and a man she doesn't know asks her if she's enjoying the view. Does Casey act so startled that she acts in a normal way? No, she is calm and jokes back with him. Like no no no! A woman alone in the middle of the woods would NOT just act all happy and think this stranger is cute. She would think this strange man just showed up out of nowhere at my house while I am alone and he could hurt me. That's where he always loses me. The women don't react to normal dangers.
Yay..... Another HOT handyman 🥴Now you know you're in a Riley Sager book
How is she seeing this much going on with the binoculars at nighttime in the dark? She can see him smiling while he is on the water. She mentions that last night was foggy. How did she see across the lake? How did she see so clearly everything that Boone was doing? So did her husband really use these binoculars to look at birds or to stalk women?
I love that in this book the abuse that Katherine did to Tom (punching him in his face) is his fault because he grabbed her first. Imagine if roles were reversed... If Tom hit Katherine because she grabbed his arm. Our dear binocular-watching stalker would have been on the phone with the police. Agh.
The women in these books are always so ridiculous. There is so outlandish and jump to conclusions so fast it's insane. I love how she's had like three conversations with this Katherine lady and suddenly she knows that she's been murdered by her husband because she's not returning her phone call.
How did she not hear Boone open the door when he said he heard the scream? Earlier she had mentioned that she was able to hear the screen door squeak when it was open I doubt very much he was being quiet when he opened the screen door and stepped out this time since he heard a scream. Wouldn't he have checked on the neighbor to see if she was okay?
I love how calm she is when Boone is in her house. She remembers him showing up in her house when all the doors were locked. She wakes up the next morning and has breakfast with him because he made her food. The other thing that's annoying is when a man tells her to do something and she obeys and then finds out that he's right. Boone tells her to eat food and she'll feel better - she does - and now she is shoveling the food down.
Why does every Riley Sager book have to have some stupid man whose quote sexy show up in this girl's life and always have to save her in some way?
Every drink Ellie has seems to give her superpowers. She has like 8 or 12 drinks and she's able to tow across a lake during a storm that's turned the water choppy. Being that wasted I would assume she couldn't do much other than pass out. It's mentioned before she's had 6 drinks and passed out on the porch chair all night, but here she is being a superhero.
Was Riley Sager drunk when he came up with that weird plot twist of Katherine being possessed by Len's body 🤔
Was easy to guess Len was the killer as the murders stopped almost exactly up to the point he died. Plus hasn't it been the boyfriend a few times in his books? If he knew he had the licenses in the tackle box why oh why would he be cool with her getting the lighter? You're going to tell me he forgot about them in there. Then she's gone long enough that she can call two hotels to find out about if he stayed there and he briefly questions her being gone so long to get a lighter.... Also how RIDICULOUS is it that she finds out he is a killer and decided at that moment that she is just going to kill him, comes up with a plan in 10 minutes, and is he is dead in a few hours. Not sure how no one on this quiet lake that had people in the house on a summer night heard anything.
How Riley sager assumes people are reading his book
and how I'm reading it when I got to the twist.I've watched a lot of interviews with killers and so I think it's odd how much Len is saying he did all of this because of his messed-up childhood. Most times killers just talk about how it's a feeling that they get I can't really recall many of them blaming their childhoods. I'm sure there are a few but he just sounds the opposite of a killer. Killers love taking the blame for their murders and he seems like he's making an excuse to dissociate from them.
Nowhere in this book up this point did it even hint at a supernatural element. It's out of the blue that now there's a possession. What a dumb ending. So no one swam in the lake for 18 months that he could have possessed? At first, I thought it had to be someone that had died but he was able to possess Casey so anyone swimming could have been possessed.
Riley sager treats alcoholism as though it's something you can switch on and off. She just manages to forget she hasn't had a drink in hours or days when before she was getting shaky not having it. She then purges the house of all the alcohol like it's nothing.
It's never explained why Katherine was on the laptop and turned around startled when Tom caught her. Or why she wasn't allowed on the phone with Boone when she rushed off the phone when Tom caught her.
Boone's wife killed herself by throwing herself down the stairs??? What? Who kills themselves in such a weird way? Seriously someone give me one person who has killed themself in this way.
Not sure why Casey is suddenly now worried about where the bodies are at when before she didn't care at all before.
They come up with a plan to tell the police that Katherine was just found coming out of the woods lost. What about the rope burns on her wrists? There's no evidence that she was out in the elements for days.
Oh, then we find out Tom is trying to kill her for real. He shows up at Casey's house doing this
but with a wine bottle because what couldn't be a whiter thing to do. I kept laughing picturing him getting in a boat with a wine bottle to look so threatening. How did he know right at that moment that she was going to remember the drug residue on the glass that broke when she never mentioned it to him before? It doesn't make any sense for Len to talk to Tom about what Casey did because he was still in love with her. It's so stupid that he still wants to go through with killing his wife when not 2 days ago they all were suspecting him! Oh and he wants to kill Casey too because she knows the truth. Dude, everyone is going to notice she's missing after all this weird shit went down. Casey manages to kill him with the wine bottle. What a weird and desperate twist the author tried to insert here. It was so cheesy and misplaced. How did Tom get to the other side of the lake that she never noticed and no one saw him?PS - the storm turns out to be nothing than a small rain storm 🤷🏻♀️. This whole time it's talked about and it goes flat.
Final Thoughts: The whole time I wanted it to be Katherine and Boone having an affair and trying to bump off Tom because she didn't want to share her money with him anymore. Oh, Eli was working with Len and they murdered those girls. Sad that the ending he gave was the best he had going for him.
This book was odd. It feels like he's running out of ideas. I'd tell the author to take some time off and come back with a book that's not rushed.
IG | Blog
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Previous review: I hope this one is about a girl who makes stupid mistakes, constantly puts herself into danger, and falls in love with the killer but doesn't know it despite all the warning signs being there.
September 28, 2022
Wow! I have so many complex feelings about this book! Some parts made me scream “come on! It’s too far fetched and ridiculous!” when some out of nowhere elements hit you in the face out of nowhere! But some parts are truly entertaining, surprising which made me awe the author’s dark sense of humor!
I don’t think this will be my favorite book of Riley Sager but I have to admit : it’s absolutely unusual, creative, twisty, mind spinning!
At the beginning main character Casey Fletcher made me so irritated! I got it she’s grieving from a big trauma! She lost her husband but I didn’t understand the main reason of self hatred and choice to drink herself to death!
The book started slow burn. Casey kept numbing her pain with more booze, self sabotaging, spying on neighbors, getting more dislikable person at each chapter! And mostly she stuck in the same cycle till she thinks something happened to her neighbor!
But when got reach the last third I felt that sudden sucker punch on my face! Yes, so many unexpected things start occurring that destroying your last remaining marbles! You keep signing “ I got voices in my head and they won’t go! The spirits in my head and they won’t go” for a tribute to the Strumbellas! The shit totally hits the fan!
It is a combination of Hitchcock’s masterpiece “ Rear Window” with Woman in the window ( it’s also inspired by Hitchcock’s work), Girl on the train and Colho’s Layla!
Main characters are not so much likable but at the end eventually you learn to tolerate with them! Maybe you dislike them because they are way too much privileged types; Casey Fletcher: a daughter of Broadway star mother, mostly trying too hard not to live under her stardom’s shadow, getting involved into tabloid scandal after she’s been sacked from her Broadway play for consuming too much alcohol!
Now she’s at the lake house where her husband was drowned. She recently saves the life of Katherine Royce who was also about to get drowned in the lake just like her husband.
Katherine is ex supermodel, new philanthropist, married to Thomas, founder of social media company called “ Mixer”, such an intense, pretentious, absolutely another irritating character!
Casey inherited her husband’s binoculars and using them to spy on her neighbors instead of scrolling through several trashy formats on Netflix which is totally understandable.
When Katherine is AWOL, she thinks her husband might be involved in her disappearance. Didn’t Katherine tell her she kept paying everything for her husband’s social media app and he wouldn’t let her go without a fight. ( he can go far to kill her! )
But when Casey digs deeper she realizes there’s also a serial killer targeting young girls in town. Could Tom be also responsible from those incidents?
Overall: I was planning to give three stars after that unexpected, out of nowhere twist but last third was way too much gripping, fast pacing and entertaining for me! So I decided to round up 3.5 stars to 4 girl power, haunting lake stars!
For the record: I wouldn’t be so generous if I wasn’t a big fan of the author!
I don’t think this will be my favorite book of Riley Sager but I have to admit : it’s absolutely unusual, creative, twisty, mind spinning!
At the beginning main character Casey Fletcher made me so irritated! I got it she’s grieving from a big trauma! She lost her husband but I didn’t understand the main reason of self hatred and choice to drink herself to death!
The book started slow burn. Casey kept numbing her pain with more booze, self sabotaging, spying on neighbors, getting more dislikable person at each chapter! And mostly she stuck in the same cycle till she thinks something happened to her neighbor!
But when got reach the last third I felt that sudden sucker punch on my face! Yes, so many unexpected things start occurring that destroying your last remaining marbles! You keep signing “ I got voices in my head and they won’t go! The spirits in my head and they won’t go” for a tribute to the Strumbellas! The shit totally hits the fan!
It is a combination of Hitchcock’s masterpiece “ Rear Window” with Woman in the window ( it’s also inspired by Hitchcock’s work), Girl on the train and Colho’s Layla!
Main characters are not so much likable but at the end eventually you learn to tolerate with them! Maybe you dislike them because they are way too much privileged types; Casey Fletcher: a daughter of Broadway star mother, mostly trying too hard not to live under her stardom’s shadow, getting involved into tabloid scandal after she’s been sacked from her Broadway play for consuming too much alcohol!
Now she’s at the lake house where her husband was drowned. She recently saves the life of Katherine Royce who was also about to get drowned in the lake just like her husband.
Katherine is ex supermodel, new philanthropist, married to Thomas, founder of social media company called “ Mixer”, such an intense, pretentious, absolutely another irritating character!
Casey inherited her husband’s binoculars and using them to spy on her neighbors instead of scrolling through several trashy formats on Netflix which is totally understandable.
When Katherine is AWOL, she thinks her husband might be involved in her disappearance. Didn’t Katherine tell her she kept paying everything for her husband’s social media app and he wouldn’t let her go without a fight. ( he can go far to kill her! )
But when Casey digs deeper she realizes there’s also a serial killer targeting young girls in town. Could Tom be also responsible from those incidents?
Overall: I was planning to give three stars after that unexpected, out of nowhere twist but last third was way too much gripping, fast pacing and entertaining for me! So I decided to round up 3.5 stars to 4 girl power, haunting lake stars!
For the record: I wouldn’t be so generous if I wasn’t a big fan of the author!
June 23, 2022
One, two, three, one two three, drink
One, two, three, one, two three drink
One, two, three, one, two three, drink
Throw’em back till I lose count.
(lyrics of Chandelier by Sia)
I couldn’t help but think of this song as disgraced former actress, Casey Fletcher spends her days and nights, in a “bourbon haze” drinking to forget all that happened over the past year. 🥃
She has retreated to her family’s lake house in Vermont, located on Lake Greene, and armed with binoculars she watches Tom and Katherine Royce, who live in the house across the lake.
Floor to ceiling windows make their modern structure resemble a doll house from the back, each room clearly illuminated against the murky lake and pitch black night.
Serious “The Woman In The Window” (A.J. Finn) vibes for the first 50%.
Fortunately, her voyeurism pays off when she is able to rescue Katherine Royce from drowning. She appeared to be dead but sputtered back to life, and the two hit it off.
Instantly.
But, will she be able to save her friend, a second time, when she disappears?
Fortunately, Boone, a “hot former cop” is staying in the lake house next door-so the two can team up.
(How convenient)
I was really struggling at this point, despite our leading lady’s witty sense of humor, and a few clever references to places from earlier books, such as the “ The Bartholomew” and being a Nightingale Girl. The story just lacked the atmosphere and complexity of past work.
The book is told from the alternating timelines of BEFORE and NOW, with an eerie photograph of the lake before each NOW chapter. Look carefully and you might see a reflection in it.
Centuries ago, it was a common belief that reflective surfaces could trap the souls of the dead.
Alcohol, however, can trap the souls of the living, and I grew weary of Casey’s reliance on the bottle.
There are a couple of twists that I didn’t see coming.
The first, I never suspected and really liked.
The second, I didn’t guess either, but I really disliked it.
A lot.
Should have ended it with the first!
I have read each of Riley Sager’s books and all have earned 4 or 5 stars from me, until now.
I just wanted this one to end, and if it hadn’t been for twist #1-my rating may have even been lower.
😬
A buddy read with Mary Beth-be sure to read her amazing review for another opinion!
Thank You to my local Public library for the loan!
One, two, three, one, two three drink
One, two, three, one, two three, drink
Throw’em back till I lose count.
(lyrics of Chandelier by Sia)
I couldn’t help but think of this song as disgraced former actress, Casey Fletcher spends her days and nights, in a “bourbon haze” drinking to forget all that happened over the past year. 🥃
She has retreated to her family’s lake house in Vermont, located on Lake Greene, and armed with binoculars she watches Tom and Katherine Royce, who live in the house across the lake.
Floor to ceiling windows make their modern structure resemble a doll house from the back, each room clearly illuminated against the murky lake and pitch black night.
Serious “The Woman In The Window” (A.J. Finn) vibes for the first 50%.
Fortunately, her voyeurism pays off when she is able to rescue Katherine Royce from drowning. She appeared to be dead but sputtered back to life, and the two hit it off.
Instantly.
But, will she be able to save her friend, a second time, when she disappears?
Fortunately, Boone, a “hot former cop” is staying in the lake house next door-so the two can team up.
(How convenient)
I was really struggling at this point, despite our leading lady’s witty sense of humor, and a few clever references to places from earlier books, such as the “ The Bartholomew” and being a Nightingale Girl. The story just lacked the atmosphere and complexity of past work.
The book is told from the alternating timelines of BEFORE and NOW, with an eerie photograph of the lake before each NOW chapter. Look carefully and you might see a reflection in it.
Centuries ago, it was a common belief that reflective surfaces could trap the souls of the dead.
Alcohol, however, can trap the souls of the living, and I grew weary of Casey’s reliance on the bottle.
There are a couple of twists that I didn’t see coming.
The first, I never suspected and really liked.
The second, I didn’t guess either, but I really disliked it.
A lot.
Should have ended it with the first!
I have read each of Riley Sager’s books and all have earned 4 or 5 stars from me, until now.
I just wanted this one to end, and if it hadn’t been for twist #1-my rating may have even been lower.
😬
A buddy read with Mary Beth-be sure to read her amazing review for another opinion!
Thank You to my local Public library for the loan!
July 30, 2022
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!
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!
June 24, 2022
2 stars
Wow, Riley Sager has really bombed with these last two releases. This is possibly one of the worst suspense novels I have read in a while.
The House Across the Lake has the most interesting premise, a nosy neighbor who spies on her neighbors across the lake and thinks a husband has murdered his wife. But in reality, it was beyond boring and the twists were completely unbelievable and laughable. I found myself muttering “what the fuck” to myself while reading this book and not in a good way.
Not sure if Sager has lost his touch/giving into pressure and demand for more books, but this one and Survive the Night were not it. I’m mad I wasted a libro.fm credit on this one. I think I’ll never get that reading high like I did for Home Before Dark and Last Time I Lied ever again…
Side note: I thought the main character of the book was an old woman because that’s what the narrator of the audiobook sounds like. Imagine my surprise when halfway through I figured out she was 35. Publishers, can we not do this? It made things confusing for me as a reader since I didn’t have the physical copy of the book on hand.
Wow, Riley Sager has really bombed with these last two releases. This is possibly one of the worst suspense novels I have read in a while.
The House Across the Lake has the most interesting premise, a nosy neighbor who spies on her neighbors across the lake and thinks a husband has murdered his wife. But in reality, it was beyond boring and the twists were completely unbelievable and laughable. I found myself muttering “what the fuck” to myself while reading this book and not in a good way.
Not sure if Sager has lost his touch/giving into pressure and demand for more books, but this one and Survive the Night were not it. I’m mad I wasted a libro.fm credit on this one. I think I’ll never get that reading high like I did for Home Before Dark and Last Time I Lied ever again…
Side note: I thought the main character of the book was an old woman because that’s what the narrator of the audiobook sounds like. Imagine my surprise when halfway through I figured out she was 35. Publishers, can we not do this? It made things confusing for me as a reader since I didn’t have the physical copy of the book on hand.
July 2, 2022
oof. i think this is RSs book ive enjoyed the least… HOWEVER! i didnt hate this like it seems a good amount of other readers did. i easily finished this, but that doesnt mean there werent some bumps along the way.
first of all, i will go on record and say that when i read one of RSs previous books, i complained that there wasnt a when it would have perfectly fit the tone of the story. so now i feel a little hypocritical because its present in this story, but i didnt like it. it honestly comes out of left field and i think, had it been integrated a little more into the story instead of being chucked in at the end, it may have worked. i think it just needed a little more explanation and i could have been on board with it.
that being said, i can understand why is was included and i like the concept. the whole “unreliable alcoholic female narrator witnesses her neighbours do something shady because she was spying on them” is sooo over done (thank goodness this wasnt titled ‘the woman across the lake’ lol). so this story definitely needs something to make it different. but its lacklustre execution is the primarily reason why i didnt like the ending. its a little all over the place and just leaves the reader scratching their heads when they close the book.
like i said, it wasnt hard to me to finish this - RS is a great author. but this one didnt quite reach the high expectations i have when it comes to his books. better luck next time!
↠ 3 stars
first of all, i will go on record and say that when i read one of RSs previous books, i complained that there wasnt a when it would have perfectly fit the tone of the story. so now i feel a little hypocritical because its present in this story, but i didnt like it. it honestly comes out of left field and i think, had it been integrated a little more into the story instead of being chucked in at the end, it may have worked. i think it just needed a little more explanation and i could have been on board with it.
that being said, i can understand why is was included and i like the concept. the whole “unreliable alcoholic female narrator witnesses her neighbours do something shady because she was spying on them” is sooo over done (thank goodness this wasnt titled ‘the woman across the lake’ lol). so this story definitely needs something to make it different. but its lacklustre execution is the primarily reason why i didnt like the ending. its a little all over the place and just leaves the reader scratching their heads when they close the book.
like i said, it wasnt hard to me to finish this - RS is a great author. but this one didnt quite reach the high expectations i have when it comes to his books. better luck next time!
↠ 3 stars
December 5, 2022
I buddy read The House Across the Lake with my sis Irina, and we ended up having identical thoughts on all the ins and outs of what makes this story so divisive. On the one hand, it's incredibly difficult to put down, even with the worn and tired set up of "traumatized alcoholic female spying on glamorous couple across the way and thinks she sees something detrimental occur" trope at play. On the flip side, the main plot twist is really make-or-break it for the entire story, because everything else is so recycled it felt like reading the same tale for the millionth time. In fact, even though this book promised to be one where you think you know what will happen, but don't, it did take a leap similar to and , so even that didn't quite give me the gasp I was hoping to receive.
Obviously this book is incredibly difficult to review without giving away spoilers, so pardon my vagueness. What you need to know going in is that there are a handful of twists, and each one comes in a different way. The format of storytelling, which relies on short "Now" sections, lengthy "Then" sections, and a final "Later" section that serves as an epilogue of sorts, is structured that way for a reason.
Depending on how you break them up, there are multiple twists, but they can mostly be attributed to two different parts of the story, which is where most readers either love or hate it. The House Across the Lake very much feels like the blending of two books into one, which did give a slightly clunky vibe to the overall narrative and a feel that maybe too much is included, while also serving a particular type of plot twist that some readers like to know about before going in, as they don't enjoy it. Also, there is very much a dependence on the reader being denied certain information a la Agatha Christie style that ties into a twist, so if any of these things are a hard pass for you, you've been warned upfront.
Personally, I don't feel like I wasted my time reading it due to the compulsive nature of the book, but I'm also glad I didn't have to spend $28 on it either. Verdict? I'd make it a library request if possible. Sager has proven he is clearly a talented author, I just think this particular book wasn't his best.
*Many thanks to the publisher for my review copy.
Obviously this book is incredibly difficult to review without giving away spoilers, so pardon my vagueness. What you need to know going in is that there are a handful of twists, and each one comes in a different way. The format of storytelling, which relies on short "Now" sections, lengthy "Then" sections, and a final "Later" section that serves as an epilogue of sorts, is structured that way for a reason.
Depending on how you break them up, there are multiple twists, but they can mostly be attributed to two different parts of the story, which is where most readers either love or hate it. The House Across the Lake very much feels like the blending of two books into one, which did give a slightly clunky vibe to the overall narrative and a feel that maybe too much is included, while also serving a particular type of plot twist that some readers like to know about before going in, as they don't enjoy it. Also, there is very much a dependence on the reader being denied certain information a la Agatha Christie style that ties into a twist, so if any of these things are a hard pass for you, you've been warned upfront.
Personally, I don't feel like I wasted my time reading it due to the compulsive nature of the book, but I'm also glad I didn't have to spend $28 on it either. Verdict? I'd make it a library request if possible. Sager has proven he is clearly a talented author, I just think this particular book wasn't his best.
*Many thanks to the publisher for my review copy.
August 10, 2022
Eh. Not what I expected but Riley, what was that?!!
After the disappointment that was Survive the freaking Night, I was prayingggg that this would be a welcome change...
I think I prayed to hard because one: my prayers were sorta answered and two: they sort weren't...
TBH it's a miracle this girl didn't die of alcohol poisoning with how much she drank.....idk maybe it was the booze she drank because it seemed to give her superpowers or something...able to move quickly, super sensitive hearing, and able to see through a pair of binoculars no less, in the freaking dark.
Ha ha.
Watch the liveshow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23NIS...
Overall, it might be coming to and end of an all high time author for me but I guess that's a plot twist in itself.
2 STARS
Twitter | Bookstagram | Youtube |
After the disappointment that was Survive the freaking Night, I was prayingggg that this would be a welcome change...
I think I prayed to hard because one: my prayers were sorta answered and two: they sort weren't...
TBH it's a miracle this girl didn't die of alcohol poisoning with how much she drank.....idk maybe it was the booze she drank because it seemed to give her superpowers or something...able to move quickly, super sensitive hearing, and able to see through a pair of binoculars no less, in the freaking dark.
Ha ha.
Watch the liveshow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23NIS...
Overall, it might be coming to and end of an all high time author for me but I guess that's a plot twist in itself.
2 STARS
Twitter | Bookstagram | Youtube |
July 25, 2022
“The House Across the Lake” by Riley Sager starts out pretty interesting but as you keep reading, it starts to drag on. I felt several chapters going back and forth between “Before” and “Now” were repetitive. It took way too long for a real plot twist to actually happen as this was a slog to get through between the 20% - 70% mark of this novel.
I felt that many situations involving the main protagonist’s drinking adventures, Casey, could have been truncated to make this novel tighter and a better read. A lot of these situations kept repeating themselves and honestly felt like fluff to me. This novel could have easily been about 100 pages shorter and it would have been a better reading experience. It starts out creepy, fizzles out tremendously for a huge chunk of the novel, and by the time things get creepy again, it happened a lot later than it should have.
When it comes to the dialogue and conversations between characters, I also noticed that a lot of things continued to be repeated again to the point where I started to get frustrated because it’s a recurring theme. I’m all about a great story and the development of characters, but why explain a situation and then have that same situation repeated all over again in dialogue? I kept saying to just get to the point already and again, stop dragging things on.
Don’t worry, I won’t ruin anything for you but towards the end when things finally got interesting, it does get boring because again, Sager keeps fleshing the obvious out to the point of no control. I wish things were edited down a bit and made sure that every word counted, not elaborate on every little thing three or four times over just to add more pages for the sake of adding more pages.
When it came to the ending, I also felt it was unrealistic considering what went down with the lake and what eventually gets revealed. It’s like reading two different stories when it would have been better to simply stick to the creepiness of the lake and run with that, not trying to jam in something else that didn’t really need to be added in. It just felt very unbelievable and took me out of the reading experience entirely, which I’ve dealt with in the past with Sager in “Survive the Night” with unrealistic situations and endings that would never, ever happen in the real world.
Overall, I give “The House Across the Lake” by Riley Sager a 2/5 as I did enjoy the plot twists but they came way too late. I wish more was explained about Lake Greene to really wrap things up and not have all this fluff that just made for a mostly boring reading experience. I should have learned from “Survive the Night” but make no mistake about it, I am done with reading anything Sager writes from here on out.
I felt that many situations involving the main protagonist’s drinking adventures, Casey, could have been truncated to make this novel tighter and a better read. A lot of these situations kept repeating themselves and honestly felt like fluff to me. This novel could have easily been about 100 pages shorter and it would have been a better reading experience. It starts out creepy, fizzles out tremendously for a huge chunk of the novel, and by the time things get creepy again, it happened a lot later than it should have.
When it comes to the dialogue and conversations between characters, I also noticed that a lot of things continued to be repeated again to the point where I started to get frustrated because it’s a recurring theme. I’m all about a great story and the development of characters, but why explain a situation and then have that same situation repeated all over again in dialogue? I kept saying to just get to the point already and again, stop dragging things on.
Don’t worry, I won’t ruin anything for you but towards the end when things finally got interesting, it does get boring because again, Sager keeps fleshing the obvious out to the point of no control. I wish things were edited down a bit and made sure that every word counted, not elaborate on every little thing three or four times over just to add more pages for the sake of adding more pages.
When it came to the ending, I also felt it was unrealistic considering what went down with the lake and what eventually gets revealed. It’s like reading two different stories when it would have been better to simply stick to the creepiness of the lake and run with that, not trying to jam in something else that didn’t really need to be added in. It just felt very unbelievable and took me out of the reading experience entirely, which I’ve dealt with in the past with Sager in “Survive the Night” with unrealistic situations and endings that would never, ever happen in the real world.
Overall, I give “The House Across the Lake” by Riley Sager a 2/5 as I did enjoy the plot twists but they came way too late. I wish more was explained about Lake Greene to really wrap things up and not have all this fluff that just made for a mostly boring reading experience. I should have learned from “Survive the Night” but make no mistake about it, I am done with reading anything Sager writes from here on out.
May 10, 2022
Riley Sager's latest psychological suspense thriller is infused with echoes of Rear Window, it features widowed actress, Casey Fletcher, a woman struggling to cope, taking to the demon drink to escape her pain and misery, only find her life slipping out of her control, sacked from her last production. Her torrid downward spiral is captured by the media, this is exacerbated by unsympathetic coverage on social media, this leads to her famous movie star mother pushing her to to take up residence in the family home, for the peace and quiet, at the atmospheric Lake Greene in Vermont, under the mistaken belief that alcohol will be harder to obtain there. The lakehouse does not provide the much hoped for solace, but armed with her binoculars and the inevitable drink, she finds her interest snagged by the couple in the house across the lake. They are the wealthy tech businessman, Tom Royce, and his beautiful wife, the former model Katherine.
The glamorous perfect couple's facade begins to fray when Casey ends up rescuing Katherine from drowning in the lake. The two woman start to get to know each other as they edge towards becoming friends, but when Katherine disappears, given what she has observed, Casey is suspicious at this turn of events. This propels her to seek the truth as she investigates in this intriguing narrative with its twists, there are odd happenings, and the novel ends up venturing into surprisingly unexpected territory. This is a fast paced and entertaining psychological drama, there is the requisite unreliable narrator, but it does require a suspension of disbelief to get the most out of it. I recommend this to Sager fans and to others who enjoy psychological thrillers. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
The glamorous perfect couple's facade begins to fray when Casey ends up rescuing Katherine from drowning in the lake. The two woman start to get to know each other as they edge towards becoming friends, but when Katherine disappears, given what she has observed, Casey is suspicious at this turn of events. This propels her to seek the truth as she investigates in this intriguing narrative with its twists, there are odd happenings, and the novel ends up venturing into surprisingly unexpected territory. This is a fast paced and entertaining psychological drama, there is the requisite unreliable narrator, but it does require a suspension of disbelief to get the most out of it. I recommend this to Sager fans and to others who enjoy psychological thrillers. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
June 28, 2022
This one gave me Rear Window/ Evelyn Hardcastle/Misery lake vibes!
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
Release date: 06-21-22
Mixed feelings galore!
The basic plot is not original and has been done many times before. An alcohol fueled woman at her window giving her binoculars a workout, swinging them around from room to room, watching inside the half glass house across the lake.
This time it is Casey, a widowed actress who is staying at her family's charming little ramshackle lake house. Her mom calls daily to check in on her and always asks if she has been drinking. She always replies, "Of course not." She is lying though, even the glassy eyed moose head mounted on the wall seems to taunt her, like everyone, it is judging her too.
I was so excited when I began this book. I raced through the pages trying to figure out the twist, preparing to be blindsided, laughing out loud at so much of the mad as a hatter insanity!
In the end, I struggled with the plot device used, the disappointing reveals and the conclusion. Maybe if I had known the direction the narrative would take, I would have enjoyed it more.
I listened to most of the book and the narrator was just okay. The male voicing seemed a bit forced. I had the ecopy and only read maybe 15%.
Even with the struggles, I absolutely did enjoy it because Sager's writing style, sarcasm, jokey jokes, and settings just thrill me every single time!
P.S. Casey, please stay far, far away from Lake Greene in the future!
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
Release date: 06-21-22
Mixed feelings galore!
The basic plot is not original and has been done many times before. An alcohol fueled woman at her window giving her binoculars a workout, swinging them around from room to room, watching inside the half glass house across the lake.
This time it is Casey, a widowed actress who is staying at her family's charming little ramshackle lake house. Her mom calls daily to check in on her and always asks if she has been drinking. She always replies, "Of course not." She is lying though, even the glassy eyed moose head mounted on the wall seems to taunt her, like everyone, it is judging her too.
I was so excited when I began this book. I raced through the pages trying to figure out the twist, preparing to be blindsided, laughing out loud at so much of the mad as a hatter insanity!
In the end, I struggled with the plot device used, the disappointing reveals and the conclusion. Maybe if I had known the direction the narrative would take, I would have enjoyed it more.
I listened to most of the book and the narrator was just okay. The male voicing seemed a bit forced. I had the ecopy and only read maybe 15%.
Even with the struggles, I absolutely did enjoy it because Sager's writing style, sarcasm, jokey jokes, and settings just thrill me every single time!
P.S. Casey, please stay far, far away from Lake Greene in the future!
April 28, 2022
Do y'all remember when we were super excited once we finished home before dark and wanted Riley to publish a supernatural book? Yeah? Right? Yeah, so this isn't it.
The worst supernatural book I've ever read in my life.
Riley gets a second strike.
The worst supernatural book I've ever read in my life.
Riley gets a second strike.
June 27, 2022
Casey is an actress who hasn’t worked in awhile…due to her husband’s death and her subsequent alcoholism. She’s currently hiding away at her cottage in Lake Green, drinking her afternoons and evenings away. She realizes there is a couple living at THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE. When she saves the wife from drowning, Casey recognizes her…a former model who is still famous. Casey, almost always under the influence, starts watching her and her husband with a handy pair of binoculars. Then, the former model goes missing…
DUN DUN DUN!
The first part of the story has been told many times, but author Riley Sager does an amazing job of keeping the tension high and the pace fast…
…until about halfway through when a twist occurs that is pretty implausible with little explanation. Such a disappointment. Ugh! The ending was satisfying though, and it was entertaining overall.
I’ve loved every OTHER book by Sager. According to my scientific calculations, I was supposed to love this one. I didn’t. Yet, it was a vast improvement over Survive The Night (his last novel). So I’ll take it…and I’ll eagerly await his next offering.
DUN DUN DUN!
The first part of the story has been told many times, but author Riley Sager does an amazing job of keeping the tension high and the pace fast…
…until about halfway through when a twist occurs that is pretty implausible with little explanation. Such a disappointment. Ugh! The ending was satisfying though, and it was entertaining overall.
I’ve loved every OTHER book by Sager. According to my scientific calculations, I was supposed to love this one. I didn’t. Yet, it was a vast improvement over Survive The Night (his last novel). So I’ll take it…and I’ll eagerly await his next offering.
July 20, 2022
3.5 stars: I enjoyed it and was entertained
In the author's own words....it's BONKERS!
Did the author intend this to be a serious thriller or is it a campy homage to certain books/movies (that would be spoilers if I named them all)?
Hmm...as a spoof it succeeded. If meant to be serious it may have jumped the shark in the last 25%.
The book opens with a storm raging and Casey demanding answers from a tied up suspect. Then the story alternates between "now" and what happened in the days leading up to this turn of events.
Casey, a disgraced actress, is spending time at her parent’s lake house on Greene Lake, the same lake where her husband drowned a year ago. She spends her days in a bourbon haze, and out of boredom, picks up her binoculars and becomes intrigued by the glamorous and famous couple across the lake, Katherine and Tom Royce. But is she really spying? After all, isn’t social media an acceptable form of spying? (love that analogy!)
One day, she sees Katherine floating motionless in the lake and saves her from drowning. They strike up a friendship, and Casey learns that Tom and Katherine’s marriage is far from perfect. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey is certain Tom has killed her. Casey, along with her hunky neighbor, Boone, investigate on their own when the police fail to take her suspicions seriously.
I have stated many times that I’m tired of boozy narrators but this time I wasn’t bothered, because Casey is not an unreliable narrator and I never once thought she was imagining things. There are shades of Rear Window, a favorite movie of Casey’s, so this is hardly a new theme.
If you think you know where this is going, you are wrong. At 75%, the story takes a turn with a surprising revelation. Depending on your perspective, the story then either jumps the shark, or takes a brilliant turn. This is where I thought the author was having a bit of fun with a mash-up of genres, and books/movies that have been done before. The twists and turns come fast and furious, and kept me flipping the pages. And chuckling. Was it supposed to be funny? Apparently I wrong read it as a campy spoof so I found the ridiculousness humorous 🤷🏻♀️
In the afterward, the author calls it a bonkers plot, and he is right. I can’t say I was a fan of the direction the story took but it kept me entertained and is not likely to be forgotten, so for that 3.5 stars. A new Sager book is something to look forward to every summer, and while I hope next year’s is not quite so bonkers, I’ll definitely be reading it.
In the author's own words....it's BONKERS!
Did the author intend this to be a serious thriller or is it a campy homage to certain books/movies (that would be spoilers if I named them all)?
Hmm...as a spoof it succeeded. If meant to be serious it may have jumped the shark in the last 25%.
The book opens with a storm raging and Casey demanding answers from a tied up suspect. Then the story alternates between "now" and what happened in the days leading up to this turn of events.
Casey, a disgraced actress, is spending time at her parent’s lake house on Greene Lake, the same lake where her husband drowned a year ago. She spends her days in a bourbon haze, and out of boredom, picks up her binoculars and becomes intrigued by the glamorous and famous couple across the lake, Katherine and Tom Royce. But is she really spying? After all, isn’t social media an acceptable form of spying? (love that analogy!)
One day, she sees Katherine floating motionless in the lake and saves her from drowning. They strike up a friendship, and Casey learns that Tom and Katherine’s marriage is far from perfect. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey is certain Tom has killed her. Casey, along with her hunky neighbor, Boone, investigate on their own when the police fail to take her suspicions seriously.
I have stated many times that I’m tired of boozy narrators but this time I wasn’t bothered, because Casey is not an unreliable narrator and I never once thought she was imagining things. There are shades of Rear Window, a favorite movie of Casey’s, so this is hardly a new theme.
If you think you know where this is going, you are wrong. At 75%, the story takes a turn with a surprising revelation. Depending on your perspective, the story then either jumps the shark, or takes a brilliant turn. This is where I thought the author was having a bit of fun with a mash-up of genres, and books/movies that have been done before. The twists and turns come fast and furious, and kept me flipping the pages. And chuckling. Was it supposed to be funny? Apparently I wrong read it as a campy spoof so I found the ridiculousness humorous 🤷🏻♀️
In the afterward, the author calls it a bonkers plot, and he is right. I can’t say I was a fan of the direction the story took but it kept me entertained and is not likely to be forgotten, so for that 3.5 stars. A new Sager book is something to look forward to every summer, and while I hope next year’s is not quite so bonkers, I’ll definitely be reading it.
June 21, 2022
HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY!
“What is marriage but a series of mutual deceptions?”
Grab your binoculars and take a seat on the porch because Riley Sager is back with a voyeuristic thriller that will have you guessing until the very end!
The House Across the Lake can best be described as a combination between Goodnight Beautiful, Misery, The Woman in the Window, and Behind Her Eyes.
Casey Fletcher is an actress and alcoholic who has been banished to Greene Lake by her mother after her drunken behavior on set alerted the paparazzi. She must lay low for awhile if she wants to save her acting career. However, she is grieving from the recent sudden death of her husband and instead drowns her sorrows in alcohol.
She passes the time by viewing her neighbors through a set of binoculars left by her husband at the lake house.
Tom and Katherine Royce just bought the new house across the lake. She is a super model and he is the owner of a tech company. He created the app named Mixer, a combination between LinkedIn and Facebook. They seem to be the perfect couple.
Boone Conrad is staying at the Mitchell’s place while he does work on their house. A stranger to this area and very good looking, he peaks Casey’s interest.
Eli is the only full-time resident of Greene Lake and has been there as long as Casey can remember. He brings her supplies from town and a much needed stash of alcohol.
One night, Casey witnesses Katherine drowning in the lake through her binoculars. She quickly saves her with her boat and starts a new friendship. How did Katherine end up in the lake? Casey isn’t sure, because she was very drunk at the time.
Soon after the incident in the lake, Katherine goes missing. Casey is determined to figure out what happened to her. Is Tom Royce behind this? After all, she has witnessed strange behavior in their house.
What happened to Katherine?
Casey is the ultimate unreliable narrator attempting to solve a locked room mystery. Alternating between now and before, there are many shocking twists and turns to this plot. This was a five star thriller for me until the last 25% due to an issue with believability. However, I really enjoyed this one much more than Survive the Night. Riley Sager’s books are on auto-request for me because even when they are unbelievable, they are still very entertaining.
4/5 stars
Expected publication date: 6/21/22
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton publishing for the ARC of The House Across the Lake in exchange for an honest review.
“What is marriage but a series of mutual deceptions?”
Grab your binoculars and take a seat on the porch because Riley Sager is back with a voyeuristic thriller that will have you guessing until the very end!
The House Across the Lake can best be described as a combination between Goodnight Beautiful, Misery, The Woman in the Window, and Behind Her Eyes.
Casey Fletcher is an actress and alcoholic who has been banished to Greene Lake by her mother after her drunken behavior on set alerted the paparazzi. She must lay low for awhile if she wants to save her acting career. However, she is grieving from the recent sudden death of her husband and instead drowns her sorrows in alcohol.
She passes the time by viewing her neighbors through a set of binoculars left by her husband at the lake house.
Tom and Katherine Royce just bought the new house across the lake. She is a super model and he is the owner of a tech company. He created the app named Mixer, a combination between LinkedIn and Facebook. They seem to be the perfect couple.
Boone Conrad is staying at the Mitchell’s place while he does work on their house. A stranger to this area and very good looking, he peaks Casey’s interest.
Eli is the only full-time resident of Greene Lake and has been there as long as Casey can remember. He brings her supplies from town and a much needed stash of alcohol.
One night, Casey witnesses Katherine drowning in the lake through her binoculars. She quickly saves her with her boat and starts a new friendship. How did Katherine end up in the lake? Casey isn’t sure, because she was very drunk at the time.
Soon after the incident in the lake, Katherine goes missing. Casey is determined to figure out what happened to her. Is Tom Royce behind this? After all, she has witnessed strange behavior in their house.
What happened to Katherine?
Casey is the ultimate unreliable narrator attempting to solve a locked room mystery. Alternating between now and before, there are many shocking twists and turns to this plot. This was a five star thriller for me until the last 25% due to an issue with believability. However, I really enjoyed this one much more than Survive the Night. Riley Sager’s books are on auto-request for me because even when they are unbelievable, they are still very entertaining.
4/5 stars
Expected publication date: 6/21/22
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton publishing for the ARC of The House Across the Lake in exchange for an honest review.
December 22, 2022
Two staff members reviewed this book. Enjoy!
Spoiler warning!
Brandon's review
Around this time of year, I always get excited because a new Riley Sager book gets released.
The premise of this newest book sadly, did not sound that unique, but I’m a sucker for these types of books that take place on lake getaways.
I turned my thinking cap on with bated anticipation to see what twists get thrown my way and try to solve as many as I can. Spoiler, I don’t solve them all.
Casey is a mourning alcoholic trying to cope with the death of her husband by staying at her lake house. In actuality, she is exiled to her family lake house by her mother after making a drunken scene in front of a crowd of paparazzi (Casey and her family were quite famous in showbiz).
Having grown up at the lake house, she knows all of her neighbors until a new celebrity couple move into the house directly across the lake. She also gets surprised when it turns out her next-door neighbors have a dashing stranger house-sitting for them.
Casey finds herself spying on the new neighbors while having a drink, frequently.
Things go awry when the super model wife goes missing in strange circumstances not long after Casey saved her from drowning. She believes the husband to be complicit. Add to the fact that multiple women have disappeared from the surrounding area over the years means that something isn’t adding up.
A lot of Riley Sager’s books change between two timelines almost every chapter, but this endeavor consisted of multiple timelines while mainly following only one with rare switches in-between. It seems that Riley Sager is a bit of a cinephile since there are references to older movies and TV shows in this book, and numerous references in the last book he released.
I do like the prose in most of Riley’s books since they grab my attention without letting go through the book. It is simple yet engaging. This book also featured a larger cast of characters that are developed more compared to previous books. Casey’s background though was told instead of shown a lot where she goes on this long inner monologue explaining her own backstory for many pages.
Casey is more developed than the previous main characters in Riley’s other books, but at the same time she feels just like all of the other main characters in his novels. Casey did feel more complex with different motivations and traumas that impacted her personality with her biggest flaw being an alcoholic. When I say alcoholic, I mean drinking to keep her demons at bay constantly.
I felt that her alcoholism was excessive as it was always brought up with her needing a drink and getting drunk at all times of the day. Again, the supporting cast was well-developed, where I thought Katherine was more compelling of a character than even our main character. Boone though felt like a character trope more than an actual character.
There were a couple of red herrings in this book with some more obvious than others. As per usual in a Riley Sager book, there were a lot of twists. The biggest twist for me was only a twist because of the content of the author’s previous works under this pseudonym.
Be forewarned, spoilers are ahead:
I did enjoy the book and did like the author’s writing, but I felt this book and his previous book were some of his weaker entries. Certain things such as an aspect of the big twist and the constant drinking of the main character took me out of the story at times.
Overall, I had a positive experience and recommend this book to fans of his previous books and fans of horror, thriller, and mystery genres.
Cora's review
3.5/5 stars
People who know me know I’m a relative newbie to the mystery/thriller genre. I tend to go for nonfiction and sci-fi/fantasy reads.
However, I am always willing to try recommendations from friends and coworkers. On the recommendation of Brandon, I gave The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager a try.
A decent read, but there were a few quibbles of mine that prevented me from giving it a full four stars.
Brandon gave a good overview of the plot in his review, so I won’t rehash that too much here. He’s read a few more of Riley Sager’s books than I have, so he has a better idea of what the author’s writing style is like, and I trust that he gave a good synopsis of the book with that knowledge in mind.
Nonetheless, Sager did a decent job of deploying red herrings that kept me utterly confused for about half the book and then dumbfounded at some of the twists. The dumbfounding being bad and good. I figured out some, but there were others that took me by surprise.
Speaking of surprises, I did not suspect Casey’s involvement in all of this as much as I should have. I did suspect every other character in the book, including Katherine herself. That aspect of not knowing who to trust and constantly hunting for clues may be the appeal for many people that enjoy this genre, and I can see why.
Now, for the bad. I was a bit disappointed in the supernatural element that reared its head in the last half of the book. To me, relying on this kind of element is lazy, when the more interesting thing is trying to figure out the people involved, their motivations, and how they played their part in the mystery song-and-dance.
Getting supernatural elements involved muddies things up too much for me and helps to spoil any of the appealing realism in the story.
That probably is just me and my reading tastes here speaking, but I guess I prefer my mystery/thriller without any monsters or ghosts or the like.
Lastly, another quibble of mine involves characterization and tropes. (Mostly looking at Boone, here.) Boone felt like a shallowly written character laden with tropes. An ex-cop, in recovery himself, also widowed, and hot (of course). It just seemed like most of his identity and personality followed well-trod tropes, and I would have liked to see his character more fleshed out.
Overall, The House Across the Lake was an okay read. Not the worst, but not the best.
-Cora
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Spoiler warning!
Brandon's review
Around this time of year, I always get excited because a new Riley Sager book gets released.
The premise of this newest book sadly, did not sound that unique, but I’m a sucker for these types of books that take place on lake getaways.
I turned my thinking cap on with bated anticipation to see what twists get thrown my way and try to solve as many as I can. Spoiler, I don’t solve them all.
Casey is a mourning alcoholic trying to cope with the death of her husband by staying at her lake house. In actuality, she is exiled to her family lake house by her mother after making a drunken scene in front of a crowd of paparazzi (Casey and her family were quite famous in showbiz).
Having grown up at the lake house, she knows all of her neighbors until a new celebrity couple move into the house directly across the lake. She also gets surprised when it turns out her next-door neighbors have a dashing stranger house-sitting for them.
Casey finds herself spying on the new neighbors while having a drink, frequently.
Things go awry when the super model wife goes missing in strange circumstances not long after Casey saved her from drowning. She believes the husband to be complicit. Add to the fact that multiple women have disappeared from the surrounding area over the years means that something isn’t adding up.
A lot of Riley Sager’s books change between two timelines almost every chapter, but this endeavor consisted of multiple timelines while mainly following only one with rare switches in-between. It seems that Riley Sager is a bit of a cinephile since there are references to older movies and TV shows in this book, and numerous references in the last book he released.
I do like the prose in most of Riley’s books since they grab my attention without letting go through the book. It is simple yet engaging. This book also featured a larger cast of characters that are developed more compared to previous books. Casey’s background though was told instead of shown a lot where she goes on this long inner monologue explaining her own backstory for many pages.
Casey is more developed than the previous main characters in Riley’s other books, but at the same time she feels just like all of the other main characters in his novels. Casey did feel more complex with different motivations and traumas that impacted her personality with her biggest flaw being an alcoholic. When I say alcoholic, I mean drinking to keep her demons at bay constantly.
I felt that her alcoholism was excessive as it was always brought up with her needing a drink and getting drunk at all times of the day. Again, the supporting cast was well-developed, where I thought Katherine was more compelling of a character than even our main character. Boone though felt like a character trope more than an actual character.
There were a couple of red herrings in this book with some more obvious than others. As per usual in a Riley Sager book, there were a lot of twists. The biggest twist for me was only a twist because of the content of the author’s previous works under this pseudonym.
Be forewarned, spoilers are ahead:
I did enjoy the book and did like the author’s writing, but I felt this book and his previous book were some of his weaker entries. Certain things such as an aspect of the big twist and the constant drinking of the main character took me out of the story at times.
Overall, I had a positive experience and recommend this book to fans of his previous books and fans of horror, thriller, and mystery genres.
Cora's review
3.5/5 stars
People who know me know I’m a relative newbie to the mystery/thriller genre. I tend to go for nonfiction and sci-fi/fantasy reads.
However, I am always willing to try recommendations from friends and coworkers. On the recommendation of Brandon, I gave The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager a try.
A decent read, but there were a few quibbles of mine that prevented me from giving it a full four stars.
Brandon gave a good overview of the plot in his review, so I won’t rehash that too much here. He’s read a few more of Riley Sager’s books than I have, so he has a better idea of what the author’s writing style is like, and I trust that he gave a good synopsis of the book with that knowledge in mind.
Nonetheless, Sager did a decent job of deploying red herrings that kept me utterly confused for about half the book and then dumbfounded at some of the twists. The dumbfounding being bad and good. I figured out some, but there were others that took me by surprise.
Speaking of surprises, I did not suspect Casey’s involvement in all of this as much as I should have. I did suspect every other character in the book, including Katherine herself. That aspect of not knowing who to trust and constantly hunting for clues may be the appeal for many people that enjoy this genre, and I can see why.
Now, for the bad. I was a bit disappointed in the supernatural element that reared its head in the last half of the book. To me, relying on this kind of element is lazy, when the more interesting thing is trying to figure out the people involved, their motivations, and how they played their part in the mystery song-and-dance.
Getting supernatural elements involved muddies things up too much for me and helps to spoil any of the appealing realism in the story.
That probably is just me and my reading tastes here speaking, but I guess I prefer my mystery/thriller without any monsters or ghosts or the like.
Lastly, another quibble of mine involves characterization and tropes. (Mostly looking at Boone, here.) Boone felt like a shallowly written character laden with tropes. An ex-cop, in recovery himself, also widowed, and hot (of course). It just seemed like most of his identity and personality followed well-trod tropes, and I would have liked to see his character more fleshed out.
Overall, The House Across the Lake was an okay read. Not the worst, but not the best.
-Cora
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June 22, 2023
ughhh i loved this book until the main plot twist which was way left field, unrealistic, and unfitting for the genre. i don’t want to spoil anything but i will say that a thriller with everything going completely realistic the entire time shouldn’t have a paranormal plot twist out of nowhere, in my opinion. the whole time i was guessing WHO was causing these things, not WHAT was. i’ll just leave it at that.
i feel bad because i neverrr write super negative reviews like this but honestly paranormal stuff is something I have zero interest in and it would have been nice if the description at least mentioned it in some way.
as for the positives, i loved this book up until the main plot twist which is a little more than halfway. so i enjoyed more than half the book! and the talk of alcoholism helped me understand more about this struggle, which is great that the author shone a light on it. oh and there were actually multiple plot twists which was exciting. the characters each had vastly different personalities and i loved reading about each of them until, of course, the plot twist i keep mentioning (sorry!) i hope this review helps because i tried my best to avoid spoilers but i wanted to let you all know the genre of this book isn’t just thriller/mystery but paranormal as well.
*Trigger warning for death, abduction, and alcoholism
i feel bad because i neverrr write super negative reviews like this but honestly paranormal stuff is something I have zero interest in and it would have been nice if the description at least mentioned it in some way.
as for the positives, i loved this book up until the main plot twist which is a little more than halfway. so i enjoyed more than half the book! and the talk of alcoholism helped me understand more about this struggle, which is great that the author shone a light on it. oh and there were actually multiple plot twists which was exciting. the characters each had vastly different personalities and i loved reading about each of them until, of course, the plot twist i keep mentioning (sorry!) i hope this review helps because i tried my best to avoid spoilers but i wanted to let you all know the genre of this book isn’t just thriller/mystery but paranormal as well.
*Trigger warning for death, abduction, and alcoholism
August 27, 2022
This was my first book I read by Riley Sager & BITCH IM HOOKED. This is most def one of my favorite reads of the year. I thought I kept predicting the ending & then another plot twist would come out of nowhere. This book kept me at the edge of my seat from beginning to end. FIVE STARS
October 3, 2022
3.5⭐
I took a chance with The House Across the Lake after seeing many low ratings for this book. I enjoyed Survive the Night while most friends didn't so maybe that's the case for this one as well.
The House Across the Lake is a 70:30 mystery:supernatural with a nosy neighbor snooping with binoculars in one hand and a glass of bourbon in another. It's told in "before" and "now" format.
It's mid-October and Casey Fletcher is recuperating at her aunt and mom's lake house. Casey is a troubled actress and a widow. Her husband drowned in this very dark water at Lake Greene in eastern Vermont. It's off-season and with nothing better to do, Casey keeps an eye out across the lake watching the Royces. She rescues the former model neighbor Katherine Royce from drowning and they form a friendship. When Katherine vanishes, Casey is determined to find her.
This book feels very cozy to me and I can't really pinpoint why. Maybe it's Casey's narration or the handsome handyman ex-cop? I think if you go in knowing it's a mystery with a teeny supernatural part, you might not be disappointed. Nothing scary, nothing gory. I was surprised by the reveal.
My major issue is the audiobook narrator. Bernadette Dunne is a wonderful narrator (We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, Memoirs of a Geisha) but she's not the right voice for a 35-year-old actress.
I took a chance with The House Across the Lake after seeing many low ratings for this book. I enjoyed Survive the Night while most friends didn't so maybe that's the case for this one as well.
The House Across the Lake is a 70:30 mystery:supernatural with a nosy neighbor snooping with binoculars in one hand and a glass of bourbon in another. It's told in "before" and "now" format.
It's mid-October and Casey Fletcher is recuperating at her aunt and mom's lake house. Casey is a troubled actress and a widow. Her husband drowned in this very dark water at Lake Greene in eastern Vermont. It's off-season and with nothing better to do, Casey keeps an eye out across the lake watching the Royces. She rescues the former model neighbor Katherine Royce from drowning and they form a friendship. When Katherine vanishes, Casey is determined to find her.
This book feels very cozy to me and I can't really pinpoint why. Maybe it's Casey's narration or the handsome handyman ex-cop? I think if you go in knowing it's a mystery with a teeny supernatural part, you might not be disappointed. Nothing scary, nothing gory. I was surprised by the reveal.
My major issue is the audiobook narrator. Bernadette Dunne is a wonderful narrator (We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, Memoirs of a Geisha) but she's not the right voice for a 35-year-old actress.
June 21, 2022
I thought I had The House Across the Lake figured out, but alas, I did not.
Casey Fletcher, a widow and notable actress, has retreated to her family’s lakeside cottage to escape some recent bad press. She spends her days drinking and using her binoculars to spy casually on her neighbours.
Casey spends her time spying on Katherine and Tom Royce, her beautiful and wealthy neighbours. Their newly developed house sits directly across the lake from her cottage.
When Katherine vanishes, Casey is determined to uncover the truth behind her disappearance.
Casey is the typical unreliable female narrator that readers see a lot of these days. Namely the main character with a drinking problem that noses her way into everyone else’s business. Usually, this type of narrator would be irksome to me, but in this case, it wasn’t. I think it’s because the reader knows at the outset that Casey’s husband recently passed away, so she’s just processing her grief. Sure, it’s not the healthiest way, but still.
I’ve read a few of Riley Sager’s books, and this one is slightly different from those. It started off as what you’d expect, but then it completely veered off course. If you’ve read any of my previous reviews, you’ll know that I don’t mind OTT - give me all the drama and theatrics. But this twist was just a bit too weird. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but it was an interesting way to go.
I will continue to read whatever Riley Sager publishes. His books are compulsively readable and always keep me entertained.
3.5
Thank you to Dutton for providing me with an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
Casey Fletcher, a widow and notable actress, has retreated to her family’s lakeside cottage to escape some recent bad press. She spends her days drinking and using her binoculars to spy casually on her neighbours.
Casey spends her time spying on Katherine and Tom Royce, her beautiful and wealthy neighbours. Their newly developed house sits directly across the lake from her cottage.
When Katherine vanishes, Casey is determined to uncover the truth behind her disappearance.
Casey is the typical unreliable female narrator that readers see a lot of these days. Namely the main character with a drinking problem that noses her way into everyone else’s business. Usually, this type of narrator would be irksome to me, but in this case, it wasn’t. I think it’s because the reader knows at the outset that Casey’s husband recently passed away, so she’s just processing her grief. Sure, it’s not the healthiest way, but still.
I’ve read a few of Riley Sager’s books, and this one is slightly different from those. It started off as what you’d expect, but then it completely veered off course. If you’ve read any of my previous reviews, you’ll know that I don’t mind OTT - give me all the drama and theatrics. But this twist was just a bit too weird. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but it was an interesting way to go.
I will continue to read whatever Riley Sager publishes. His books are compulsively readable and always keep me entertained.
3.5
Thank you to Dutton for providing me with an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
June 26, 2022
Oh just another regular unreliable female narrator who is too invested in her neighbors, right? WRONGWRONGWRONG. I’m sure this addition to Sager’s work will be divisive, due to a fun little twisty twist he threw in there, but for me-it made the book! Highly recommend if you can suspend disbelief for a few hours, and need a fun popcorn thriller with some fabulous wtf moments throughout.
April 17, 2022
This psychological suspense thriller comes in waves of twists and surprises. Touching on Rear Window, which is referenced in the book, and Woman in the Window, the main character is an alcoholic with an incredible set of binoculars. Casey is a widow and stares out at the dark and eerie Lake Greene where her husband drowned. She was once an active theater star until the loss of her husband. Now she finds herself in tabloids capturing her out of control behavior.
Casey's mom is a well known film star and is embarrassed by her daughter so she bans her to their family's secluded lake house without alcohol and away from the limelight. A lot of alcohol is delivered by a sweet little neighbor, so some of her stories may seem like the alcohol is talking and she is an unreliable source. With her new found freedom, she sits on her porch with binoculars and spies on the neighbors across the lake while she drinks. Tom, a tech guru and his wife, Katherine, a famous model live in the house. When Casey captures some sketchy movement in the house, she begins to suspect their marriage isn't right.
One day as Casey is sitting on the porch she sees a body floating in the water. She jumps in her boat to rescue this person. She realizes it is Katherine and saves her. Not long after that, Katherine disappears. This is when the story picks up pace and strange occurrences happen. Not to mention a gorgeous man staying in a few cabins away introduces himself heating up the pages.
I loved watching Casey make silly mistakes and all up in her neighbors' business. She takes the movie Rear Window to a whole new level. I could not wait to get this title and it did not disappoint. There was an iffy, unbelievable scene, nevertheless it was worth the change up.
Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for this title in exchange for my honest review.
Casey's mom is a well known film star and is embarrassed by her daughter so she bans her to their family's secluded lake house without alcohol and away from the limelight. A lot of alcohol is delivered by a sweet little neighbor, so some of her stories may seem like the alcohol is talking and she is an unreliable source. With her new found freedom, she sits on her porch with binoculars and spies on the neighbors across the lake while she drinks. Tom, a tech guru and his wife, Katherine, a famous model live in the house. When Casey captures some sketchy movement in the house, she begins to suspect their marriage isn't right.
One day as Casey is sitting on the porch she sees a body floating in the water. She jumps in her boat to rescue this person. She realizes it is Katherine and saves her. Not long after that, Katherine disappears. This is when the story picks up pace and strange occurrences happen. Not to mention a gorgeous man staying in a few cabins away introduces himself heating up the pages.
I loved watching Casey make silly mistakes and all up in her neighbors' business. She takes the movie Rear Window to a whole new level. I could not wait to get this title and it did not disappoint. There was an iffy, unbelievable scene, nevertheless it was worth the change up.
Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for this title in exchange for my honest review.
May 3, 2022
Overall sadly I didn't love this book. I'm a huge Riley Sager fan but this one was just meh for me. I didn't love the twists in this book and didn't love the paranormal aspect either. I didn't loathe this book by any means it just didn't hit the mark for me.
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