The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
Published by Dutton on June 21, 2022
my rating: 1 star
Goodreads avg: 3.60 (as of 2022-07-19)
Spoiler-free review
Goodreads
So I read this for Kayla’s Literally Dead book club and I’m sad to say that this book and I are mortal enemies. A little dramatic perhaps, BUT I literally couldn’t stand this. Casey is a recent widow who is living at her lake house because she’s suffering from alcoholism and her family doesn’t want to deal with her — by the way, who sends a depressed addict to stay in an isolated house alone?? Casey thinks she sees ~things~ and is trying to solve a possible murder. Does this sound like half of the thrillers out today? Yup! 90% of the book entails Casey talking about bourbon and I was bored out of my mind. The twist is, uh, original. No one would ever guess it. Because it is barely alluded to the entire book. I need my twists to be shocking, but also something I could look back on and say, “oh, that makes total sense!” This made no sense. If you enjoyed this? Power to you. Could not be me. This was my first Riley Sager book and, shockingly, I will be trying another.
Sarah Ames-Foley 
Oh my god this sounds even more terrible with every review
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yes 🙂
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the title is so intriguing to me
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Ha ha. I’ve never read anything by Riley Sager but I enjoyed reading your review. Full of dry wit and sardonicism. This line especially, “by the way, who sends a depressed addict to stay in an isolated house alone??” made me chuckle. I think a lot of these mystery thrillers are written for an audience who can’t be bothered reading literary fiction. So, they all follow a formula of sorts. And this is where the money is at if you want to earn as a writer. Today, even if you wrote with Updike’s lyricism you’d probably get a meagre advance. But then again it varies from country to country. I finished Eileen btw. A little slow in the beginning, but it builds up, and has a pretty good ending. But then again I’m no critic. The unreliable narrator thing put me off a bit though. I don’t mind unlikeable protagonists, but unreliable narrators aren’t my thing.
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