Scan barcode
readwkatie's review against another edition
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley and Joe Clifford for an advanced copy in return for my honest review. The Lakehouse is available to read now!
Tracy Somerset is a divorced mother of one who unexpectedly connects with a stranger late one night at Walmart. Tracy comes to find that this person has a dark past and she has to decide if she wants to stand by him or listen to the rumors.
Todd Newman, is trying to escape his past – after being accused and cleared of murdering his wife, he is trying to start fresh. But the small town doesn’t forget and they don’t want Todd back in their lives. With other girls gone missing, people realize that Todd’s story might not add up – and he might not be as innocent as he claims to be.
This one was a miss for me. The storyline was alright, ending was a bit of a letdown. I feel like we spent a lot of time and energy on a mystery and the culprit wasn’t satisfying to me. I didn’t connect with any of the characters and found myself just wishing to be finished reading. I don’t think that the storyline was completely bad, I just don’t think that this was a book for me.
**I always cringe when I have to give a poor review as I know the author spends massive amounts of time creating something for the world to see. As an avid reader I have the utmost respect for authors and am grateful for the content they create for us.
Tracy Somerset is a divorced mother of one who unexpectedly connects with a stranger late one night at Walmart. Tracy comes to find that this person has a dark past and she has to decide if she wants to stand by him or listen to the rumors.
Todd Newman, is trying to escape his past – after being accused and cleared of murdering his wife, he is trying to start fresh. But the small town doesn’t forget and they don’t want Todd back in their lives. With other girls gone missing, people realize that Todd’s story might not add up – and he might not be as innocent as he claims to be.
This one was a miss for me. The storyline was alright, ending was a bit of a letdown. I feel like we spent a lot of time and energy on a mystery and the culprit wasn’t satisfying to me. I didn’t connect with any of the characters and found myself just wishing to be finished reading. I don’t think that the storyline was completely bad, I just don’t think that this was a book for me.
**I always cringe when I have to give a poor review as I know the author spends massive amounts of time creating something for the world to see. As an avid reader I have the utmost respect for authors and am grateful for the content they create for us.
itputsthebookupontheshelf's review against another edition
3.0
This is a hard one to review for me. Did I love the book, no. Did I enjoy it, yes. There was just so much lacking from this story. The storyline itself wasn't bad, I mean, I finished it and didn't hate it. But it felt very surface level, especially when it came to the characters.
You get most of the story through the eyes of Tracy who is a divorced mom who meets Tod Norman who everyone thinks killed his wife, but was never found guilty. The rest of the story we get through other characters. While I enjoy stories from an outside point of view, I honestly just didn't see the point of Tracy. For me, she didn't add a lot to the story besides providing an alibi and showing the side of Tod everyone refused to see. I would have liked to see more from Tod's perspective.
This was a 2.5 Stars for me. I may check out other books from this author to see if I get more from another story of theirs.
Thank you the Netgalley and Polis Books for a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review
You get most of the story through the eyes of Tracy who is a divorced mom who meets Tod Norman who everyone thinks killed his wife, but was never found guilty. The rest of the story we get through other characters. While I enjoy stories from an outside point of view, I honestly just didn't see the point of Tracy. For me, she didn't add a lot to the story besides providing an alibi and showing the side of Tod everyone refused to see. I would have liked to see more from Tod's perspective.
This was a 2.5 Stars for me. I may check out other books from this author to see if I get more from another story of theirs.
Thank you the Netgalley and Polis Books for a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review
thetamari's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
bergamotandbooks's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 STARS
After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake. He is eager to restart his life and cast aside any remaining suspicious...but all of that is dashed when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door.
.
.
.
Okay, regardless of my low(ish) rating I do have to credit THE LAKEHOUSE for getting me out of a reading slump. I read this book over one weekend and enjoyed it, even if it wasn't super memorable.
Personally I found there to be too many story lines and not enough character development. No spoilers here, but one of the bigger twists didn't even seem related to the main plot - and seemed way more interesting! I wish that the book had been more focused on that part than Todd and Tracy's budding relationship. That ending hit it out of the park, however, but again seemed to hint at another side plot. All in all, I was left confused and off-kilter. Not really a stellar combination!
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for my ARC copy. THE LAKEHOUSE is out now.
After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake. He is eager to restart his life and cast aside any remaining suspicious...but all of that is dashed when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door.
.
.
.
Okay, regardless of my low(ish) rating I do have to credit THE LAKEHOUSE for getting me out of a reading slump. I read this book over one weekend and enjoyed it, even if it wasn't super memorable.
Personally I found there to be too many story lines and not enough character development. No spoilers here, but one of the bigger twists didn't even seem related to the main plot - and seemed way more interesting! I wish that the book had been more focused on that part than Todd and Tracy's budding relationship. That ending hit it out of the park, however, but again seemed to hint at another side plot. All in all, I was left confused and off-kilter. Not really a stellar combination!
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for my ARC copy. THE LAKEHOUSE is out now.
thebookishkimmy's review against another edition
4.0
Todd Norman was accused of killing his wife, April, who came from a small town in New England. Once he is proven innocent, he surprises the town by moving there to renovate a house on the lake. But, that’s not the only surprise - a girl is found dead near the water right by his house. The town chief sets out to prove that Norman is not innocent on either accounts.
The book has three main POV, the town chief, the town counsellor and a recent divorcee who happens to fall for the suspected murderer in town. The divorcee, Tracey, felt so highly strung I started to feel stressed reading her points of view. The counsellor was meant to be a bit of a creep who made others feel uncomfortable - and I didn’t like him. And simply put, I had no issues with the chief and even felt bad for him in parts.
For a thriller/suspense style book, I found this one really easy to read and actually read it in one sitting which is highly unusual for me. I haven’t read a lot in this genre but have started to recently. This is also my first book from this author and I received a copy of this book in exchanges for a review via netgalley. It’s fast paced, particularly in the second half where a lot is going on with a few twists and turns. Overall, I enjoyed this book. It’s plot was interesting but some of the characters were a little hard to warm to.
The book has three main POV, the town chief, the town counsellor and a recent divorcee who happens to fall for the suspected murderer in town. The divorcee, Tracey, felt so highly strung I started to feel stressed reading her points of view. The counsellor was meant to be a bit of a creep who made others feel uncomfortable - and I didn’t like him. And simply put, I had no issues with the chief and even felt bad for him in parts.
For a thriller/suspense style book, I found this one really easy to read and actually read it in one sitting which is highly unusual for me. I haven’t read a lot in this genre but have started to recently. This is also my first book from this author and I received a copy of this book in exchanges for a review via netgalley. It’s fast paced, particularly in the second half where a lot is going on with a few twists and turns. Overall, I enjoyed this book. It’s plot was interesting but some of the characters were a little hard to warm to.
the_sassy_bookworm's review against another edition
5.0
This book was probably one of my favorites from this year. The writing was fantastic. The mystery was masterly written and kept me guessing until the very end. Full of twists and turns. Interesting character's. An atmospheric setting. Honestly, I can't really think of one thing I didn't love about this book.
kbranfield's review against another edition
4.0
The Lakehouse by Joe Clifford is an intriguing small town mystery.
Tracy Somerset is divorced and raising her two year old son on her own. With generous support payments from her ex-husband Brett, she does not have to work. But she is a little bored and lonely since her only outside interactions are with her best friend Diana. After meeting and chatting with Todd Norman late one night, Tracy is hopeful for her dating prospects. But when Sheriff Duane Sobczak checks with her on Todd's alibi after a dead body washes ashore, she learns the truth about her new acquaintance. But Tracy cannot let go of her confidence that Todd is not capable of the crime for which he was acquitted. Will she follow her instincts and take a chance on love?
Sobczak is a long serving sheriff who surprisingly views the town through rose-colored glasses. So his certainty that Todd is a killer is a little unexpected. That is until the realization that Sobczak's daughter Amanda and Todd's murdered wife April Abbott were childhood friends. Add in the fact that Todd is an outsider and the sheriff's animosity is a little easier to understand. Even when it turns out there is nothing suspicious about the death of Wendy Mortensen, Sobsczak remains convinced Todd is somehow involved.
Narrated from multiple points of view, The Lakehouse is an interesting mystery that takes a while to come full circle. The characters are well-developed and the small town setting is atmospheric. Despite a bit of uneven pacing, the storyline is engaging with clever red herrings and misdirects. Unexpected connections, teenage friendships and long ago events eventually provide a more complete picture that remains a little murky. Joe Clifford brings the mystery to an exciting, but frustratingly ambiguous, conclusion.
Tracy Somerset is divorced and raising her two year old son on her own. With generous support payments from her ex-husband Brett, she does not have to work. But she is a little bored and lonely since her only outside interactions are with her best friend Diana. After meeting and chatting with Todd Norman late one night, Tracy is hopeful for her dating prospects. But when Sheriff Duane Sobczak checks with her on Todd's alibi after a dead body washes ashore, she learns the truth about her new acquaintance. But Tracy cannot let go of her confidence that Todd is not capable of the crime for which he was acquitted. Will she follow her instincts and take a chance on love?
Sobczak is a long serving sheriff who surprisingly views the town through rose-colored glasses. So his certainty that Todd is a killer is a little unexpected. That is until the realization that Sobczak's daughter Amanda and Todd's murdered wife April Abbott were childhood friends. Add in the fact that Todd is an outsider and the sheriff's animosity is a little easier to understand. Even when it turns out there is nothing suspicious about the death of Wendy Mortensen, Sobsczak remains convinced Todd is somehow involved.
Narrated from multiple points of view, The Lakehouse is an interesting mystery that takes a while to come full circle. The characters are well-developed and the small town setting is atmospheric. Despite a bit of uneven pacing, the storyline is engaging with clever red herrings and misdirects. Unexpected connections, teenage friendships and long ago events eventually provide a more complete picture that remains a little murky. Joe Clifford brings the mystery to an exciting, but frustratingly ambiguous, conclusion.
juliwi's review against another edition
2.0
I probably don't need to restate my love for thrillers and horrors. I heard a lot about The Lakehouse and had been really drawn in by the cover itself. There is a great atmosphere about it that really raised my expectations. Unfortunately I think they might have been raised a little bit too high and I ended up disappointed during my reading. Thanks to Polis Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A house on the lake. A mysterious new man in town. A body washed up on the beach. The perfect trifecta of happenings to be the start of a great thriller. One of the things that makes reading thrillers so comforting is that it's always about fitting the same kind of puzzle pieces together. There is a crime, there must be a perpetrator. There is your main character, who will have to figure out what's going on while, most likely, being in danger themselves. There are side characters who are either super helpful or super suspicious. Or maybe, just maybe, they're both. It is from these recognizable pieces that authors have been able to create something new and exciting every single time. But this is where drudgery can come from as well, when readers can predict all the next steps and the element of surprise disappears.
The Lakehouse, as the blurb shows, is about Todd Norman returning to Covenant to finish building the lake house the promised his wife, except this is interrupted when a woman's body washes up on his property. Except Todd Norman is called Greg in the book itself, which I guess falls down to changes in the editing between ARC and blurb. I also put some of the other mistakes throughout the book down to needing a final round of editing before final publication. But Todd/Greg also isn't the main character, even, of The Lakehouse. And his motivation for returning is never really addressed in the novel, only hinted at. The Lakehouse's narration is split up between Tracy Somerset, the new flame, Duane Sobczak, the cop, and Meshulum Bakshir, the psychiatrist. They all feel a little too like cardboard cut outs as their motivations are never delved in to too deeply. Because of this many of their actions feel like they come out of nowhere or are overly dramatic and nonsensical.
Duane Sobczak is probably the most fully formed of the characters and shows some actual development towards the end. He is a small town cop with a one-person team consisting of his son-in-law. He strongly believes in his town and in the goodness of its people. Drugs have no place there and neither do pre-marital sex, lesbians and murderers. Watching him come up against the real world is kind of charming but also struck me as very odd in this particular cultural moment. Tracy is a messy character that I think needed a lot more pages to develop her interiority. Dr. Bakshir feels like the odd character out, largely used for shock factor in some of the twists and turns. Aside from that there is a focus on drug abuse and sexual abuse in some of the female story lines that I don't believe was handled well or with any kind of delicacy.
I've seen a lot of praise for Joe Clifford's writing and was very excited to experience it myself. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed from the previous paragraphs, I was merely whelmed. There are a lot of interesting ideas in The Lakehouse which maybe needed a little bit more time in the oven, but in the edition I read they didn't quite fit well together yet. Some of the characters needed more development and attention in order to make them feel less like a plot-device. I saw the plot twist coming from quite early on but was looking forward to how Clifford would work his way towards it. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, many things did not end up getting explained which left me quite unsatisfied. By the end of the novel there were still quite a few plot threads that needed wrapping up which never happened. Finally, and I'm willing to admit it may be pedantic, but I loathe the title not separating 'Lake' and 'house'.
I had very high expectations of The Lakehouse but unfortunately none of them were met. Although I did get through the book quickly, I did not enjoy a lot of aspects of it. I may give Joe Clifford another go in future books, but only once complete edits have been done.
A house on the lake. A mysterious new man in town. A body washed up on the beach. The perfect trifecta of happenings to be the start of a great thriller. One of the things that makes reading thrillers so comforting is that it's always about fitting the same kind of puzzle pieces together. There is a crime, there must be a perpetrator. There is your main character, who will have to figure out what's going on while, most likely, being in danger themselves. There are side characters who are either super helpful or super suspicious. Or maybe, just maybe, they're both. It is from these recognizable pieces that authors have been able to create something new and exciting every single time. But this is where drudgery can come from as well, when readers can predict all the next steps and the element of surprise disappears.
The Lakehouse, as the blurb shows, is about Todd Norman returning to Covenant to finish building the lake house the promised his wife, except this is interrupted when a woman's body washes up on his property. Except Todd Norman is called Greg in the book itself, which I guess falls down to changes in the editing between ARC and blurb. I also put some of the other mistakes throughout the book down to needing a final round of editing before final publication. But Todd/Greg also isn't the main character, even, of The Lakehouse. And his motivation for returning is never really addressed in the novel, only hinted at. The Lakehouse's narration is split up between Tracy Somerset, the new flame, Duane Sobczak, the cop, and Meshulum Bakshir, the psychiatrist. They all feel a little too like cardboard cut outs as their motivations are never delved in to too deeply. Because of this many of their actions feel like they come out of nowhere or are overly dramatic and nonsensical.
Duane Sobczak is probably the most fully formed of the characters and shows some actual development towards the end. He is a small town cop with a one-person team consisting of his son-in-law. He strongly believes in his town and in the goodness of its people. Drugs have no place there and neither do pre-marital sex, lesbians and murderers. Watching him come up against the real world is kind of charming but also struck me as very odd in this particular cultural moment. Tracy is a messy character that I think needed a lot more pages to develop her interiority. Dr. Bakshir feels like the odd character out, largely used for shock factor in some of the twists and turns. Aside from that there is a focus on drug abuse and sexual abuse in some of the female story lines that I don't believe was handled well or with any kind of delicacy.
I've seen a lot of praise for Joe Clifford's writing and was very excited to experience it myself. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed from the previous paragraphs, I was merely whelmed. There are a lot of interesting ideas in The Lakehouse which maybe needed a little bit more time in the oven, but in the edition I read they didn't quite fit well together yet. Some of the characters needed more development and attention in order to make them feel less like a plot-device. I saw the plot twist coming from quite early on but was looking forward to how Clifford would work his way towards it. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, many things did not end up getting explained which left me quite unsatisfied. By the end of the novel there were still quite a few plot threads that needed wrapping up which never happened. Finally, and I'm willing to admit it may be pedantic, but I loathe the title not separating 'Lake' and 'house'.
I had very high expectations of The Lakehouse but unfortunately none of them were met. Although I did get through the book quickly, I did not enjoy a lot of aspects of it. I may give Joe Clifford another go in future books, but only once complete edits have been done.
cassies_books_reviews's review against another edition
4.0
Todd Newman has been cleared of his wife’s murder. The murder follows him he insists he’s innocent but people believe he bought his way off. He decides to return to her hometown in Connecticut. He’s building a lake house and just wants a fresh start. When a young woman’s body is found washed up on the beach next door of the lake house, of course Todd’s the first suspect, the police are certain he’s to blame and they continue harass him. Tracey Somerset is a single mom who just went through a tough divorce, she’s raising her two year old son with little help from her ex. On a rainy stormy night she drives to Walmart to pick up some medication. Meeting a handsome man at 1am is the last thing on her mind. She meets Todd unaware of his past and that he was called “The Banker Butcher”she enjoys a coffee and good conversation with the handsome man. The next day she’s shocked to hear about the woman being found dead, and when Sheriff Sobczak asks if she was with a man at Walmart at 1am she’s floored that she’s being asked if she is Todd’s alibi. When more woman disappear she begins to wonder could the nice man she fell for be capable of murder? Is there a connection with the murdered woman and the other woman that have disappeared? What secrets is the small town hiding? Told through the POV of Tracey and the sheriff we get a peek into their lives and the investigation. The ending left me wanting more! I really loved the book ,I felt the darkness hanging over the town, and the author does an amazing job bringing the characters to life and making you feel like they are real and imperfect. The story drew me in and got me out of my reading slump. This is the second book I’ve read from the author and I highly recommend his previous book The One That Got Away. Four stars!