Scan barcode
A review by davidb71
The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
1.0
I read my first Riley Sager novel late last year - The Only One Left - and I thought it was a real treat. A twisty gothic thriller that was better than I was expecting it to be, and a pleasant surprise. Since then I've read two other books of his - Home Before Dark and Lock Every Door - and while I didn't enjoy them anywhere near as much as The Only One Left, I still found them enjoyable reads. With his books I've found that I just need to enter into the spirit of them, and go along with them - they may be a little blunt at times, a little lacking in subtlety, the dialogue a little on the nose, there may be some implausibilities in the plot - but there's been enough to enjoy in them to stop any issues I had from completely dragging them down.
And this is how I felt about this book - The House Across the Lake - for perhaps the first half of it. I felt it was a little blunt and heavy-handed in lots of ways, but I was still drawn into the mystery and quite happy to go along with it, eager to see where the story was heading.
But at around the two-thirds mark the novel went from being flawed and a little too heavy-handed for my taste, but basically okay-ish, to going completely off the rails. And I mean completely off the rails. I can't recall ever seeing a novel take such a jarring turn into total craziness like this one did. And for me it didn't work at all.
I couldn't believe what I reading - and not in a good way. There's a supernatural twist that comes from nowhere that I found totally jarring. For two-thirds of the book you're reading one type of novel - a mystery surrounding a missing woman at a lake house, with echoes of Hitchcock's Rear Window - and then, suddenly, you're reading a completely different type of novel involving supernatural elements and people being possessed by spirits. If this sounds like fun, it isn't. I thought it was a mess.
And it wasn't just the supernatural elements that I didn't like - there were other plot twists and revelations piled upon this supernatural nonsense - and none of it worked for me. Too much made absolutely no sense. None of it felt cohesive - I can't remember a less cohesive novel I've read in a long time, if ever. And it just kept getting worse and worse - to the final 'twist' that I thought was so poorly executed it had all the sophistication of a villain's reveal in an episode of Scooby Doo.
I finished this book feeling dazed, stupefied, in a state of disbelief - not because of the story itself, but because I couldn't believe how bad it was. I couldn't believe how anyone could think this was a good idea, from the writer himself, to the publisher, the editors, the whole litany of people involved in bringing a book to publication. I thought it was a complete mess. It's a book that will live on in my memory for all the wrong reasons. Truly awful.
And this is how I felt about this book - The House Across the Lake - for perhaps the first half of it. I felt it was a little blunt and heavy-handed in lots of ways, but I was still drawn into the mystery and quite happy to go along with it, eager to see where the story was heading.
But at around the two-thirds mark the novel went from being flawed and a little too heavy-handed for my taste, but basically okay-ish, to going completely off the rails. And I mean completely off the rails. I can't recall ever seeing a novel take such a jarring turn into total craziness like this one did. And for me it didn't work at all.
I couldn't believe what I reading - and not in a good way. There's a supernatural twist that comes from nowhere that I found totally jarring. For two-thirds of the book you're reading one type of novel - a mystery surrounding a missing woman at a lake house, with echoes of Hitchcock's Rear Window - and then, suddenly, you're reading a completely different type of novel involving supernatural elements and people being possessed by spirits. If this sounds like fun, it isn't. I thought it was a mess.
And it wasn't just the supernatural elements that I didn't like - there were other plot twists and revelations piled upon this supernatural nonsense - and none of it worked for me. Too much made absolutely no sense. None of it felt cohesive - I can't remember a less cohesive novel I've read in a long time, if ever. And it just kept getting worse and worse - to the final 'twist' that I thought was so poorly executed it had all the sophistication of a villain's reveal in an episode of Scooby Doo.
I finished this book feeling dazed, stupefied, in a state of disbelief - not because of the story itself, but because I couldn't believe how bad it was. I couldn't believe how anyone could think this was a good idea, from the writer himself, to the publisher, the editors, the whole litany of people involved in bringing a book to publication. I thought it was a complete mess. It's a book that will live on in my memory for all the wrong reasons. Truly awful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, and Alcoholism