A review by seawarrior
The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

2.0

I tragically feel this book is Sager's weakest work that I've read so far, even thought I was highly anticipating it. An enormous amount of pages are dedicated to reiterating how much Casey drinks, to the point it almost felt exploitive. Sager's protagonists typically have a unique hobby that their personality revolves around, and Casey's is alcoholism. She really doesn't have many skills or strengths, besides teetering on the edge of drunkenness and withholding the truth, that are explored within the events of the book. The twist was also a disappointment to me.
At this point it's been long cliché to reveal the husband as the murderer, and I've liked how Sager's past work avoided using supernatural occurrences as the easy way to explain why something strange was happening. I did think it was interesting to make Casey an unreliable narrator, but I felt that was the only strength that was unique to this book.
When the book was not overly repetitive I was engaged in it, yet too much of the text reiterated ideas that I as a reader already understood and did not need to have restated. Reading those lines was irritating and felt almost like an insecurity was being expressed. Either Sager felt his ability to imply ideas to us was inadequate, or that we as readers weren't very sharp. There are many improvements that could have been made to this book, but the ending was decently rewarding and it was entertaining enough that I continued it despite its flaws. I wouldn't recommend this book to other readers because I feel Sager has written stronger books previously, but I still look forward to reading what he creates in the future.
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