The Lake by Natasha Preston is a young adult thriller with perhaps a touch of horror. Seeing that this was set at a summer camp and being a horror fan I had images of Jason stalking Crystal Lake and was excited to pick this up to see just what this one was about.

Off we go to Camp Pine Lake where Esme and Kayla are now, at seventeen, returning to the camp to train to become counselors. The girls once attended Camp Pine Lake themselves but those are days they prefer to not think about as they promised one another to never speak of what happened the last time they were there. The fun in the sun at camp however comes crashing to a halt when Esme and Kayla find a note that reads “THE LAKE NEVER FORGETS” and they know they need to find out if someone knows their secret.

I have to say that this is one of those books that while reading I couldn’t decide if I was liking it or not, if that makes sense. Perhaps my love of this type of setting was what was more engaging to me than the actual story because at times it felt fast then at others it felt as if it was dragging a bit. When finished I wasn’t overly sold on the entire wrap up either so my thought was I suppose it passed the time but I wouldn’t return to it or brag either.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This book was absolutely amazing! Intriguing, thought provoking plot and interesting characters! This book pulled me in from the beginning and made it hard for me to put it down!

The Lake is a YA mystery/thriller centered around two young girls named Esme and Kayla who end up training to be counselors at a camp they attended as kids, and the two of them have been keeping a huge secret from the time they spent at the same camp ten years prior.

I didn't really like the ending, but the story had a lot of suspense and kept me engaged and interested, and I thought it was a pretty good thriller.

I have been a hard core fan of Natasha Preston for ages but I have to say that this is the first book that I feel I wasn't given what I was promised. It fell far from the bar I set from reading her other stories and this one was just flat.

This is my first book by Preston, and unfortunately, I was ultimately disappointed. I was hoping for a quick, spooky romp down memory lane - I used to love RL Stein's horror/thriller books as a kid/teen, as formulaic and predictable as they were, and I was anticipating something similar. Either RL Stein's works wouldn't age well, or I myself have aged out of that demographic (or, most likely, both).

I found The Lake lacking in both plausibility and scares, and overly heavy-handed with exposition and what passes for foreshadowing. Nothing much happens in the first half of the book - I think the slow build-up of creepy things is meant to build tension, but instead I was just bored. While the action did pick up in the second half, it also suffered greatly from purposeful stupidity and lack of communication, which is just lazy writing disguised as plot drivers. When the story resorts to keeping secrets and poor decision-making to get where it needs to go, I lose all interest and respect.

And, frankly, living in Esme's head was exhausting. She was high-strung and anxious throughout the book, paranoid and jumping at shadows, lying to people and withholding information. Reading her constant paranoid thoughts tired me out, and it only got worse as the harassment escalated and her fears deepened. AND ANOTHER THING - Esme and Kayla accidentally set a fire in the woods that burned a small clearing. That's it. That's their biggest darkest secret that they swore a blood oath to never tell a living soul. The way they were going on about it at the beginning of the book, I thought they'd committed murder or something actually egregious, but no, they burned down a few bushes. AND NO ONE MUST KNOW or else, I don't know, they might get a slap on the wrist or something.

This book is silly, and the zero-to-one-hundred ending just makes it even more so. Perhaps this would be more suitable for a younger reader who is less discerning and might enjoy the silliness more. I didn't care for it.

Esme and Kayla did something bad when they were campers. Afterwards, the girls agreed to keep it secret.... now they are back as camp counselors. This book reminded me of the move I know what you did last summer and I loved it soooo much!

Um Woah!

This book was nostalgic it took me back to the feeling of summer camps and swimming in a lake.

The story follows Esme a girl who went to this summer camp but made a mistake that has no come to haunt her and her best friend. However, all of the counselors at the camp were chosen for a reason. As more threats and questioning coincides pop up, Esme becomes more and more certain that someone from her past is trying to enact revenge, not only putting her life in danger but the children at the camp as well. Esme is determined to figure who is out to get them and stop it.

The story was not slow, it was extremely well-paced and the suspense was very, very high. The plot was intriguing and kept you at the edge of your seat begging for answers. Natasha Preston also always includes a little romance in her books which I always enjoy, this one included.

The only thing I wasn’t a fan of was the ending, the ending was abrupt and very unexpected. I kept trying to turn the page because I needed more. At some points, the book felt a little childish and super nostalgic which is fine, but I feel as if it could have been written a little bit more sophisticated, but do keep in mind this is a YA thriller.

Also, the author has a couple of easter eggs that tie into her other books, which I also am a huge fan of.


Arc from NetGalley

The Lake has all the creepy summer camp vibes we need in this fast-paced thriller. Reminiscent of I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Lake reminds us, two can keep a secret if one of us is dead. Truly, secrets never stay buried and the lake never forgets.

Esme and her best friend Kayla were campers at Camp Pine Lake when they were 8 years old. Now, 10 years after they fled with a terrible secret they’ve returned to be counselors in training, and someone wants them to pay for the sins of the past.

This is the first book that I've read by Natasha Preston. Based on the book description I was very excited to read this because the plot sounds so good. Esme and Kayla have a secret about something bad that happened at camp many years ago when they were merely campers. Now, years later they've returned to the same camp but are camp counselors in training. They fear that someone knows their secret and may expose it if they don't return to camp...

I was very hopeful for this book and feel disappointed. The pacing was way too slow. At some point I stopped counting the chapters while waiting for something interesting to happen. The characters are poorly developed, so I wasn't invested in any of them. I did like the friendship that Esme and Kayla seem to have, but I believe more could have been done to make it believable and maybe relatable. Its always a shame when you don't really care any of the characters when reading a book. It was very annoying to have the character point out multiple times in each chapter that something bad happened in the past that they're keeping a secret. We get it...something bad happened that you don't want anyone to ever find out. That doesn't have to be stated over and over again. I never found out what the secret was because I did not want to force myself to finish reading this book. At some point I even tried skim reading because the story just wasn't holding my interest, but even that became tedious and tiresome. I thought about reading the last few chapters but the characters weren't interesting enough for me to do so. I'm sure other may love this book. It just wasn't doing it for me.

Overall, this is a fast-paced YA mystery that my students will love. Personally, I expected a little more from this book based on the synopsis, but it still has the right amount of creepy summer camp vibes to keep you hooked.

I have several Natasha Preston books on my classroom shelves, but this is the first one I had read. The Lake kept me on my toes - and holy cow, what an ENDING!! I liked the concept- teens returning to summer camp with unshared secrets. I might have liked a little "more" of everything, especially development of minor characters and their relationships and interactions with the main group. I can’t wait to go back and read TheTwin now!! Thanks to #netgalley forthe opportunity to preview #thelake by Natasha Preston. I really enjoyed the escape.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

Esme and Kayla, two 17 year olds, return as CITs to the summer camp they attended as children. At 8, something awful happened that they kept a secret for nearly 10 years, and they swore they'd never tell...but what would happen if someone saw them that night?

I enjoyed reading this book. While I wanted more depth and twists, it was easy to read. There was good build up, but the mystery was given away too early, and never deviated from that.

I liked so much about this plot, but the execution fell a bit short for me. Maybe it's me, but I rarely seem to like thriller endings?? I would recommend this one to someone wanting to try the genre out, but probably not to someone already into it.

I LOVE horror/slashers/thrillers where there is no "Last Girl". Stories where the villain doesn't necessarily win, but leaves the protagonist(s) at a disadvantage. Subvert my expectations. Please. Ending the book with Esme holding the gun over Kayla, while cops arrive, with all other witnesses dead? Awesome. It leaves things open to interpretation and sparked some ideas in my head. But too much happened within a short time for it to feel...earned? This book spent a lot of time meandering through the plot for that kind of an ending. There were certain points this veered in the direction of a ghost story and/or "Confined Sick (or "Sick") Woman No One Believes" territory, and I really feel like those directions had so much promise, at least compared to the slasher direction it ended with. I know that might be more me wishing this book was something it didn't set out to be (which is unfair to the book, author, and tbh myself as a reader), but I wanted this book to subvert my expectations.

This is a nitpick because every camp is different and I only went to daycamp and Girl Scout camp, but it felt like something was off with the whole camp setting and setup. Did Natasha Preston go to summer camp? Are Southern summer camps that different from Northeastern? (Probably)

I went into this book expecting a slasher, and I ended the book getting a slasher, so I guess I got what I wanted. I just didn't expect to want something else.

"The Lake" is an entertaining YA thriller with Friday the 13th and I Know What You Did Last Summer vibes. The characters aren't particularly complex or likable and the plot is predictable and flat.

4 stars! I have read all of Natasha Preston's YA Thrillers and they never disappoint! She will continue to be an auto-buy author for me.

I did not enjoy reading this at all. The plot was flat, the characters didn't have any depth to them, and the ending didn't make any sense. The writing and characters made this book seem like it was for the younger side of YA, but there are a lot of graphic moments near the end of the book that totally contrast with this. One thing about the ending really bothered me as well. If the police find you with a gun, they can find fingerprints on it and attach it to the correct person, right? I guess not in this universe. It just felt like, instead of tying everything up, the book ended the way it did to sound "edgy" or "cool". The mystery was pretty lame. This book was definitely not for me and felt poorly done. The premise didn't feel totally fleshed out. It was almost as if the idea for the book floated along and was immediately written without thinking about the logistics of everything. There was so much in here that didn't make much sense. Why go through all the trouble of watching four people for TEN YEARS and having them come back to the scene of the crime to get revenge. I mean, seems a little pretentious to me. And not at all feasible. The plot of this book was super unbelievable to begin with. This wasn't an easy read either. It was a struggle to get through the 300 or so pages that this book was. The writing was all telling instead of showing. I found myself noticing that there would be sentences telling me what the characters were feeling or doing instead of showing me. It felt really one dimensional. I feel like this book should have been edited more, but, even then, I don't know if editing could have saved how cloudy this plot was and how bland the writing was.

A great YA thriller that held my attention and kept me guessing. This would be a fun read during summer break.

I tried, as I have tried numerous times before, to like Natasha Preston's books..... this one just didn't do it for me at all. The plot was very "Friday the 13ish" and the dialogue was awful.

And the ending? well it assured that I will not be trying anymore of her books.

Natasha Preston is one of my go-to authors for young adult thrillers. No matter if others love or hate them, I always find myself reading them because she writes such intriguing novels that take me back to when I first started reading young adult novels. While this one wasn't perfect, it was a good read and I read it in one sitting. I look forward to many more of her books in the future!

The Lake felt a bit like a 90's horror movie where there are a group of kids who know a terrible secret of something that happened, and there's a murderer running loose. I really enjoy Natasha Preston's books, but this one was just okay for me.

It was slow to start, and I feel like we spent a lot of time going around in circles. The ending was pretty gripping, but it just took too long to really get to the meat of the story. I didn't love the characters, and it made getting through the slow pace so much more difficult. I do think there are really good parts of this story, and I think there are a lot of readers who will love the YA thriller in this book. If you enjoy creepy camp stories and YA characters, you should check this one out!

I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.