This book was good, starts off with a boy finding his dead neighbor floating in the lake. That ending left me shocked. I typically read mysteries and it's been a while since a book has capitVed me from early on. Thank you to the author for that!

This was an easy read and I always love a coming-of-age story. I liked the New Jersey lake community setting. I could picture the summer parties and the colorful neighbors. What I didn't expect was for the plot to turn so dark. There is quite a plot twist at the end! Overall, I enjoyed reading The Boy and the Lake, but I it's not a story that will stick with me.

I enjoyed this one. It was a good, easy read. I would also read more by this author in the future. Overall, I'd give 3/5 stars.

This was a fantastic coming of age tale taken place in a disordered time in America history. It left me emotional, nostalgic and heartbroken but wanting more. What a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Wonderfully rich in character and beautifully written it was easy to get lost in the story and fully immersed in the 1960s. You don't see the ending coming. A must read!

A surprising, delightful book that enchanted me. A simple tale of a Jewish community in 1967 and a teenage boy enjoying a summer by the lake. The background Newark riots is symbolic of the tumult in life amongst this close-knit community. A story of family, friendship, love and the time before college takes you away and your adulthood begins. Clear vivid imagery and a poetic like language captures the nuances of life and the potential of its destruction in unexpected ways. Is it more literature then crime, a possible coming of age or study of a particular cultural community?? This book ensnared me and was a true pleasure to experience - a must read 5-star rating.

4.5 stars
I’m not going to lie, what first drew me to this book was the beautiful cover.
Thankfully, the inside was just as beautiful.
This hooked me from the start.
It’s a a murder mystery in some ways, but really, it’s a coming of age story. Growing up and entering the adult world.
It was mostly character driven (which I love) and you couldn’t help but root for everyone.
I’ve seen people say nothing happened, but I think a lot actually happened. There’s so much to unpack. And just wait for the end.
I will reiterate what every other person has seemed to say in their review, which is the ending! It’s perfect.
It’s a quick read, but I enjoyed every second. I will be purchasing this book for my shelves (I only wish I came in a hardcover).

I felt all the emotions with this book. Adam Pelzman takes you through the thoughts of a middle class 15 year old Jewish boy growing up in New Jersey and the untimely riots going on. His family moves to their lake house permanently and his whole world changes. He finds a neighbor dead in the lake and it affects him so much. I can feel his depression, worry, and how he refuses to believe the death was an accident. I love the relationship Ben has with his father. They have the best father-son relationship I have ever read. His mother seems a little manic depressive, but I loved that while this book is quite sad, Ben's sarcasm and sass with his mom is a nice respite from that darkness. It was a beautifully written novel.

The boy, the lake, the dead body. It sounds like a mystery but reads like a drama, although wait until the very end and you’ll get both, plot twist and all.
The boy is the only surviving child of a well to do middle class Jewish family living in an idyllic lake community in Northern New Jersey, surrounded by other well to do middle class Jewish families. It’s insular, but comfortable and certainly more secure than the Newark and its riots they left behind. The boy goes through life comfortably, enjoying the affections of a lovely girl friend and wishing to change that arrangement into a single word descriptor, his loving grandparents, his nice kind father and his brutal, mercurial, irascible mother. I mean, the woman is straight out of a fairy tale wicked stepmother central casting, although her appeal is less witchy and more bitchy.
The lake provides a lovely setting to these families, a symbol of having made it in their generations back adapted country.
The dead body belongs to a beloved member of the community, a woman the boy was fond of, a nice and generous soul. The death appears to be a misadventure. But the boy has his own suspicions (it’s always the spouse, isn’t it), so he proceeds to try to investigate on his own.
What he uncovers will be a life changer…but until then there are all the teenage things to get into, drinking, misbehaving, romance, college, etc.
So I suppose in the end this is one of those coming of age stories where innocence is first stricken (discovery of a dead body), then slowly challenged (as the boy begins to become more aware of the dynamics of his surroundings) and then completely devastated with one final blow (which you’ll have to read to find out about). And as such it is very effective.
The story is set in 1967, the time easy to idealize with nostalgia fumes in retrospect, but actually quite turbulent in its own right. Some things were simpler, sure, but the main aspects of people as social animals…just as complex and ugly as ever. The novel gets that right also, never veering into oversentimentalism or cheap emotional manipulation.
The overall style is steady and measured, it isn’t just set in 1967, it reads like it might have been written then. A very immersive experience in a way. Slow, sedate and steady narrative with occasional flashes of brutality. More description than action, more contemplation than dialogue, but dynamic in its own way, it certainly never drags. Definitely a work of literary fiction.
It didn’t engage me to the extent of loving it, but it was an enjoyable read and I definitely liked spending time with it. A sad book, elegiac, actually, is more accurate of word for it, with a sort of singular elegance to it. And that ending…that ending. So yeah, pretty good overall. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

A wonderful story of a boy coming of age in a tight-knit Jewish community set in New Jersey during the year of 1967. On top of that, it is a mystery with some truly unique quirks and vivid characters. You could read this on many different levels and you could re-read this and get an entirely different impression from your first read. It reads smoothly and just when you think the mystery is going to peter out, it revives itself and from that point on, forget about going to bed; you will have to read to the end. This is also the kind of book where you wish for a sequel just to know how the characters go on with their lives. If the time period and the culture are familiar to you, you won't regret picking up this book.