I was so excited to get approved for an early copy of Riley Sager's latest book to read and review that I had to read it straight away. This book is wild! This was an unforgettable mix of Rear Window and The Woman in the Window but on steroids.

A grieving widow, Casey uses alcohol to cope with the loss of her husband who drowned in the same place she's staying. Casey also happens to be a famous actress. She is spending some time in her house on Lake Greene to hide out from the press. On the other side of the lake is another famous couple, former supermodel Katherine Royce and her husband Tom. Just as they start to get friendly, Katherine goes missing. With the help of her husband's bird watching binoculars, Casey has been keeping an eye on her neighbours and their goings-on. Casey is suspicious of Katherine's disappearance and is sure that her husband Tom is behind it. So of course she decides to investigate her friend's disappearance.

The author does a fantastic job of creating an ominous atmosphere which has you on tenterhooks wondering where the story is going. The characters are believable and one feels for the main protagonist Casey.

The book has some great twists and turns and though you expect that the plot goes in a direction that one does not see coming at all including the jaw-dropping conclusion.

This is a must-read for all thriller and Riley Sager fans.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

I usually love books by this author, but this one is a bit muddled. The lead character is yet another drunken female who may or may not be seeing what she thinks she is seeing. She uses binoculars to spy on neighbors across the lake (Rear Window, anyone?), who may be having problems. The lead drunken female lost her husband over a year ago in that same lake, and is having trouble adjusting. There is so much more to this story than the reader thinks, so much so that one almost needs a score card. Still, it is worth the time and effort to read this weird, confusing, head-scratcher. Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for providing an ARC.

Every time I start one of Riley Sager’s book, I tell myself that I will not be caught surprised by one of his twists— oh boy, was I wrong again! The story starts off like every predictable tragic woman in a window story but then— oh but then! I won’t give away surprises but be rest assured, you do NOT know where this tale is headed! I adored it!

This entire story is filled with thriller tropes and damn it, I enjoyed it so much! This is a new Sager favorite of mine now.

We got:
✔️Secluded lakeside homes that scream wealth
✔️Sudden death of a spouse…or two?
✔️Depression fueled alcohol binging
✔️Insensitive mother doing insensitive things
✔️Nosy spying neighbor
✔️Ghosts from the past
✔️Hot lumberjack next door
✔️Impending storm
✔️Husband as a murder suspect
✔️More alcohol…like, a lot more.

Our girl Casey can DRINK. She could put a pirate to shame. For reals. 🥃 🏴‍☠️

Anyway, I just love Sager’s writing style and thought this was a great mystery thriller. I loved that the story is written in a Now and Before format, it made unraveling it extra fun. Sager was very clever in how he set it all up. When the twist hits, it hits hard. 💥🥊

I also had fun spotting the little Easter Eggs he wove in relating to some of his past novels. I see what you did there, Riley! Love that! 👏🏻

Widowed and out of a job, actress Casey Fletcher has been banished to her family's lake house to hopefully get off the booze and out of the spotlight. Except this is the very same lakehouse where her entire life fell apart, so yeah, that's not going great. Across the lake in a house made completely of windows, Tom, a rising tech startup founder and his beautiful and rich former model wife Katherine are visiting the secluded lake right as fall settles in Vermont. Curious Casey starts to peer into their lives using her deceased husband's binoculars and drunkenly witnesses a lover's quarrel right before Katherine goes missing. But so much of the story is not adding up — including another lake visitor's — a hottie named Boone — past.

Loved the premise of this book — despite being a bit of a tired troupe. I truly felt that if anyone could do a good job on the whole drunk low life lady spying on people, it would be Riley Sager. And he did, for the most part. I really loved Casey and was looking for alllll the clues as I was reading, thinking I could figure out the whodunnit. Literally could have never predicted how this one twists and turns, so for that, I give Sager all the credit. Hey, if you want your thrillers to surprise you, this one will def do that. There is an element to the book that I'm really not the biggest fan of, and there's no way to share on that without major spoilers, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

Not my fave from Riley Sager, and I think this will definitely be a love it or hate it book for everyone.... I still think I mostly enjoyed this ride and hope everyone else does too when it comes out on June 21! Thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for the eARC of this book!

The house across the lake had me just with the quote at the beginning which was,

"I think he did it, but I just can't prove it."
-Taylor Swift," No Body, No Crime"

I am a major Swiftie and as soon as I read this, I got the gist of the book. I thought the plot was going to be similar to the song, but the author did a brilliant job tweaking it into a unexpected ending. I finished the book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down and I just needed to know what happened.

The plot had so many twists and turns. It had so much suspense and action in it. The book started off a bit slow, it was eerily similar to "The woman in the window". I didn't really enjoy the excessive drinking in the book. It made me wonder how a person can drink so much, investigate a crime and also be physically strong. That's the only part of the book I had a problem with.

The book was set in a quaint Lake with lake houses all around. The main character was Casey Fletcher, daughter of an actress and a actress herself. She lost her husband in an accident in the Lake. Since then, she became an alcoholic. Her mother sends her to the Lake House after bad publicity as a punishment. But immediately, Casey seems to go fully into stalker mode when she sees her new supermodel neighbour, Katherine.

Casey saves Katherine from drowning and they form a bond since then. She keeps an eye on the house across the lake because she has a bad feeling about Katherine's husband, Tom. She sees something suspicious and Katherine disappears the next morning. There were a lot different red herrings in the book and it kept the plot fresh. If you like crazy thrillers, check this one out.

Wild and Totally Unexpected

House Across the Lake is the story of a widowed actress Casey, an alcoholic who saves a girl, a former model from drowning one day. Casey seems fascinated by Katherine and Tom, a glamorous couple who happens to live on the other side of the lake and start to keep a tab on their life with a help of her binoculars. Now this is a usual next door story but with a twist. So when Katherine goes missing, Casey is the only person who starts looking for her and unravel the mystery.

To be honest, the first 30-40% of the book was a mere typical story that could be dragging and took a lot of time to read. I liked the characters and Casey being stubborn on things made it easy to connect and read further. But the last 30% was a absolute wild ride. I just finished the last 30% in a single sitting because it was that good. I appreciate the authors writing, his style because Sager has just blown all the twists record.

I was very confident that I could guess the plot and where it was going, but then Sager has done an exceptional job by layering each twist one on another. Overall loved it. Read it if you like Detective novels, suspenseful novels, books with twist.

Thank you to Dutton books and Netgalley for providing me an arc of zthis amazing book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publishers for allowing me to read the advanced reader copy of this through netgalley.

I enjoyed this book. The first 70% of it I was worried it was going to turn out like so many other thriller books, but then the author threw in a twist that I definitely did not see coming.

An ARC I was super excited for but was extremely let down by. So much happened in this book but ultimately, I really didn’t love the twist. (Possible spoiler alert coming next???) After reading “Lock Every Door” I expected way more and was all around disappointed how much this book felt like a mix of “The Woman in the Window” and “Layla”, which were both ok to me. Overall, I will still continue to read more Riley Sager, but this one just did not do it for me.

The title and setting had me eager to read Riley Sager’s newest release, The House Across the Lake.

Casey Fletcher has been banished to her parents’ summer house in Vermont in order to escape the press, recover from her husband’s death and get her life together. Her days consist of drinking heavily, to avoid the painful memories of her husband’s drowning at the lake, and peering through her binoculars to watch her neighbor’s lives. As the summer progresses, Casey befriends the wife across the way, meets her hunky neighbor next door and gets reacquainted with the grandpa-like friend from her childhood. What seems like an idyllic and peaceful place is actually full of secrets that are gradually revealed as the story progresses.

Part Rear Window, part Gone Girl, Sager kept me guessing until the plot took an unexpected turn. The improbability of the twist curbed my enthusiasm for this novel but the scary, spooky events in the story kept me reading. If readers are looking for an escape from reality, this title won’t disappoint.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for the opportunity to read this book before its release in return for an honest review.

Casey is a broadway actress who is following in my mothers footsteps. She has always felt she had big shoes to fill but loved being on stage. As time went on the pressure was starting to get to her and alcohol become her new best friend. After an embarrassing moment with the paparazzi seeing Casey drunk in the middle of the day her career was in jeopardy.

On the advice of her mother, Casey moved into their cottage home on Lake Greene to lay low while the media attention dies down. However, Lake Greene also has bad memories for Casey as this is the place her husband drowned in the lake just a year prior. Casey’s drinking problems continues to worsen but one day she notices a woman struggling to swim in the lake and jumps to the rescue to save her. When the woman who happens to be a famous model goes missing it’s up to Casey to find out what happened to her.

This was my fifth book by the author and I found this one to be really different in terms of writing style. This was not a bad thing but it didn’t exactly feel like the other books he has written. However, the spooky and scary aspects was classic Riley. I really did not expect the back half of the story to go where it did but I absolutely enjoyed it. The book had a mix of a lot of themes such as family dynamics, alcoholism, friendship, love which I thought was great. The book also combines suspense, mystery and horror into one story and it was wonderful. If you are a fan of Riley or this is your first book of his you will enjoy it and won’t be disappointed.

The first quarter or so of this book had me thinking that it definitely wasn't getting any points for originality. It was the same old formula we've all read time and again: recent widow with a drinking problem sees something suspicious while spying on her neighbors, but nobody believes her so she takes matters into her own hands...

BUT to my surprise, halfway through things took a turn for the better with a crazy twist I did not see coming. Sager's descriptive writing and strong characters also helped this read stand out in the crowd of these types of thrillers. The unexpected originality bumped this read up to 4 stars!

Thank you NetGalley and Dutton for an ARC of one of my most anticipated reads of the year!

Rounding up to 4.5 stars

Just what in the world? First off, I really liked this. Will everyone love it? I can already tell this will have thriller fans divided and possibly question Sager’s style. Before getting to the spoilers, this was packed with twists. each one had me more shocked as the story went on. The book started off strong and then it kind of tapered off and nothing happened for a bit. Just as i was wondering if anything else exciting was going to happen, things went completely sideways. It is a somewhat slow buildup to more action, but the main characters inner monologue kept the book moving. The book itself is very reminiscent of the Hitchcock thriller, Rear Window, as in watching your neighbors can leave you with more than what your bargained for.

Now to the spoilers

so this has a HUGE supernatural element. When one of the twists came I said “…Sager did not just dump some cheap spooky plot on us right?” BUT, it worked! You gotta go into this with an open mind and this ties into the serial killer plot line very well. This is why I think alot of fans are a bit iffy about this book since it strays away from Sager’s usual formula of things that go bump in the night have a perfect human explanation. Yep there is still a killer but it’s just so strange and you got to suspend beliefs for this one.

Again I really liked this one. Some characters were a tad bland and meant as an obvious decoy but I’m not too mad about. I absolutely sped read this, perfect weekend read AND keeps Sager at the top of the thriller genre.

Mind my own business?

Never.

I definitely don’t want to say too much because I want everyone to have the experience of reading Sager’s latest for themselves, so I’ll just share some of my highlights and dislikes:

• The feel of a detective story mixed with thriller, which I absolutely loved, until the MC wouldn’t leave it alone and let the cops do their job

• Nods to his previous books and Taylor Swift had me squealing

• 🤯 this reaction definitely happened more than once

• Casey was drunk all the time, and I mean ALL THE TIME, which was extremely aggravating and could be a trigger for some readers

• I found a pretty large part of the plot to be unbelievable

The twists were done well, in regular Sager fashion, so I gave it 4 ★s

I think I'd rate this one about 3.5 stars. It was entertaining and I only guessed some of the twists. I wasn't expecting the paranormal element though and it wasn't my favorite. Overall, I still enjoyed the book though and found it an entertaining read. I think Sager is pretty successful in playing with sexist tropes and trying to flip them in the end.

I’m a big fan of all Riley Sager books so I was extremely excited to recieve an arc of his newest novel(thank you netgalley!). But in comparison to the rest of his books, this is probably one of my least favorites out of the six(although I enjoyed them all!). Before reading, the synopsis made me assume I would be reading a pretty typical cliche, but I was pleased to find the premise was quite a bit more unique than I expected. However, parts of the many present twists were pretty easily predictable, and some “shocking moments” seemed to blow over in the course of a few paragraps, and it almost made me wonder if some inclusions were even necessary at all. I enjoyed the different time lines, and they did help to confuse my predictions for a bit. I though the diverse selection of characters was admirable, but I did wish some of them got more attention(Boone and especially Eli!!). Although I was a bit disappointed that this novel seemed to be missing a bit of Sager’s usual magic, the reason I love his books so much is because they seem to defy reason and logic every time, and they draw you in from beginning to end with every individual, outlandish plot. And this was definitely no exception! So overall, I really did enjoy this unique spin on a commonly used trope and urban legend, and I would happily reccommend this to others!

Ok, I think I am going to have to stop reading this authors books. I know i have enjoyed them in the past but the supernatural element does nothing for me. The only author I like who deals with this is Stephen King. To me it ruins the story that starts off fairly normally before diving into the silly. If you like that kind of book then all well and good but not fo me.
Casey lives in a lake house in Vermont. He husband drowned In the lake over a year ago and her life has spiralled out of control since. Fired from the play she was staring in for being drunk, she has continued to drink herself into oblivion most days. When she meets her neighbour, glamorous super model Katherine, she becomes fascinated with her and her husband Tom and starts watching them through binoculars as they live in the house across the lake. A modern design all windows and glass doors that makes it easy to spy on the inhabitants. It soon becomes clear to Casey that Tom and Katherine’s marriage is not as perfect as they make out and when Katherine disappears she becomes consumed with finding out what Tom did to her.

#TheHouseAcrossTheLake #NetGalley

This was a wild freaking ride. Every page I suspected a new person! I'm still in shock I've been left speechless. Definitely worth the read.

Riley Sager is an auto-buy author for me, and in my bookshop I've been excited to introduce readers to Lock Every Door and The Last Time I Lied in particular. So this was a disappointing miss for me.
First- I think it's hard to tell any story that is an homage to Rear Window. This is such an iconic masterpiece, that's there's little one can add to improve upon it. The main character (with whom I share a name- which is a rare experience for me, as opposed to the Emilys and Jessicas of the world) is an alcoholic staying in her family home on a remote lake. This ends up making for some really repetitive content that I ended up skimming over from time to time. There are some fun red herrings and I was along for the ride until we got to the first reveal. I got to the paragraph with the first twist of the story, read it, and was immediately simultaneously perplexed and disappointed. I actually stopped to look around the room as though someone was going to pop out and tell me I was being pranked. The subsequent reveal is interesting if not also a little baffling. The book really goes off the rails for the last quarter but then there's a happy ending. So. I'm not sure if/how I'll be sharing this one with customers. I'm sure there's plenty of readers who will love this book, I just think I expected different/better from Riley Sager.

A famous starlet's husband dies at the family lake house and she turns to alcohol in her grief. To dry her out, her mom sends her back to the lake house to be by herself. While she is there (definitely not sobering up) she meets a new neighbor who has almost drowned in the lake. It just so happens that this woman is a super famous model who has married a super rich tech guy. But is he super rich? Do they have the great marriage that Instagram says they do? Because he seems intimidating, cold, and threatening. I really want to leave this review at that because to say anymore would be giving too much of the fun away. I read this book in one sitting. From the very first chapter I was hooked. I did not see the twist at the end coming. I don't think anyone will see it coming...it's that good. I say this is a must purchase for libraries where thrillers like Getaway by Zoje Stage and The Return by Rachel Harrison have done well.