Thoughts

I loved this book. This isn't a book with twists, per se, which I think is to its benefit. Instead, it has a slow-creeping nature to it, subtle shifts in tone and feeling that mean you can't sense the brewing trouble until its right there. That unease, that tension: perfect.

Pros
Priorities: So often, I've found, books that start with the premise "teens stranded in the wilderness" are frustrating. The kids don't know they're stuck, or they don't realize the seriousness of the situation until hours, days, or weeks later when they're shelterless, cold, and hungry. These girls, however, immediately latch onto their situation (as, realistically, one would). Very few people would not see the problem with being left in a national forest with no way out. For once, that common sense makes its way into these pages. These girls know they have to rely on each other, trust each other, and work whatever angle they can to get out of this. I appreciate that.

Up the Ante: The stakes here start pretty high, of course. Three girls abandoned in the woods, far from civilization, is struggle enough. The woods contain dangers, too, but these dangers quickly prove to be more than just exposure and rabid animals. These ladies aren't as alone as they thought. There are men with guns, murdered corpses, and signs of... something else. Each of these reveals ups the ante of being trapped. There is so much to fear here, for good reason and to good effect.

Mental Health: Claire has panic attacks, which is obviously not good in a high-stress situation. But I love how Durst handles Claire's panic attacks, because these attacks don't just happen to make the situation more difficult for the characters. Panic attacks can happen during situations that make anyone anxious. They can also happen at a time that does not, on the surface, make sense. The inclusion of Claire's anxiety here is consistent, and the ramifications are important not just for the plot at large but for Claire's character, her development, and her relationship with the other girls. I really appreciated this nuanced and true-to-life exploration of mental health struggles.


Cons
Silly Setup: This book ultimately veers into the vaguely paranormal, so the way we get there can be forgiven. But the whole setup feels a little... whimsical. It feels convenient. Sending these girls off without anybody thinking to check in, make sure they're okay, make sure everything's above board? That was an immediate red flag from the beginning. When nobody meets them at the dock... Would these girls really just think that everything's okay? And would their families back home have nothing to say? It feels off. Forgivable, in hindsight, but off.

Psychologically Aware: These girls seem to be very in-tune with their inner lives and beings. There are a lot of psychological factors at play here, both at the Lake House and in their backstories, and they are all willing and able to vocalize exactly these pressures and how they are affected by them. It seems pretty unbelievable for anyone, really, to be so aware of their own psychological state but it is an especial stretch for young teenage girls who haven't, as far as we know, had any sort of therapy in their lives. This, too, feels a little... off.

Get Moving: While I appreciated how quickly these girls realized the severity of their situation, survival-wise, they still lingered far longer than they should. This was rather provoking--get a move on! On the one hand, that's good. Durst evokes a particularly acute sense of anxiety in this book. But it still feels like girls who are as on top of it as these girls wouldn't drag their feet as long as they do.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
8/10

Fans of Laura Bates's No Accident will enjoy this survival tale turned something more. Those who enjoyed Kate A. Boorman's Into the Sublime will love the uncertain line between psychological and supernatural in this book.

Special thanks to Harper Collins Children's Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

For me, this book was too many plot twists and too juvenile for me. However would I recommend it to a YA....definitely.

I should've never picked this one up. I cannot fairly rate a YA book. I DNF because I'm too old for this. I will give 3 stars bc I feel I would've liked it 30 yrs ago

🏕️ The Lake House is a YA novel about 3 teen girls, who don’t know each other, that are trapped on an abandoned island under the illusion of attending a summer camp

🏕️ This one had a lot of plot points going on that I felt could have been narrowed down to just include a few that could have been explored further. There were so many interesting things going on and I wish we could’ve gotten more out of it.

🏕️ I would recommend this one if you like YA and also liked The Island by Adrian McKinty!

Incredible, dark and atmospheric. I loved the characters and the writing was both compelling and easy to read. It's exactly as good as the cover promises. I hope everyone reads it upon release.

4.5 stars. I may not read as much YA fiction as I used to, but I am here for anything Durst writes. She is an author who has proven herself to me over and over, and this survival thriller horror novel was a compelling page-turner. Three teen girls, all strangers to each other, are dropped off at a very remote summer camp in Maine. Their boat has already departed when the girls arrive at the camp buildings and find them burned to the ground, with no one else in sight. Their phones don't work and it's not long before they find a dead body in the woods. This plot is bananas, and I loved the girls' characters, the friendship they built, and their strength and resourcefulness. Things get pretty creepy and tense, and I loved it all. Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books/HarperTeen for a digital review copy.

This had an incredible premise and Durst's atmospheric writing lived up to that premise, full of fog and secrets. It was a twisty story that I enjoyed, but unfortunately did not totally love & do not think it fully lived up to the hype set by its premise.

In this supernatural survival story, three girls find themselves completely alone in the Maine woods when the summer camp they signed up for is nothing but a burnt husk of a building on arrival. Relying on their wit and strength, and most importantly on each other, they find themselves face to face with more than just the wilderness. As the stakes escalate and things get more and more dire, they learn to embrace their strengths and band together to help each other rise above the anxieties and insecurities that held them back. I really like this book! I think a couple points are a little overly repetitive, but overall I really thought this was a creative and creepy survival story. I adore the three main girls, and I think their friendship is so believable and grows as they fight to survive together. Even though they are wildly different people they balance each other out and are really charming together. You can tell they’re not just trauma bonded, but really friends. I think there’s a little bit of yadda yadda-ing at the end to try and make it make a little more sense. But hey it’s a supernatural thriller! I don’t need it to totally make sense, I just need it to be creepy and fun, and this was all of that!

This review will be posted on my instagram @boozehoundbookclub, closer to the pub date.

This book sounded good, but it was really boring and slow. It struggled to hold my attention, and I put it down, preferring to do other things.

This was an entertaining story about girl friendships with more than a touch of horror.

Claire, Revya, and Mariana are late arrivals at the Lake House. All have been pressured by their parents to go to this summer camp for and "enrichment retreat." None expected to find themselves alone on an island in Maine with the camp burned to the ground and something chasing them.

I liked the way each girl exposed herself to the others as they began to trust each other. Claire has a pessimistic viewpoint on life. She's the first to identify all the things that can go wrong in any situation. Sometimes these circular thoughts cause her be suffer panic attacks. Her parents don't know what to do with her and make her feel that these attacks can be overcome with a more positive attitude. This only makes Claire feel worse about them.

Mariana and Revya are hiding secrets of their own.

But all three girls have to develop their own sorts of survival skills if they want to live through their summer camp experience. I loved watching the girls grow while learning to depend on and accept each other for what they are.

The horror aspect was also a nice addition to the story in a very creepy way.

This was a YA book that I did not want to put down. From the beginning chapters of The Lake House, you know something is not right. There was a twist in the story that I for one dis not expect, but that made it even more interesting.

Claire, Marianna, and Reyva are three teens from three different backgrounds, three different states, but had one thing in common...The Lake House. The Lake House was a summer camp in the woods of Northern Maine where the girls' parents had attended a couple of decades earlier. They then decided to send their daughters there for a few weeks. The three girls were arriving a little late due to bad weather and were being dropped off, expecting the camp director to meet them. However, after the boat that dropped them off leaves and no one is there to meet them, they decide to follow the trail to the cabin. What they find will leave them all in a state of shock and trigger a chain of events that will keep you guessing.

I really liked this survival stiry and was impressed with the three mc's courage, stamina, and ability to think clearly after all they go through.

I also loved that this story didn't have any kind of agenda, it was just a good, twisty story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of The Lake House in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Claire is less than thrilled to go to a remote lake house retreat. It's just like all the other things her parents sign her up for that give her anxiety. When she and the other two girls are left on the dock only to discover that the Lake House has burned to the ground, Claire's anxiety gives her only the worst-case scenarios. Claire, Revka, and Mariana might be very different girls, but together they will have to survive, because there's something else out here in the woods with them...

I think I would have liked this better if it had been just a straight survival story. The dangerous elements - a mysterious man in the woods, another man with a gun, and an unspecified evil - were a little vague and confusing. Which is weird, because I generally like supernatural evil. I think if the supernatural aspect had been larger and there'd be more of that atmosphere in the story, I would have liked it, but in the end nothing was really answered about it. The comradery between the girls and how they overcome their personal issues was the best part of the book.

The cover for this book is what first drew me, but the story sucked me in, and wouldn't let go.

The tension and suspense start right away, our three girls arriving via boat, to the Lake House, somewhere their parents went to as children. However, once they arrive all they find is the husk of the house as it has very recently burned to the ground. Now the boat is gone, there is no phone service, and there doesn't seem to be any other people around... even though they were a day late arriving at the camp and all the others should surely be there... did they all die in the fire?
How are they going to get rescued? Once they find the body in the woods everything really ramps up, because now they know there is at least one other person with them, and they are a killer.
The book kept me on the edge of my seat throughout, it was spooky, and suspenseful, a story of three girls forming an unbreakable bond that helped them survive days in the forest while being hunted by not only a couple of crazy people but something that shouldn't exist, and will do everything in its power to make sure no one escapes.
I loved everything about this book, and when it was over I wanted there to be more. This was a perfect supernatural thriller and I will definitely be reading more from this author.

First, thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins Canada for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

The cover was an immediate draw for me in picking this book, it had that nineties style horror vibes in the vein of Christoper Pike and RL Stine. Once I got into the book, those vibes continued and I ended up reading the whole book in one day.

I really loved the girls: Claire, Mariana, and Reyva and how they used their different strengths to survive in the wilderness with nothing really but their wits and what they could gather. They all had their own personal battles and I loved how the girls opened up to each other and really found that solid friendship with each other—because that’s the biggest takeaway from this story. Friendship and accepting oneself for who you are.

I enjoyed the setting with that survivalist aspect and how the girls were able to overcome obstacles and how strong they were as a trio. When the mystery started ramping up the girls never swayed in their support of one another when they easily could’ve abandoned each other—instead, despite having just met they really formed a tight nit bond. Trust was definitely needed to survive what they were facing!

I honestly didn’t expect this story to go where it did but it was a fun read with a great thrill!

Instagram post to come soon!

It's fine, it's perfectly serviceable but it's not doing anything incredible or original. I didn't dislike it but it's possible I just don't connect with YA anymore.

Three girls arrive at a summer camp deep in the woods in Maine—but nobody's there. The camp is a battered, burnt-out ruin, and the only person they can find is dead. With nobody around to get them out, it's up to them to figure out: who did this? And why? And what will it take for the three of them to survive?

I've read a number of books of late in which it's clear that one of the main characters must have been the perpetrator, and this is basically the opposite: Claire and Mariana and Reyva arrived together, on the same boat—so there are few things of which they are certain, but they know without a doubt that none of them is responsible. They know they can trust each other. As a platonic-friendship story, then, it's fantastic: the girls are all very different, and under normal circumstances they probably wouldn't be friends...but these are not normal circumstances. This is late nights in the woods, in the rain, desperately needing a way to collect water and a way to find food; this is knowing that they aren't alone in the woods, and that nobody is coming to save them, and they'll need to save themselves. Mariana is a girly-girl with a deep love of old cars, and Reyva has gotten used to years of quelling her emotions, and Claire is terrified that her panic attacks will break them apart—and right now, they're all each other has.

I love a mystery that *scares* me, that makes me afraid that someone is, you know, stalking me through the woods and could slit my throat any minute now. I want to be afraid for the characters, but I want to be so lost in the story that I'm afraid for myself too. And "The Lake House" gripped me by the throat for the first twenty-one chapters. I was so deep in it that I barely registered the world around me as I walked through my neighborhood with my nose deep in my e-reader, and I jumped every time I caught another person moving in my peripheral vision.

What I didn't love: there's a twist. It's one that will work brilliantly for some readers, and I think it's best to go in not knowing, so I won't get more detailed than that—but it's the sort of twist that neutralizes a lot of the fear for me. I finished the book in a day and slept like a baby, but I sort of wish that I'd read only halfway before calling it a night, and then finished the next day, so that I could have had a bit of that wide-awake-can't-sleep-is-that-something-at-the-window feeling. (I know. It's a personal problem.)

So...not a home run for me, but I can and do gleefully recommend this for anyone who wants a deep-in-the-woods type of mystery (it's one of my favorite sorts, along with the stuck-in-a-rambling-old-mansion type) with an emphasis on platonic friendship and girls working together.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Between the cover, the title and the premise of a summer camp mystery/thriller I was sold. Unfortunately it didn’t work as well as I wanted it to. Firstly I didn’t realize this was YA and while I read the genre; this time it was too young writing style wise for my liking. Secondly, I can’t stand supernatural twists which (spoiler alert) this one has. I think this will work for lots but not me

The Lake House follows Claire, Mariana, and Reyva as they fight to survive while trapped at summer camp. All three girls were such interesting characters and I liked their immediate friendship. Each girl has their own secrets and as they work together to survive, each of their secrets come to light. I really liked being in Claire’s head because we got to see how she deals with mental health. It’s not explicitly stated but I read her condition as anxiety and OCD. She is constantly worrying about things around her and always thinks in worst-case-scenario. As someone who has anxiety, I really connected to this side of Claire because I often think in worst case scenarios so it was nice to see myself represented in a character. The girls’ relationship was interesting to see unfold. Each girl has something they want to hide about themselves, but being trapped in this situation forces them to confront their flaws in a way that forms them into strengths. They give each other the support they each long for so to see them finding them selves in such a dark situation was beautiful.
The mystery thriller element was fun and I found myself constantly trying to figure it out before it was revealed. The descriptions were super creepy and there were times I had goose bumps because of how creepy and gruesome the descriptions were. I was able to guess where the book was headed and the big twist was not my favourite. I felt like it pulled me away from the thriller aspect unfortunately. But the entire store was a fun read. I was engrossed in the story and even though the twist wasn’t my favourite, I still really enjoyed how the whole book wrapped up.
Overall this was an exciting Young Adult thriller that fans of Karen McManus and Holly Jackson would really enjoy! It releases April 25th 2023!

An edge of your seat, suspenseful page turner! I loved that this supernatural thriller focused on the friendship of the three main characters and romance was not a focus. That can be really hard to find in YA.

I was definitely interested from the beginning of book, the thought of 3 teens being stranded in the woods sounded great. I was invested in the survival aspect of the story but once the supernatural element came into play it lost me.

I did really like the friendship that formed between the 3 girls and how they worked together to survive and overcome the challenges throughout the book.

I didn’t love the end, I didn’t like how the just forgot Jack. I mean I get WHY but it didn’t work for me.

The cover art is great and I think this will really appeal to the younger YA crowd.

Thank you to HarperCollins Children's Books, HarperTeen for this advanced copy.

Imagine Jason has gone through Camp Crystal Lake, killed the campers, burned the bunks, moved into the shadows, curtain down. But then, three young teen campers, delayed by weather show up the next day, dropped off at the dock, expecting to be greeted by happy scenes out of a camp brochure, only to find the smoldering remains of camp house, see the boat that dropped them off speeding away, and realizing that they have no cell service and limited supplies. As they try to work through this nightmare scenario, they also discover something else - they may not be alone at the camp. And whoever's with them isn't exactly friendly.

The concept of this book was really exciting, not only for the "stranded on a deserted island" aspect, because if that was the only aspect of the book, there are plenty of survival shows to watch to get your fix - in fact some are mentioned in the book! But the author take things up a notch with the creepy, thriller angle adding in the unknown presence on the island and the mystery surrounding what's really going on and what really happened The Lake House.

And the answer is really intense - it's a great puzzle that the girls are able to slowly put together as they also fight for survival against the elements. I don't want to give anything away, but they end up dealing with threats in the present, threats from the past, and their own demons to try and stay alive for just one more day. It's really intense, and you can just feel the emotion coming off the page.

I really enjoyed this one, with its unique premise and its just little tiniest bit of a twist ending that makes you think. If you're a fan of Survivor-type shows, or even just good ol' thrillers, I'd recommend picking this one up.