This was a great book with building suspense. It got a little long winded at the end but over all, I really enjoyed it.

I love a good pun in a title (or in any context really). This was a good story and on some days maybe I would rate it 4 stars. I loved the various parts of the characters that made this story work so well. Multiple points of view and timeline hops kept things both interesting but also led to an inconsistent pacing. Sometimes this works in keeping the reader off balance but here it just felt uncomfortable. Add to that the weird foreshadowing at the end of many of the chapters. It felt forced as though the author had just finished a how-to on writing suspense and had been told to add a cliffhanger to keep the reader turning the pages. Seems like a lot of complaining about the book, but I still really enjoyed the characters and the twists in the story. I didn't need the foreshadowing cliff hangers to get me to turn the page!

Thanks to @Netgalley, @susanwalterauthor, @thrillerbookloverspromotions, @amazonpublishing for access to this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Wow, what can I say ? For most of the beginning part of the book, I thought I knew what happened that caused Bree to be in this situation. The twists in this book shocked me so much ! It was a great book and I'm impatient to read more of this author !

{3.5 stars}

I'm not gonna give much of a summary here, because I think this one is worth going in blind (the publisher's blurb is really misleading and that frustrated me). Bree is newly "unhoused" as the young kids say and she finds herself squatting on the pool loungers of a fancy uninhabited house at night. When she is caught, she is brought into a complex web that she is unaware of until someone ends up dead.

This one is entertaining but I found it fairly predictable. Not really a thriller but a metered domestic mystery, it flips POVs amongst a group of people who all have some connection to the house. I feel like it could have been punchier if it were a bit shorter and just focused on Bree and Sophie's POVs. Those were the most compelling and easily gave us all of the information we needed to know. They were both smart, capable women and I enjoyed reading them. But the book often focused on inane details of going to the bathroom or what they ate and I'm ok with the main character being a musician but the passages about the actual music were a bit much for me. Still a quick read with an easy mystery that would be perfect for reading by the pool.

Thanks to Lake Union Publishing for gifted access via Netgalley. All opinions above are my own.

Lie by the pool is such an exciting and engaging read! Told in alternating perspectives,
the story unfolds revealing how Bree lost her husband and became homeless. The author did a fantastic job weaving jaw dropping bits of the past into the present storyline! I don’t know how many times I gasped when a chapter ended leaving me scratching my head!

I really enjoyed this mystery thriller as it incorporated some adventure and family drama. The characters were likable and believable and definitely made you feel for them!

I love finding new authors and she was new to me! The book was so good with cliffhanger throughout! It’s a must read! Grab the last days of summer and head to the beach!

I was enjoying the start of this one. I liked the mystery around the pool house and the characters coming into view. It left you wondering who the mysterious woman was for a while and I liked that being held back. As the book progressed to the main event before the reveal it was going great. The plot was on track and I was an eager reader.

I liked the reveal once the timelines started to shift to her past also as it did with other characters but then it lost me. The plot started to really slow and it was cumbersome to the end. Apart from the reveal about what was really going on (which I didn’t like and felt another angle would of blended much better) there was nothing much more to enjoy.

I was skip reading chapters yet could see I was missing nothing. The ending was really a let down and I’d hoped it would really ramp up to a huge climax but sadly not. So I have mixed opinions, started of well but slid downhill after halfway. A shame as it could of had so much more psychological thriller aspects thrown in on top to make it a winner. .
3 stars from me. I would try this Author again with another book.

This started off interesting and it lead you to think that there was something really dark going on . . . but it was very anti-climatic and I would hesitate to even call this a thriller. While it had an interesting MC, it got muddled and the ending was disappointing. I suppose if you are looking for a low stakes mystery where nothing bad really happens and there isn't much thrill, this could be for you. I also questioned some of the believability at times -- did not seem entirely accurate on police procedure. Good atmospheric parts but not very thrilling.

Lie By the Pool comes out next week on September 12, 2023 and you can purchase HERE.

We rinsed our bodies in the river, then made some oatmeal, which we topped with brown sugar and thinly sliced Honeycrisp apples. I'd snuck the French press into the "kitchen' box, and we drank our coffee black and strong just like we both liked it. Our "table" was a big, flat rock by the river, and we sat on a fallen log and let the rushing water remind us that life is ever changing. A petal falls , a shadow forms, sunlight does an improvised dance across the water. If you're not present, you'll miss it; nature never gives you the same show twice.

Thank you to @thrillerbookloverspromotions and Lake Union Publishing

This is so compulsively readable! I couldn’t put it down! I went into it blind only knowing it was a thriller and I really enjoyed it that way, so here’s what I’ll tell you. Mistakes, secrets, love and Music and some really bad guys. I really liked these characters and even the side characters we got to know well enough to care about them. They were all so different with their struggles.
4.5

This book was just okay for me. I liked all the crime elements, but there were a couple of loose ends that did not get tied up by the end.

Alternating POV and timelines, and lots of action – this book sucks you in from the first chapters already. Also, it is really well-written. Seriously, the writing is remarkably good!
Each of the characters has something unique about them, something that makes you want to know more about them, dig deeper, and see more. Not all are likeable, but all pull you in and make you want to know more and understand more.

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish! There was a lot going on, that wove together seamlessly! I loved the red herrings, and foreshadowing throughout. The dual timelines were done well, and I enjoyed the multiple POV from our 4 main characters. Each character had their own voice and it was easy to distinguish between them. The action packed climax had me holding my breath.

This is a great book to read while sitting in the sun!

This was a fast paced and twisty thriller and I couldn’t put this book down.

Bree is barely surviving by conducting piano classes and is homeless, living in her former home. Then the owner of the home have a Halloween party and the next day, a body was found lying in the pool, murdered.

The story is told from multiple character POV Bree, Carter, Sophie, Luke. Luke is the contractor and Brees husband and Sophie worked for Luke. This is also a page turner and the twist at the end was completely unexpected. Overall, this was actually a good thriller that will keep you hooked from the first page onwards. Worth 4.5 stars.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union for the ARC. the review is based on my honest opinion only.

Fun and quick read with multiple POVs and broken into several parts. The twists were good and I like the way they were slowly unraveled.

A zippy thriller told in two time lines by several people centered around the mysterious death of Sophie and Bree's attempt to solve the crime. This is the sort of page turner that might have you guessing the villain early on- but you'll be wrong. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Good storytelling and a propulsive plot make this a good read.

This is a fast paced story with a great plot line. I really loved this author’s book, Good as Dead, last year. I appreciate her creativity in coming up with original storylines. This one started out with with some Drowning Woman vibes with a woman living out of her car and I was excited and intrigued to see where this one would go. However, I never really connected with the characters and there was a lot of “telling” me to beware which kind of ruined the suspense for me. I look forward to this author’s next book, but this one was kind of a miss for me. Thank you Netgalley, Lake Union Publishing, and the author for this eARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be available for purchase on September 12, 2023

This was the book I saw out August with and WHAT a way to finish the month!!! I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book 🤩🤩

It was fast paced, it had multiple POV, and it was super TWISTY 😮😮

Bree was an incredibly likeable character and my heart went out to her ❤️❤️ But I also connected with all the narrators in this book and each had their own unique voice. There was also a little jumping of timelines which I thought was a clever way of pacing the story and keeping the twists fresh 🔥🔥

With vividly descriptive writing, it wasn’t too difficult to imagine these gorgeous houses up in Beverley Hills 🏡🏡

This was a solid domestic thriller, with fab characters, and juicy twists… HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Thank you @susanwalterauthor @thrillerbookloverspromotions for the #gifted copy of this book!

Bree is a girl who is down on her luck. She’s homeless with no money having recently lost her husband. Living out of her car she decides one night to hop the fence to a very nice home and LIE BY THE POOL. 😉 This is not just any pool…this is a pool that also has a mansion attached to it. As she lays there, Sophie, the owners daughter comes home and spots her. On a whim instead of turning her in she does that gracious thing and invites her to her upcoming pool party. The night of the party she is happy to be living like normal and getting to sleep in a regular bed. Everyone goes home and she has the house to herself. Ahh…home sweet home.
The next morning she wakes up to a dead body in the pool and police already on the scene. Who is the dead person? How did that happen? Will she be blamed?

I was so excited to have the chance to read this book! It was told from two POV and as the book went on we find out just how Sophie and Bree are tied together. You can’t help but root for Bree, being that she’s homeless and you can tell there is more to her story! Once I found out why it made me feel for her even more. I can empathize to how people get themselves into sticky situations because I am naive and gullible. I can see how things played out the way they did. I thought this book was very engaging as it alternated between past and present keeping my attention and flipping pages quickly! This book had the perfect amount of emotion and action! I can’t wait to see what Susan comes up with next!

I really enjoyed Lie by the Pool. It was suspenseful and kept me coming back for more. I liked how all of the characters connected together. The twists were both a little predictable and unpredictable, but they weren’t so predictable that I didn’t want to read the book.

The one thing that I didn’t particularly love was the time jumps and how many POVs the book was told in. Also the parts where they would say something and then outright say that something would happen in the future, like the inner monologue was telling us thoughts from the future from the past.

That was the only thing I really didn’t connect with though so overall I would recommend this book.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.

4.5 stars rounding up on Goodreads.

Bree is down and out on her luck! I was hooked with the multiple POV and winding thorough the maze to find out why Bree is homeless and alone. I loved this book and I could not fly through the chapters fast enough. It was a rollercoaster of a ride and the major twist left me with my jaw wide open! Susan Walter writing is so suspenseful that it will leave you reading late in the night. This was my second book that I have read by Walters and I have loved both. Definitely add this to your TBR!

****Many thanks to Susan Walter for the gifted copy in turn for an honest review and thank you to @thrillerbookloverspromotions for including me in the tour.

My review will be posted on Instagram (@thriller_book_sisters) on September 1, 2023).