I thoroughly enjoyed The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene. The novel’s intricate narrative structure, shifting between multiple points of view and alternating between the present day and 1998/1999, keeps the reader engaged and adds depth to the story. The dual perspectives of Jessica and Lindsey provide a compelling look into their respective journeys, making the plot more immersive and relatable.

The character development is great, with each personality meticulously crafted. The isolated and eerie lake setting enhances the mystery, and Greene’s talent for building suspense is evident throughout the book. The mystery of the disappearing female students and the discovery of their bodies in the lake creates a chilling and sinister atmosphere.

This novel is a sharp examination of sisterhood and the culture of true crime, making it a must-read for thriller enthusiasts. Catherine Greene has delivered a gripping and thought-provoking story that is sure to captivate readers.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC of this book. I appreciated the opportunity to read and provide my review!

Rounded up to 4.5⭐️

I absolutely devoured this book. What started as a buddy read with @bookstagrambrad turned into us both not being able to put this down and finishing our chapters way ahead of schedule. I’m loving the podcast aspect I’ve seen in thrillers and this is done perfectly. There was a perfect mix of podcast episodes, social media posts and dual timelines in multiple POV’s. Each chapter flowed perfectly from the last which made this impossible to stop reading. You’ll spend so much time being suspicious of different characters that you won’t realize the twist until it hits you in the face. GREAT read that I highly recommend!

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC in return for my honest review.

BOOK REVIEW


The Lake of Lost Girls

By Katherine Greene

Plot: It's 1998, and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina. The latest to disappear is Jessica Fadley.
Twenty-four years later, Jessica's sister Lindsey is desperately searching for answers and uses the momentum of a new chart-topping true crime podcast, Ten Seconds to Vanish, that focuses on the cold cases, to guide her own investigation. Soon, interest reaches fever pitch when the bodies of the long-missing women begin turning up at a local lake, which leads Lindsey down a disturbing road of discovery.

Review: This book was a buddy read with my friend @readwithdubs! We had a goal of about 20 days to read but once we both got into the story…we couldn’t put it down and finished the book in record time!
The chapters alternated between Jess in the past, and Lindsey in the present, which kept us on our toes. The podcast element was a nice recap of what we knew and a hint at what the next chapter would give us. 

The writing was exceptional. This story is a web of lies so dynamic and memorizing that you just can’t put it down. You fall right into the shoes of each characters and really feel the tension! This is the type of book that has you staying up way too late needing to know what happened to the lost girls. 

5/5 Stars! 100% recommend! Do not sleep on this one! I anticipate this to be one of the falls hottest books.

I thought multiple times that I have figured out “who did it” but with a few clever red-herrings and some perfectly placed lies, I was proved wrong time and time again.

The Lake of Lost Girls is out Nov 5th, 2024! Thank you to Katherine Greene, Crooked Lane Books, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I really enjoyed this book and was kept thoroughly engaged as I read the story of Mt. Randall’s local missing girl, Jessica Fadley. Told by multiple authors in different formats and across different times; the story focuses primarily on the two Fadley sisters and some very creepy sounding men! There were one or two inconsistencies which made more sense once I realised that Katherine Greene was actually the pen name for two authors.

Nearing the end of the book, I didn’t want it to stop and actually had to take a short break so that it wouldn’t end before I was ready. I had suspicions, but was not expecting the full twist the book gave. This riveting story kept me on tender hooks, and left me wanting more.

Told in alternating timelines, The Lake of Lost Girls uses suspenseful podcast clips to weave a twisty tale of a missing student and her sister. I loved the true crime aspect of the novel it works really with the podcast setting. While this novel was good it was somewhat predictable would make a good beach read

What a great story! Missing college student changed the life and family dynamic for her younger sister, Mom and Dad. The story takes place many years later when a podcast is being made to try to find out what happened to her and other missing girls from the same time period. There are suspects as the story unfolds but it really keeps you guessing all the way until the end. Just when I thought I had it figured out another piece of evidence appears. Highly recommend!

WOW. This book was FANTASTIC! This is one novel that I might actually buy a physical copy of upon release. I really enjoyed the story going back and forth between the two timelines and POVs to help you get a full scope of the story. There were several twists and turns that had me hooked and compelled to read it as quickly as I could. While I did end up predicting what was going on, it did take me some time to get there. This is one title that I will be for sure recommending.

Love a book that involves missing people and true crime podcasts. I also love true crime so I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was somewhat predictable though and that affected my rating.

The Lake of Lost Girls - Katherine Greene
Lindsey's sister Jessica was once a young and happy student who was excited to have a fresh start at University. While the University was in her home town, she needed a change and opted to live on campus. As she settled in and found her place, girls started disappearing. They all theorized that there was a killer on campus.
When Jessica suddenly goes missing, they assume she is just like the other missing girls.
When a body is found at the lake, it not only sparks the interest of a popular podcast duo, but the need for answers pulls Lindsey back in. She was the last one who saw Jessica all those years ago, one minute by her car, and the next gone. Lindsey can't help but feel partially responsible, even though she was only a small child. As she mourns the relationship her and Jessica could've had, she dives in deep trying to put the pieces together to find out what really happened to her sister.
It's simple, I devoured this book. It's the second Katherine Greene book I've read, and she will always now be an automatic read and recommendation from me. I got wrapped up in the lost girls, trying to piece together who the bad guy in this story really was. I had multiple theories and while I had slight suspicions, I really couldn't have fully put this one together. If you're looking for a thriller that's different from the rest, and will keep you on your toes, keep an eye out for this one and snag your copy in November! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5!
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

Thank you Net Galley and Katherine Greene for my ebook.

Katherine Greene is the pen name of two writers: A Meredith Walters and Catherine C Riley.

The Lake of Lost Girls is a suspense-filled story about the disappearances of four female college students in 1999. The plot line is driven by alternating past and present narratives of the main characters, and the scripts of a podcast by two annoyingly flippant women seeking out and interviewing possible witnesses to the disappearances twenty-four years ago.

Lindsey is 30 years old and was 6 when her sister, Jess, vanished. Lindsey’s life for the last twenty-four years has been lived under the cloud of Jess’s disappearance, and she has always been desperate to know what happened to her sister. Something happens to bring the disappearances to the attention of the local police once more and at the same time a man seeks Lindsey out at the hotel where she works and tells her he is researching the case.

Lindsey tells her story in the present while her sister, Jess, is speaking from twenty-four years ago. People are not necessarily what they seem to be, which is always an important ingredient in a good mystery story.

This book kept me enthralled from start to finish. There were a lot of twists and turns and I couldn’t begin to guess how the mystery was going to be resolved, right up to the end.

Congratulations, ‘Katherine Greene’, on a terrific collaboration!

Published by Crooked Lane Books

The Lake of Lost Girls exceeded all of my expectations and is easily one of my favorite reads for 2024. Told from multiple viewpoints over different timelines, this book revolves around the disappearance of four college women in 1998, and the review of the cold cases in present day. When a body is discovered at Doll's Eye Lake and a True Crime Podcast releases details of the cold case, Lindsey, a sister of one of the missing women, goes on a journey to discover what happened to her sister all those years ago. As more remains are found, it's only a matter of time before the truth comes out.

I loved this book, and I enjoyed the format of the dual timeline and the true crime podcast snippets sprinkled in. The trauma and grief throughout the book were so realistic and I was desperate to find out what happened. The twists and turns were so unexpected, and it was just a beautiful and well written book. Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC of this haunting mystery.
The setting comes alive in this small town mystery split between two time lines.
The characters are created to come alive in your mind as you sift through freshman Jessica Fadley’s life that is divided between before her sister disappeared in 1998 and the present.
I really liked this book, and I found the ending to be heartbreaking as the truth is revealed.
The ending seemed to come together in a rushed manner, other than that, the book was really well done.

4.5 stars - a brilliant thriller that, although predictable, leaves an impact after you have finished. The pacing was fantastic and I loved the social media aspects that were dotted throughout. Was it fairly obvious what was going on, yes - but I did enjoy the ride.

What a rollercoaster!!! If you’re a fan a true crime podcasts and true crime books, this is right up that alley! It definitely true crime, but the writing style was so relatable. I also felt the writing style was similar to the agggtm series by holly Jackson.

All through the book, the details being uncovered pointed to characters who seemed they like they had a role in the disappearances of the missing college girls. But to find out at the end who really did it was so shocking! This book will keep you invested from start to finish! A great, fast paced read!

The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene isn't out until later this year but I had an early copy and (at the time of reading) nothing else on my Kindle due to be published soon so figured I'd jump in early. And I discovered that Katherine Greene is the pen name of bestselling authors A Meredith Walters and Claire C Riley. And is it just me or is it weird they both have initials in their names? Interestingly they're both based in the UK but this is set in a small American college town and it's their second collaboration.

It was the second book I'd read in a fairly short timeframe that featured a podcaster, though I have to admit the podcasters here feature fairly minimally, other than to break the dual timeline storytelling and offer up another 'medium' if you like, with the podcast transcript included.

In the present 30 year old Lindsey manages a hotel reception desk and hasn't felt she's able to leave town as her parents have never really recovered from the disappearance of her sister twenty-four years earlier. Although only six at the time, Lindsey looked up to the much-older Jessica and feels her loss keenly as the college student seemed to have been the perfect foil to her parents different styles of parenting and coping.

Jessica was very close to her father and - unfortunately for Lindsey - her mother admits to only having a second child so she had someone who could love her the same way. Jessica was a high-achiever and star student. She was the apple of her father's eye and her mother, though quietly proud, was a hard taskmaster.

In the present the podcasters' decision to revisit the case is timed with the discovery of bones. It seems astonishingly weird that the police at the time did not see the connection between four girls going missing from the same college in a small town... where nothing usually happens. Although we do learn that there was a lot of misinformation shared - both accidentally and on purpose.

Some of this book was predictable. Lindsey meets a journalist staying at the hotel who's after the truth but it's pretty obvious he has an agenda which (thankfully) is fairly quickly revealed. I appreciated the extremes Greene takes with his character and the fact that he's one of several characters with blurred lines of morality and... well, not necessarily at the right end of the good-to-evil spectrum.

On learning of the link between her sister's disappearance and that of other students Lindsay starts digging and soon discovers the Jessica who disappeared was quite different to the one that had started college just months earlier.

I found Greene's storytelling to be engaging and I liked both Lindsay and Jessica. The mystery at the heart of this book easily had my attention but there's also an examination of deeper issues around family and relationships. Around trust and secrets.

We get some hints so it doesn't render the final twist as shocking as it could have been. It's still unexpected, but one's more likely to gasp and then a nod - like 'Ah yes, of course.' Greene gives us lots of red herrings though and characters awash with grey. Not all bad. But perhaps not all good either.

As podcasts have become more and more popular in the last decade, so have books utilizing a podcast element to help tell their story. Books with this format tend to be pretty hit or miss for me. This book uses the podcast trope to explore the connection between the late 1990s disappearances of Jessica Fadley and three other young women to a recent discovery of human remains at a nearby lake.

The story shifts from a present day, first person narrative from Jessica’s sister, Lindsey, to a past narrative from Jessica herself. Interlaced are clips from the Ten Seconds to Vanish podcast, true crime blog posts, newspaper clippings, and more. I, personally, could have done without those add-ins as they didn’t bring any new information to the story that wasn’t already disclosed in the narrative. There were also a few instances where the writing was repetitive or didn’t align with what was said in a previous paragraph.

Jessica and Lindsey had a very similar narrative voice, often times making it difficult to distinguish between the two, and their desperate need for approval from men grew to be so maddening. I wanted to grab their shoulders and shake them like a damn apple tree but that didn’t take away from the overall story for me. In fact, their approval-seeking personalities played in to the plot very well.

What I really enjoyed about the story was the pacing. It kept me wanting more and overall, I found this thriller to be very gripping; I was desperately turning the pages to try and uncover the truth.

In all honesty, this wasn’t the perfect thriller but I still had a lot of fun reading it. I think if you can cast aside your critical mind, it’s an enjoyable ride. 3.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads.

Thank you Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the digital copy!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book hooked me from the start and I was invested in the story and the mystery we were trying to solve the case of these 4 missing girls who died. This has a past and present timeline. The past timeline is from the older sister Jessica’s POV and the present timeline is of the younger sister Lindsey’s POV. We jump between past and present with each chapter. I thought it could be confusing to keep track of each timeline but the author has done a great job of making this not the case.

Mixed media is also present in this novel in the forms of podcasts, newspaper clippings and social media screenshots. These forms of mixed media sprinkled throughout the story contributed to the immersion of the story.

The characters were also written really well. I felt that by the end I really knew the key players of this story and I especially got to know the two sisters, Jessica and Lindsey. The writing was really easy to read and since this was the first book I read from the author, I look forward to reading more. In terms of a mystery thriller novel, I enjoyed it and would recommend!

I have a little secret…

Katherine Greene. just released one heck of a book, and it’s straight up poppin’!

The Lake of Lost Girls

This book deserves a standing ovation and I am SO here for it.

I cant even tell you what I thought I was going to read compared to what I actually did read but I can tell you, this book is one that I will never be able to stop talking about and it deserves every bit of the hype it is about to get..

Fantastic! This took you for a wild ride! I loved the suspense and the characters. This book was great!

Absolutely devoured this book and loved it. I was not expecting the multiple twists at the end of the book and did not expect that ending either. The story started off as many we have read before with a podcast and a murder but this one had so many unexpected twists and turns that kept me wanting more and more. Highly reccomend!