While I really enjoyed The Lake of Lost Girls, it faces a challenge I often see in books that jump between timelines. The past perspective — in this case, Jessica in 1998 and 1999 — tends to dominate, both in plot and in length. As the reader, I'm naturally drawn to the present tense and wanting to solve the mystery, rather than watching it slowly happen. At best, that imbalance is very tangible and hard to ignore. At worst, it dilutes plot twists and risks spoiling the ending. Clearly, I think the story would have been stronger if it stayed in the current timeline (or, at the very least, done away with the flashbacks within Jess' own story).

All of that said, there was a lot of interesting aspects to the story. Even though I wish the book would have jumped around less, I really enjoyed the podcast perspective. I also would have loved for the small town element to have been played into more.

I really enjoyed this book. I would change a couple of the interludes between chapters though. I liked the podcast manuscripts and the newspaper articles, but I thought the Facebook and Instagram posts seemed cheesy and cheap.