I really enjoyed reading this! The plot was interesting and I liked the twist at the end. Fun, quick read for Halloween time!

🔥 M U S T R E A D M O N D A Y review 🔥 featuring “The Lake of Lost Girls” by Katherine Greene!

BOOK REVIEW: 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤/5

In 1998, Jessica Fadley left home to attend her first year at Southern State University in North Carolina. Although it was only 15 minutes away from her childhood home and parents, the need to be on her own had never been so needed. Jessica started out as a straight A student with a responsible head on her shoulders, but this quickly changed and she started to party too much and spiral out of control.

Female students at the university started to go missing … all of them linked in one way or another to a Professor with a predator reputation. Jessica included … and she also went missing without a trace like the other girls.

24 years later, a popular true crime podcast called Ten Seconds to Vanish has decided to focus on the cold cases of the missing girls. Jessica’s younger sister Lindsey has always been desperate for answers and she uses the podcast as a guide into her own investigation. After all this time the bodies of the missing women are found in the bottom of Doll’s Eye Lake … except for Jessica. What will Lindsey discover as she untangles a disturbing web of secrets and lies about her sister??

MIC DROP!! THIS BOOK HAD ME SHOOK 🤯!!!! The twists and turns were WILD, the bread crumbs of new information throughout the investigation were GRIPPING and the ending was EXPLOSIVE!!! I was totally shocked and thrown for a loop and I will be thinking about this haunting story for a long time! Bravo 👏!!

Thank you kindly to @katherinegreeneauthor @crookedlanebooks @penguinrandomca @netgalley for my advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review! This book releases on November 5, 2024!

The Lake of Lost Girls was such a great book! I loved the pacing and the dual timelines, it gave me the opportunity to get to know each character a bit better. Jess was surrounded by toxic or predatory men and any one of them could have been responsible for her death and the deaths of her fellow students, and I was absolutely shocked by how this book turned out! I also really appreciated the podcast element and because of that, I would highly recommend the audiobook version, though I also read the ebook when I couldn’t listen. You’ll enjoy it either way!

The Lake of Lost Girls is a mystery thriller told in two timelines interwind with snippets of a podcast and social media posts.



Lindsey’s sister disappeared when they celebrated Lindsey’s sixth birthday. She watched her getting her cake from the trunk of her car but got distracted and looked away for ten seconds. When she turned her head back Jess was gone. Twentyfour years later her life is still on hold. She went to university but went back to live with her still grieving parents. When a new podcast starts to unravel what may have happened to Jess thinks begin to move. She meets a handsome journalist who is obsessed with the case. Lindsey realized that she knows close to nothing about her sister and she has no idea what happened. And Jess was not the only girl who got missing.



The book is entertaining enough and an easy read, maybe even more if you haven’t read a ton of thrillers before like I have. The writing is quite simple and the characters are not very good developed. The men are all creepy predators and the women all have but a tragic penchant for the wrong men. The story is not very complex and you can see the twists coming and figure out easily who did what. I think it is meant to be more complex than it actually is. The reason behind it all stays murky. There is a lot of negative archetypes and a lot of creepy things are going on, especially between Jess and her father.



It is an easy read but there are too many plot holes and inconsistencies for my liking.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Dreamscape Media for gifting me both a digital and audio ARC of the second thriller by the best friends writing duo known as Katherine Greene, with the audio fabulously narrated by the cast of Helen Laser, Frankie Corzo, Sara Young, Haley Taylor, and David Bendena. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!

It's 1998 and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina. Jessica Fadley, a promising student who began struggling, is the latest to disappear. Twenty-four years later, Jessica's sister, Lindsey, uses the interest in a new true crime podcast focusing on the case, Ten Seconds to Vanish, to help her own investigations into what happened to her sister. Then bodies of the long-missing women start turning up at a local lake.

Wow - this book was fantastic! I both read the digital version and listened to the wonderful audio, which is my favorite way to get totally immersed into a story. Having a whole cast made the audio production top notch and I couldn't put it down. The story alternates between both timelines as we follow Jessica on the lead up to her disappearance, and in the present as Lindsey tries to put all the pieces together of her sister's life. In between, we get snippets of the podcast to amp up the tension and suspense. There were plenty of suspects and creepy behavior that will keep you guessing, and the ending just totally blew my mind in the best possible way! If you like thrillers, this is an absolute must read!

This book was entertaining, fast paced, but left me wanting a little more.. i did enjoy it though

thanks netgalley and publisher. all thoughts and opinions are my own

This is my first book by this author and it was middle of the road for me. I quite enjoyed the first half, but then the second half went downhill and the author wasn’t able to pull me back in.

I liked the dual narrators, and am on the fence about the additional narrators at the end. I’m still sitting with whether they were necessary or not … I liked how the author presented Lindsay as never quite having her own life experiences, living instead in the shadow of her missing sister; Lindsay definitely made some questionable choices. Her parents were unlikeable (the mom was a piece of work), Ryan was terrible, and the only character I even remotely liked was the roommate (but only in her younger days).

As many other reviewers have noted, the podcast entries really don’t add anything to the story (except to make me reflect on how victims of crime and their families must feel knowing their experiences have provided fodder for entertainment).

I didn’t mind the pool of suspects, but I didn’t love the reveal. could get on board with who the killer was, but the reasons for the murders didn’t make sense. I don’t care for coincidences in my books, and this story had too many (all four girls being involved with all the suspects seemed a bit much. I also didn’t care for the portrayal of all men as bad / creepy / predatory / incompetent and one female character getting a pass on her bad choices because … girl power, I guess?

A satisfying thriller/mystery novel with multiple twists and red herrings. Even though I figured out most of the story before the end I was still questioning myself right up to the end.

Jess Fadley has been missing for 24 years, and the case had gone cold. When evidence of a potentially connected crime surfaces, Jess's family hopes there will finally be answers. The story unfolds through alternating perspectives of Jess in 1999 and her sister, Lindsey, in 2023.

This may be a good fit if you enjoy:
- complex family dynamics
- mixed media elements, including a podcast
- multiple strong suspects

This book had me hooked! (Even with longer chapters, which says something.) The alternating POVs and timelines had me constantly rotating through who I thought was the offender. I can't say too much without spoilers, but the ending had me conflicted. I imagine that was the intent, and ultimately, I like that it challenged me.

Rating: I really liked it! (4.5)

Thank you to Crooked Lane and NetGalley for an early copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Lindsay was only 6 when her sister Jessica went missing. Now. 24 years later, the remains of young women are turning up. This is told in the past, the present, through a pod cast, and by multiple people, a pastiche that become popular in recent years but which can, at times take away from the momentum of the story. That said, this is nicely twisty. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

HOLY FREAKIN CRAP!!!!
An ARC that is a FIVE STAR!!?!?!?!?

Major, major thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media and Crooked Lane Books for the ALC and ARC copies of this incredibly brilliant read.

I LOVED this book. It is SO rare for me to give a 5⭐️ Truthfully, I was at a 4.5 with this - but then it gave me literal chills during the end and I just knew it deserved the full 5.

I would not say that this is very fast paced, however it's not super slow either. I think it was paced just right, gave the perfect amount of details and honestly was just a fantastic story.

Dreamscape did an amazing job on this audio as well. Really brought these characters to life and made the story that much better.

HIGHLY recommend!!! OUT 11/5!!!!

Loved this. Read it in one sitting. What a page turner. This was my first novel by this author and will be adding to my auto buy list.

This book had some of my favorite elements; dual timelines and multiple POVs. I was luck to have both an e-arc and advance listening copy. The narrator kept me intrigued throughout. Some of the twists were predictable but still kept me reading. Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.
4/5

If you like:
🐌 Slower Burn Thrillers
⏳ Past and Present Timelines
#️⃣ Couple POV
🎙️ True Crime Podcasts
⛓️‍💥 Interconnected Missing Persons Cases
🏫 Freshman College Experiences
🍻Lots of Partying

This book is told in two timelines, one in the past when responsible Jessica turns party girl during her freshman year of college in 1998 and then present day from her sister’s POV, Lindsay who is now in her 30’s, who was only 6 when Jessica mysteriously disappeared from their family home and was never seen again and her famous words about her sister’s disappearance is now the title of a brand new true crime podcast that is trying to figure out what happened to Jessica all those years ago and several of her classmates who also went missing around the same time.

And in comes a boyfriend Lindsay never knew Jessica had, who also is trying to get to the bottom of what happened to his lost girlfriend.

Between the podcast excerpts, the past from Jessica, present from Lindsay and a few other one off POV’s this book truly was so immersive especially on audio and I just had to know what was happening!

If you like thrillers with podcast aspects and lots of pointing fingers and misdirection you will definitely enjoy this one!

Thank you so much to Crooked Lane Books for my ALC and ARC in exchange for my review! I will definitely be reading more from the writing duo that is Katherine Greene!

I came for the alluring premise, regarding a newly reopened cold-case about missing college girls from the nineties, but soon upon starting, I wanted it to be over quickly, because of the odious one-dimensional characters and their awkwardly stilted dialogue, among other things.

Firstly, I should acknowledge that I called the “mystery” of it all VERY early into the story. To me, it was GLARINGLY OBVIOUS who the unhinged character was by the things they were saying/not saying, literally from their first presence on page, and because of this, the wow factor of what actually happened to the missing girls (and why) was never quite there for me.

Lack of surprise aside, I also struggled with the portrayals of practically every character in this story. I always have a very hard time reading (any kind of fiction story) when I don’t like or care for the characters involved, and that quickly became apparent in my experience here.

It was one of those stories where each sub-set of characters were exactly the same as each other, and extremely so. By that I mean: ALL the men were predatory creeps that gave major ick vibes with every word spoken, ALL the women were emotionally stunted child-adults, seeking out/partaking in extremely unhealthy relationships with the men in their lives, and ALL the cops investigating the case were inept buffoons who couldn’t tell a CLEARLY CONNECTED string of disappearances from the freckles on their arses.

That is to say, the author’s personal sentiments felt like they came across hard and fast, especially regarding the untrustworthy, lecherous nature of (apparently all!?) men, the failings of law enforcement at the most basic levels of competency, and even, the small-minds of small-town folk who hate outsiders, and so on. For me, it was a lot of negative archetypes and a lot of preach, and it was damn distracting—again, this struck me very early into the story (literally from the first random podcast rant onward).

Don’t get me wrong, it was an extremely easy book to read, so points for that, but the story, the characters, and even the conclusion of the mystery at hand left a lot to be desired, at least for me personally. I love thriller-suspense stories and I love whodunnit-mysteries, but this just didn’t hit for me on either count. If you don’t read much in this genre, this may have a bigger, more positive impact—perhaps it could even read as intriguing in its telling and reveals—but if you’ve got a mind for this kind of thing, I highly doubt much will shock or excite you here.

I’ve said this before. I’m not an expert in mysteries or thrillers, and I’m quite often taken by surprise when the answers are revealed or there's twisty turns that come out of nowhere. Regardless, I’m always curious to find out what really happened and worried about the protagonist's fate but here, that was not the case.

Overall, the main issue for me was that there’s a consistently huge ICK factor that coated everything - the victims and their predators, not to mention the incompetence of law enforcement, and the toxic nature of social media and the journalists who are so very eager to discover the truth no matter what. I was appalled and disgusted by pretty much every person in this story, and perhaps that was the goal of the author.

I’m obviously not in agreement with the majority who have read this which goes to show just how personal a book can resonate. Admittedly, this was a quick, easy, page turner of a read. In broad strokes, the bones of this whodunnit were quite bold but again, I came away from this not feeling good about any aspect of this story - the execution, the characters, or the unsatisfying ending. I don’t know if that’s a testament to the writing or a testament to the writing.

Ultimately, I wish readers of this all the best and hope my dislikes are what make them love it instead!

Thank you to the author and Crooked Lane Books via NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review posted to Goodreads.

I love thrillers. I enjoy the tension they can build around a gripping plot; however, *The Lake of Lost Girls* left me disappointed.
While the storyline had the potential to engage readers with its adrenaline-pumping setting, the truth is that everything else fell flat. I really appreciated the tension it was able to generate, even though there are major flaws in the main aspects of the story. First of all, I found the characters dull, cliché, and two-dimensional. They act without any real logic, are lifeless, make nonsensical decisions, and, to be honest, are so full of anger that they come across as downright unlikeable. Moreover, if the idea was to write a different kind of thriller… well, it didn’t succeed; the writing still feels very immature.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. The premise sounded interesting, but it was beyond predictable. I knew it was the dad the moment he appeared in the book and then knew the other “twist” the moment an ID card kept getting mentioned over and over again. I won’t be recommending this one.

Dual timelines? Multiple POVs? Podcast transcripts? Say no more! This book had some of my favorite elements to frame a story. My first book by this writing duo and hopefully not my last!

I find the combination of books with podcasts absolutely captivating, especially when they're diving into unsolved mysteries and chilling old murders.

Take "The Lake of Lost Girls," for instance—it's a thriller that checks all the boxes for me! I was beyond thrilled to get my hands on both the ebook and the audiobook. Following along with the audio really adds a rich layer to the story. It unfolds through dual timelines and multiple perspectives, which is my jam! And with multiple narrators bringing the characters to life, this audiobook truly hit the mark for me.

The plot centers on a cold case involving several missing college girls, which gets reignited when one of their bodies turns up near Doll's Eye Lake—the place initially suspected to be the dumping ground. Intrigued by the lake's eerie name, I couldn't resist looking up the Doll's Eye plant, and wow, it's real! Its strange appearance would make a perfect spooky decoration for Halloween!

What I loved most about this story were the red herrings that kept my mind racing, weaving an intricate web of suspense. The characters are richly developed and interlinked, and I was completely hooked from the first moments of listening. While I managed to piece together some clues, the final twist left me utterly stunned—it was like a punch to the gut! Seriously, it's one of the best plot twists I've encountered.

Katherine Greene, the collaborative genius behind this delightful pen name, has truly knocked it out of the park with this latest novel! Having thoroughly enjoyed their first collaboration, I was absolutely blown away by how they raised the bar this time. I'm eagerly counting the days until their next spectacular story hits the shelves! The two dazzling women hosting the podcast in the book are absolutely captivating—I'd love to hear more from them and dive deeper into their world!

Thanks to the author, Dreamscape Media, and Crooked Lane Books for these gifted ARCs! All opinions are my own and left voluntarily.

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