Beneath the Lake

this was an odd read. I loved it. will re read

A series of (orchestrated) events come together in a perfect storm to hurtle Lacey Montgomery into the past, where she meets the love of her life; unbeknownst to her, she'd already met him at a party earlier but doesn't quite recognise him because she has yet to go back in time to meet him.

Confused much, yet?

'Beneath the Lake' is a paranormal romance story with all the ingredients of suspense and mystery, wrapped up in a whooping blanket of syfy-induced time travelling and its consequences.

My head hurts already, just thinking about the time travel paradox and the contradictions that must already be there. That aside, Casi McLean delivers a pretty decent read that's undoubtedly atmospheric and engaging, even if the first person narration seems to lack the sophistication of the voice I've come to expect of a grown woman who's an attorney. My attention was expertly steered in the direction of the hints and clues given because of (and despite) the confusing narrative segments of different time periods, yet left me scratching my head at the believability of the entire time travel plot.

I felt like this read as a series of notesbor journal entries instead of a novel. I enjoyed the idea behind the plot and found that unique, which made me want to read it. I'd never read anything by this author before but I see great potential, especially with editing and formatting. I loved the heroine and the descrptive inner dialog but found the hero bobby annoying. I kept imaging that every time he spoke, was in a ultra feminine high pitched voice and fast. I don't know why I did this but because of that, I wasn't feeling their connection, which for a romance book that is important. I think there is potential for this to be great but sadly fell flat for me.

My thoughts were all over the place with this book and I had a difficult time compiling my review.

I really liked the story and the characters in Beneath the Lake but struggled with the execution. There were parts where I was really pulled in and others where the story line dragged a bit. At the beginning, after a really good start, it seemed to get a little choppy with the back and forth between past and present. (Of course, present is relative when you are talking about time travel.)

What I liked:
I liked how the author developed the two communities of past and present and developed the characters in both timelines. The story line of how the lake front community was created and what happened to the town that Bobbie (our H) was from was really good. How Lacey/Maddie goes back in time and develops relationships with people from the past was also really good. I liked the characters of Bobbie and Maddie together, although I got frustrated with her inability to communicate.

What I struggled with:

When the book is in Maddie's (aka Lacey) perspective the story is written in 1st POV whether she's in current or in the past. When the book is not from Maggie's perspective the story is written in 3rd POV. I prefer 3rd POV as I feel 1st POV has to be done really well to work and I really don't like when POV jumps around in a book - for me it makes it a really choppy read. So I was disappointed that the author chose the jumping POV format.

Lacey/Maddie was supposed to be an attorney but she wasn't really able to communicate well which made for some character disconnects for me. Also as the book was written in her 1st POV, she never sounded like an attorney with an upper crust background. When she's in the past she struggled with saying modern day slang and didn't understand some of the comments made by others. However, she was a defense attorney, law school background, upper crust background so I find it hard that she struggled with not using modern day slang. She would have used proper English in courtroom and in litigation documents so not using slang shouldn't have been an issue. These elements felt more contrived than real for the character they were supposed to be portraying.

The book also tends to give main characters two different names depending on whether they are in the past or in the present. With Lacey/Maddie, the book is up front with one character/two names. But with a couple of others the book created a mini "mystery" even though the reader can guess who they are so the "mystery" seemed a little over the top and for me it was a little too much.

In trying to keep the "future" a mystery, the book simply provided a synopsis of what happened at the end of the story. I think this was a big miss. I think what could have been a really good part of the story was the actions that took part in the future time frame as Bobbie tried to get Maddie and he together again. There were just little blips of this with an attempt at mystery. However, I think skipping the mystery element and instead focusing on his efforts and those of his sister on trying to recreate the portal to bring them together would have been more interesting.

4 Stars

Beneath the Lake was my first time travel romance, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. There was something about all the details coming together to form a complete story that hooked me. At the end of the book I was in love.
The descriptions are what drew me in at the beginning, but slowly I began to fall in love with the characters.
Watching this story unfold over decades and the plot twists that came along with it had me nearly in tears at the end of the book. Early in the story, some of the dialogue felt out of place and pulled me out of the story so it took me a bit longer than expected to finish this book. BUT once I got into the meat of the story I was pulled back in and rewarded with gems like this…

"His touch ignited desire in the deepest depths of my soul, a burning, bubbling molten lava flowing through my veins. There was no denying we were two parts of one heart."

Overall, reading this sparked an interest in a genre I previously had no interest in exploring. I’m excited to see where the rest of the books in the series go.

This was a lovely time travel story that kept you thinking. For some reason it took me a while to get into this one.

I was at about the 20% mark on my Kindle before I thought to myself that I’d be finishing it. I’m not sure what it was exactly. The author has a nice writing style, the story moves along at a good pace, and the characters are well developed. I honestly can’t pin down why it didn’t grab me from the first few pages, but it wasn’t a fault of the story. Maybe it was just me? Maybe it was that Lacey travels back to 1949 rather than further back like many time travel stories and it was a bit of a mental adjustment? I don’t know.

But if this happens to you I seriously recommend persevering because the story is a good one. It has a bit of a suspenseful theme going through it where the POV switches to someone in Lacey’s own time period who seems to be stalking her with malicious intent. The who and why doesn’t become clear until later in the book and it is a very satisfying ending when it happens.

I very much enjoyed Beneath the Lake by Casi Mclean and I’d certainly recommend picking up a copy.