The Lake House: A Dry Review For A Dry Book

The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst
Genres: Mystery (YA), Paranormal (YA), Thriller (YA)
Pages: 368
Goodreads

Claire’s grown up triple-checking locks. Counting her steps. Second-guessing every decision. It’s just how she’s wired – her worst-case scenarios never actually come true.
Until she arrives at an off-the-grid summer camp to find a blackened, burned husk instead of a lodge – and no survivors, except her and two other late arrivals: Reyva and Mariana.
When the three girls find a dead body in the woods, they realize none of this is an accident. Someone, something, is hunting them. Something that hides in the shadows. Something that refuses to let them leave.

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This book had potential, but it just didn’t hit the mark. But let’s start with some things I liked about it.

WHAT I LIKED

1. I enjoyed the bond between the three girls. They were strangers at the beginning, dumped at this camp with no idea who each other were. As the story progressed, they had to learn to trust and rely on each other to survive. Along the way, they learn to love themselves, too. Overall, it was a very nice story about friendship.
2. I’m glad this book included mental health rep. I don’t have panic attacks, so I can’t speak on the accuracy of the representation (and I don’t know if this is own voices or not), but it’s nice to see this sort of representation in a young adult thriller.
3. The setting is good. It’s not great, but I didn’t hate it, so I’m including it in the “What I Liked” section. I thought it was eerie. It definitely felt desolate and abandoned. I’ll chat about what I didn’t like about it later.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE

So, what didn’t I like? Basically, the story itself. It could be a case of “it’s me it’s not you” but I’m going to give you my thoughts anyway.

The paranormal aspect could have been done better. It could have been scarier. It could have been more action packed. While I appreciate the book had a lot of great representation in it (mental health, disability, LGBTQIA+) the majority of the book is spent on Claire’s episodes (it is told in her POV). Which meant a lot of that eerie-ness relied on her, her overthinking, and her reactions to that. It felt a little…off…to have the majority of the tension come from someone’s struggle with their mental health, I don’t know, maybe that’s just me.

Besides the story heavily relying on Claire’s mental state, the way it concluded was lackluster. It could have had such an interesting twist at the end, instead everything was wrapped up with a little bow. Yet, it somehow had issues with continuity between the cause of everything and the solution to it all – like the author just wanted a nice clean ending, even if it didn’t fully make sense.

OVERALL

By the end, I just didn’t really care – and I feel like that attitude is translating into this review, because it reads very monotone. It was an alright book if you’re looking for representation and a great friendship story, but the thriller part of it sorely lacked. In general, it read more like a middle grade (with the exception of one slightly gory scene), and less like a YA.

Anyway, I feel like that’s all I can say without spoiling things or boring you guys with this absolutely dry review. Let me know if you’ve read this and what you thought about it in the comments!

Side note: I listened to this on audio, so this opinion is entirely unique to that format – the narrator’s voice for the “bad guy” was silly. Anytime the villain spoke, I had to chuckle because it just sounded so ridiculous. I’m not going to knock a star off my rating for this, that would be unfair. But it did have an effect on my enjoyment of the book.