This book made me think of The Woman in the Window and the Kristen Bell thriller parody on Netflix. The protagonist in Riley Sager’s latest is an alcoholic woman spying on her neighbors. The wife goes missing, and she decides to investigate.

I’m keeping this as vague as possible. There are a few fantastic twists in this book, but one of the big ones I had figured out very early on, then I was annoyed with myself for ruining the surprise. Ha.

I thought the pacing was a bit slow during the first half or so, then things got kind of wacky. THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE was entertaining for the most part, but it was no HOME BEFORE DARK. That one scared the crap out of me, and I loved every minute. ( )

Weird turn of events. Certainly entertaining but not my cup of tea! ( )

I loved this one. Highly entertaining and highly addictive, I read it all in one day. I could picture it all, the beautiful lake and the stunning setting. I know a lot of other reviews complained it was similar to another book, but I love the original Rear Window and many of the remake movies for it. So I've loved the remake books as well.

But this one had amazing twists that made it all its own. And I loved the twists. They were such a new and interesting spin that it made the story feel new and refreshing, like a new thriller I didn't already know. The ending was a shock and played out well. I loved it all. ( )

After the death of her husband, actress Casey Fletcher has holed up in her family's lakeside summer home, where she does very little besides drinking... until the day she saves her across-the-lake neighbor, a former supermodel, from drowning, then finds that she can't keep herself from spying on the woman and her husband in their all-glass house. And something weird and dramatic seems to be happening over there.

So. There's a problem I often have with thrillers like this, that all but shout "Hey, there is AN INCREDIBLE TWIST in this one!" from the dust jacket before you even open them. Which is that I spend far too much of my time while reading trying to imagine what the INCREDIBLE TWIST might be, and I can imagine enough possibilities that whatever it is, it likely will involve something I've already thought of. Well, that's true for one or two of the INCREDIBLE TWISTs in this one, but not all of them. Mainly because the biggest of them is batshit insane.

Which, in itself, isn't a problem, actually. I've enjoyed stories with batshit insane twists before. But I think there are some important criteria for a good twist, batshit or otherwise, and it may be that the crazier it is, the more important it is to get it right. Ideally, a narrative twist should recontextualize everything we already knew, or thought we knew, about what's going on in the story in a way that snaps everything into a new and clearer focus until it all suddenly makes a different, better kind of sense. Done really well, it can lead to a "Holy shit!" epiphany that feels like nothing so much as an orgasm for the brain. What a twist should not do, in my view, is make you feel like the author has been dishonest with you in order to make the twist work. Which is a different thing from having an unreliable narrator, and can be the case even if technically you were never told anything false.

There is one pretty good moment here that made me go "Oh, I see, you didn't actually ever say the thing I was assuming. OK, clever." There was a less-good moment where I was just kind of, "WTF? We're really going here? Well, OK..." And there was a bad one where I genuinely felt like the author had lied to me, or at least misled me in an unfair way. Which might have been less annoying if I'd found more to love in other aspects of the books, but... Eh. It was... fine? Diverting enough, I guess. A quick read, for sure. But I am left sort of wondering whether or not it was actually worth even the relatively short time I took to read it. ( )

Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother thrill audiences, so it was only natural that she enters the show business profession herself. She never reached the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother had, Casey still made a decent career of bit parts in movies and TV and larger, more professional parts onstage. Then tragedy strikes...the death of her husband. This sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends her career with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi report her substance abuse, her mother sends her off to the family retreat, lake Greene, in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her. The Vermont hideaway doesn't do much except hide her away since she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching her nearest neighbors, Katherine. a former supermodel and Tom, a tech mogul who live across the lake...and she does this through a pair of binoculars. Casey makes friends with Katherine after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon comes to the conclusion that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then... Katherine disappears…. and more creepy coincidences begin to pile up. Eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends she had always heard about Lake Greene just might have more than a smidgeon of truth to them. I have always liked this author. He delivers a story with twists, that cultivates into a more than a satisfying and enjoyable ending. Perhaps there are there some things that didn't quite add up at the end...but that does nothing to spoil this highly entertaining read...it's still a wild ride. ( )