Genre: YA horror/thriller
Published: Harper Collins, April 2023 My Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Chances are, many of you have seen the TV-show Lost and remember the incredible tension and suspense you felt in those first couple of seasons. The Lake House gave me those exact vibes with its first couple of chapters. Part survival story, part mystery, a hint of supernatural horror and a group of strangers forced to rely in each other in order to survive. I was hooked and couldn’t put the book down.
Unfortunately, chances are that if you’ve seen Lost, you also remember how you felt about the ending. And yes, The Lake House repeated that experience for me too…
What I liked:
As mentioned, the story has a great opener and set-up; three teen girls arrive late to their summer camp in a remote forest, where their parents used to go as kids. Instead of finding their fellow campers toasting marshmallows and telling scary stories around a campfire, they walk into the aftermath of tragedy. The camp has been abandoned and burned to the ground, with the exception of a single dead body, that clearly did not die of natural causes. The three end up in a desperate survival situation where they have to fear not only the elements, but a killer on the loose too, as they unravel the mystery of what happened the night before they arrived.
Our three protagonists make for a likable (if at times very cringy) group. In typical YA-fashion, they all have their own individual insecurities, which they learn to make to their strength throughout the story. If you like capable female protagonists with a strong girls-supporting-girls vibe: that’s here in spades. Also major bonus points for not shoehorning a romance-subplot where it wasn’t needed!
What I didn’t like:
I’ve already mentioned the ending when comparing The Lake House to Lost. Lost was famously written on-the-go, meaning the authors had no idea how to solve the mysteries they were setting up themselves either. It felt like something similar happened with The Lake House. When it came time to answer the mysteries that were set up, the supernatural angle just came out of left field and still left some plotholes wide open. Some of the twists just really didn’t land. I’ll mention one of the minor spoilers as an example: It’s “revealed” about halfway through the book that the lakeside forest they’re trapped in has been on an island in the middle of the lake. This is presented as a surprise to our characters, yet as the reader I had literally just assumed that this was the case and that we were all on board with that knowledge already, from the way everything before had been written. It made for a strange moment of “wait, did I somehow misread?”, that took me out of the story.
On top of that entire ending sequence felt incredibly underwhelming and resolved far too easily.
Along the way, there were some hiccups too, the dialogue being the main offender. I’ve read from Sarah Beth Durst before (in fact, I gave her latest novel 5-stars just days ago now), so I know she’s capable of doing better. Yet this… this was horrendous. Dear authors, please realize that teens DO NOT talk like this. In the tensest of survival situations, these girls would roll out a mix of sit-com quips with some of the worst therapy-speak I’ve encountered. And believe me, there’s a lot of it in modern YA…
With regards to the therapy-speak, Sarah Beth Durst attempts to weave in some representation of common teenage anxieties, but also themes of queer sexuality, mental health and chronic pain. All of these feel like namedrops more so than authentic representation though. As a seasoned sensitivity reader for disability-representation, I’d honestly rate the chronic-pain-rep as poor here. The character tells us she has chronic pain, but it’s never shown to affect her on page at all. The same can be said for the queerness. The only representation that does play a role in the story is Claire’s anxiety, which is a whole different can of worms that would take a separate review to critique… Since I picked this book up out of my own interest, and not as a sensitivity-read, I won’t go into those details though…
Overall, high hopes at the start, bitter disappointment at the end. I’ve had better luck with SBD’s adult titles so far, so I guess that’s where I’ll be looking for my next title by her hand.
You can find this book here on Goodreads.
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