Book Review: STRANGER IN THE LAKE by Kimberly Belle

Title: STRANGERIN THE LAKE

Author:  KimberlyBelle
Read: June 2020

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

When Charlotte married the wealthy widower Paul, it caused a ripple of gossip in their small lakeside town. They have a charmed life together, despite the cruel whispers about her humble past and his first marriage. But everything starts to unravel when she discovers a young woman’s body floating in the exact same spot where Paul’s first wife tragically drowned.

At first, it seems like a horrific coincidence, but the stranger in the lake is no stranger. Charlotte saw Paul talking to her the day before, even though Paul tells the police he’s never met the woman. His lie exposes cracks in their fragile new marriage, cracks Charlotte is determined to keep from breaking them in two.

As Charlotte uncovers dark mysteries about the man she married, she doesn’t know what to trust—her heart, which knows Paul to be a good man, or her growing suspicion that there’s something he’s hiding in the water.

What attracted me to this book:

I loved Kimberly Belle’s novel DEAR WIFE, an original and twisty thriller that took me totally by surprise, so was very excited to read her latest book.

My musings:

From the very first pages, I was drawn into the setting of this book: a modern and yet remote mansion on the shores of a vast lake. What better place to stage a mystery in? Charlotte (aka Charlie) describes its isolation so well: the way she can only get into town by boat if the roads are impassable due to snow, the hundreds of steps that lead up to the house from the lake, the sketchy phone reception. What further adds to the atmosphere is that Charlie is an outsider, a woman born to a single drug addict mother in a trailer park, who now finds herself married  to Paul, a wealthy property developer. So we have the social isolation coupled together with geographical isolation. Perfectly claustrophobic! And when a body gets washed up under the couple’s private jetty in exactly the same spot where Paul’s first wife perished, the stage is set.

I admit that whilst I loved the setting, and the story was well written and entertaining enough, it ultimately felt a little bit predictable for me. Perhaps because I had only just read a very similar book with the same premise: how well do you really know your husband?

Yes, of course there is a secret, one that everyone in the book knows except for our clueless protagonist. I thought, somewhat uncharitably, that it wasn’t exciting enough to warrant the big conspiracy to cover it up, and some of the characters’ actions in the wake of it didn’t ring totally true to me. I’m usually not a great armchair detective, but the second POV in the dual timeline wasn’t exactly subtle and made me guess the big reveal very early on in the piece. The book may have worked better for me had it only been from Charlie’s POV, and perhaps random snippets from more peripheral characters rather than a full timeline leading up to the reveal. But I’m also not one who wants to give spoilers, so I’m going to jump ship right about here and say no more on the subject.

Summary:

All in all, whilst the mystery part of this book was a bit underwhelming for me, I really loved the atmospheric setting and the dynamics between siblings Charlie and Chet, as well as the Appalachian small town politics that made the story interesting and engaging. For die-hard mystery fans, the final reveal may be a bit obvious, but the slow burn leading up to it was still an enjoyable read – if not as gripping as I would have liked.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Park Row for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.