Review: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date:  June 2022

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.

One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.

I wish I could say that I liked House Across the Lake.  But, I have to be honest.  It was merely OK.  I mean not awful, but not what I was expecting.  The story was a bit slow and dull in the first two-thirds. It definitely took a weird turn in the last third of the book.  Like out into left field.  There were some twists that I didn't see coming. I'll give it that.  I just didn't love the storyline. 

 I also didn't love the characters.  Casey was a drunk.  I'm just not a fan of excessive drinking, especially in main characters.  She wasn't a very likable person either.  I listened to the audiobook and I didn't like the narrator choice.  She made Casey sound much older than she was supposed to be in the book.  Lastly, I wasn't a fan of the pop culture references.  Casey is an actress and hearing she was in certain real-life movies pulled me out of the story.  I am usually a fan of this author, but this one didn't do it for me.  I say skip it.  He has better books.

Review: Survive the Night by Riley Sager

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton Books
Publication Date: June 2021

It's November 1991. George H. W. Bush is in the White House, Nirvana's in the tape deck, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.

Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it's guilt and grief over the murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it's to help care for his sick father. Or so he says. Like the Hitchcock heroine she's named after, Charlie has her doubts. There's something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn't seem to want Charlie to see inside the car's trunk. As they travel an empty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly worried Charlie begins to think she's sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie's suspicion merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?

Survive the Night is the latest offering from Riley Sager.  He is definitely one of my go to thriller authors now.  Charlie is still traumatized over the death of her college roommate.  Unable to cope, she decides to leave college and her boyfriend early and head home before the Thanksgiving break.  Her ride share partner, Josh, seems a bit fishy. But is it her imagination or he just a nice guy giving her a ride?

I really enjoyed this one.  One of my favorite things about thrillers is when there is an unreliable narrator.  Charlie has a wild imagination and often slips into seeing movies in her mind.  For most of the book, I never knew if she was imagining things or seeing reality.  It kept me on my toes.  I won't talk plot too much.  This is a book you are better off going in not knowing much.  There are a few twists.  One of them I did call very early on.  But the rest took me by surprise. and I loved the ending.   My only complaint was the amount of time that was put into reminding me it was the early 90s.  You all know I'm not a fan of pop culture references. But that is a "me" problem.   Despite that, I highly recommend this one.  I can't wait to see what this author comes up with next.

Review: Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton Books
Publication Date: June 2020

What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

Home Before Dark is the third book that I have read by this author.  So far it's the best one that I have read.  It's kind of a take on Amityville Horror.  Maggie inherits the house that she and her family fled when she was little.  Her father wrote a tell-all book about their experience in the haunted house.  Despite warnings, she decides to move in and get the house ready for sale.

That is all you really should know before going into the book. I really enjoyed this book.  There are a lot of surprises.  I did call one of them, but for the most part I was surprised   I loved the creepy atmosphere and the sense of not knowing if the house is really haunted. I think this would make a good spooky movie.  Maggie was a great character.  I always enjoy strong female characters who aren't afraid to get to the truth. We also get excerpts of the book that her father wrote. That would be a fun book to read on its own.  I highly recommend this one. 

Review: Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date: July 2019

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.

As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.

I wish I could say that I loved Lock Every Door.  But I really can't.  I'm getting a bit tired of buying into the hype of a book, only to be let down when I actually read it.  This book has received rave reviews, but I don't see it. The only other book that I have read by this author was Final Girls and I liked that one OK. I kind of feel the same way about this book.  It was just kind of meh.  

The most disappointing part of the book was the ending.  It was such a far-fetched twist and at the same time kind of a cop out.  Up until that reveal, I was actually almost on board with the way I thought the book was headed.   I think it would have made for a more satisfying story in the end.  The main character was frustrating and had a lot of TSTL moments.  In the end, this was not a "thriller".  I'd call it an OK mystery.  Not one I would necessarily recommend unless you didn't have much else to read on hand.

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton
Date of publication:  July 2017

Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.

Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past. 

In Final Girls, Quincy, the soul survivor of a brutal killing spree is considered a "final girl".  It's been ten years since she went through her ordeal and seems to have moved on with her life. But, has she really? Another final girl, Lisa, has reached out to her only to die a few days later.  Once her death is ruled a homicide, Quincy's memories about that night at the cabin begin to emerge.  

I thought this was an OK mystery.  I'll admit to not really liking the main character, Quincy.  I know she was still dealing with her trauma, but she just didn't sit right with me.  She was kind of horrible to everyone, including her boyfriend.  The story contains flashbacks to what happened that night, so the reader slowly gets the truth as Quincy's memories slowly come back.  And I do mean slow.  This story did drag a bit at times.  There are a couple of twists and the ending was a surprise.  However, that was only because it was a little out of left field.    It's not a bad story.  Yet, it's not ultra exciting or fast paced either.  I think it will be a matter of seeing for yourself.