YA Weekend: The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst

Mogsy’s Rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Young Adult, Thriller

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: HarperTeen (April 25, 2023)

Length: 368 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

The Lake House is Sarah Beth Durst’s YA thriller that does overtime as a survival horror. It follows three teen girls who arrive at the Maine-based Lake House camp expecting a sun-soaked summer of adventures and fun on the island but instead find themselves trapped in a terrifying nightmare.

Our protagonist is Claire, a world-class worrier. A pessimist at heart, she always thinks of the worst-case scenario in every situation, obsessing over every single detail so that she can be prepared when things inevitably go wrong. This year, she’s working on her extracurriculars in preparation for college, and her parents have signed her up for summer camp at Lake House she can add an off-the-grid experience to her application as well as make some new friends.

But when Claire arrives with Reyva and Mariana, her fellow would-be campers, all the girls discover at the site of Lake House is a burned-out husk of a building. Now that the boat that brought them here is gone and there’s no cell service, they’re also stuck. Worse, once they start exploring the surrounding woods, they also find the body of their camp director, dead by gunshot wound. Frightened and confused, the girls have no way off the island and must find a source of food and shelter before the storm arrives, not to mention the possibility of a killer on the loose.

I had mixed feelings about The Lake House. The vibe it’s going for is a bit of old-school slasher horror meets One of Us is Lying, which provides plenty of oomph to get the ball rolling. And roll it does, at least for the first half. We have three girls trapped at camp Lake House, or what’s left of it, each with their own reasons for being there, each with their own unique set of skills to bring to the table. For a while it was an awesome and suspenseful survival story, with shades of Lost. Claire’s anxiety and wariness ends up being an asset to the group as she alerts her new friends to all the potential dangers they could face out in the wilderness.

It goes on like this, with the characters sharing their stories and their strengths as they overcome the terrors thrown their way. Eventually though, we hit a peak and the intrigue high starts to wear off, leaving behind the doldrums. The horror element fades to the background as the plot trots out trope after thriller trope, even as the story’s overall pacing hits a wall. While there was no actual slowdown per se, it just felt like we were going around in circles stalling for time as we made virtually no headway on solving the greater mystery.

To be fair, if I hadn’t read any of the author’s previous work, I might have enjoyed this one a lot more. But having no less than half a dozen of Durst’s other books under my belt including her Queens of Renthia series and Bone Maker (my personal favorite), The Lake House simply felt underdeveloped and dull in comparison. Its premise was also too simplistic, the writing lacking in the deeper nuances that I know Durst is capable of, which is why I can’t see this as anything but a letdown. I suppose it’s fine if you aren’t expecting too much, but the author has written better books and I would recommend passing on this one.