NetGalley | The Lake of Lost Girls

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating | 0 stars foreverrrrrrrr

Initial reaction:

For the life of me, I cannot understand how this book is rated so highly. The writing is so awkward at times and juvenile. The podcast aspect brought nothing to the story. it just seems like the thing to do now in thrillers, and in this case it didn't work at all because it was pointless. It added nothing to the story.

I had a hunch pretty early on who the killer was, and it would've been a fantastic twist had the writing not been so poor. I considered DNF-ing a couple times due to the lackluster and stilted writing, but I wanted to find out if my instinct was correct. It was, hooray for me. But also sad for me because I spent time reading a book that is simply not good.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

I think I dislike the book even more now than when I first finished it. It's bad. So bad. It rivals The Business Trip for one of the worst books I have ever read in my entire life. And if you read that review, you know I haaaaaaaaaaated that book with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

So, here we go. There will be spoilers.

In 1998 female students at a super small college in North Carolina start going missing. One of them is Jessica Fadley.

Fast forward 24 years and Jessica's younger sister Lindsey is searching for answers to what happened to Jessica. There's a new hit podcast called Ten Second to Vanish, which highlights cold cases. Then the bodies start turning up at a local lake and Lindsey will finally have her answers.

The story is told in two timelines, Jessica's and Lindsey's. Both are idiots and unlikable. Normally, I love an unreliable/unlikable narrator when it is helpful to the plot. Not when the characters and plot are so poorly written, they just turn out that way.

No surprise, Jessica killed the other girls. Dad killed Jessica. It's all very ridiculous and completely predictable because the author does not know how to use red herrings, clues, foreshadowing, or anything necessary to craft an intelligent thriller.

And remember how I said it was a small college. It's so small that only two people in the whole book are connected to all four missing girls. It's ridiculous. No college could be that small and still, you know, FUNCTION AS A COLLEGE OF ANY KIND.

One of the biggest icks ever was the possibility that it was going somewhere incest-y and gross. There are multiple times that there is such a special bond/connection between one of the sisters and their father. Once was okay, but every time after that made me wonder where this was all really going. And in the end, there wasn't, at least nothing confirmed. Why bother hinting at it, then ignore it? OH, RIGHT. Another pointless red herring? Or just another thread that wasn't tied up at the end?

Luckily, we will never know.

Ultimately, I hated everyone. I genuinely did not care what happened to any of them by the end and I wish each one of them would've gotten what they deserved. I didn't care that Lindsey found out what really happened. I didn't care about the pointless podcast that actually could have been used in a meaningful way but ended up just being filler. I didn't care about the stupid social media posts scattered throughout. We get it. You're so cool because you're using the latest societal/cultural trends.

100% DO NOT recommend.