The Lakehouse by Joe Clifford

☆☆☆
ebook, 222 pages
Expected publication: September 22nd 2020 by Polis Books
About the Book:
After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake. He is eager to restart his life and cast aside any remaining suspicious...but all of that is dashed when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door. When Tracy Somerset, divorced mother from the small town of Covenant, CT, meets a handsome stranger in a midnight Wal-Mart, she has no idea she is speaking with Todd Norman, the former Wall Street financier dubbed “The Banker Butcher” by the New York tabloids. The following morning, on the beach by Norman’s back-under-construction lakehouse, another young woman’s body is discovered. Sheriff Duane Sobczak’s investigation leads him to town psychiatrist Dr. Meshulum Bakshir, whose position at a troubled girls’ group home a decade ago yields disturbing ties to several local, prominent players, including a radical preacher, a disgraced politician, a down-and-out PI—and Sobczak’s own daughter. Unfolding over the course of New England’s distinct four seasons, The Lakehouse is a domestic psychological thriller about the wayward and marginalized, the lies we tell those closest to us, and the price of forbidden love in an insular community where it seems everyone has a story to tell—and a past they prefer stay buried.

At times it was exciting but most of the story was either predictable or confusing. The writing itself is okay and consists mostly of dialogue...internal and otherwise, which is what causes the confusion. This story is told in first-person by the two main characters. The chapters switch back and forth between the characters narrations, which I normally enjoy. However, with this book, when the point of view changes no time has passed so it is hard to suddenly be reading from a different perspective, but pick up with the same event in the story. It has some interesting plot twists toward the end, but most I had predicted before they occurred.

Bottom Line: It was interesting but became confusing at times remembering which character was speaking. The story itself had sufficient mystery to keep my interest. The story of each main character became so entangled I was eager to see how the author would unravel the mystery in the end. It was not entirely surprising.

Thank you NetGalley, Joe Clifford and Polis Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

#TheLakehouse #NetGalley