Review: The Lake House (Detective Chris Bailey #1) by Kate Watterson

     

Print Length: 324 pages

Publisher: Joffee Books (February 10, 2022)

From Goodreads.com:  Two missing women.

One unidentified victim.
A witness who may have seen too much.

Lauren Mathews, while lounging on the shore, sees a man lugging something heavy into a boat the morning after she and her friends hear a strange cry ring out across the lake in the dead of night.

Detective Chris Bailey is stumped. He’s trying to solve the mystery of a drowning with an unidentified victim. But with no leads, he’s getting nowhere. And now, at the same lake, two more women suddenly have gone missing.

Chris suddenly finds he has an array of murder suspects but no bodies. At the center of it seems to be a young woman, Lauren Mathews. He doesn't know what role she plays, but he does know she is of interest to at least three of the men under suspicion.

But a pattern is emerging. Another body surfaces.

The killer will stop at nothing to stay hidden. But as he draws closer to unraveling the mystery of dead women, Chris begins to fear Lauren will be next on the killer’s list.

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

This story was sadly a far cry from the gripping thriller it promised to be. In fact, throughout most of the book, I was simply.... bored. 

The main characters were a lackluster group with nothing that made them stand out from each other. In fact, when it came to the main trio, their personalities were so close that sometimes I confused Drew and Rob altogether. I also didn't care much for the fact that Lauren was dating one of them, but had feelings for the best friend (and the best friend for her). Even Chris (our insightful detective didn't even stand out. I remember two things about him - that his girlfriend moved out and left him the dog, and that he was the more "imaginative" of the two detectives. 

Another big issue that I had with this was the fact that the point of view of who was telling the story jumped with no warning. This wasn't an issue with the opening of each chapter, as that was a given that it was from the perspective of the killer, and was italicized. However, randomly in the middle of a chapter, the point of view would change sometimes two or more times causing me to have to go back and re-read in order to ascertain just who was talking at that time. 

I did enjoy a couple of twists and turns that this story provided, but in the end, I feel as though things were wrapped up just a little too nicely (aka in a very rushed sort of way), and I didn't connect with Chris who will feature in the rest of the series enough to continue on with them (at least at this time).

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

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                                            The Lake House is available from Amazon.com

                                             (for free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited)