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A review by pushingdessy
The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing this title in exchange for an honest review!
This could have been good…
“The lake of lost girls” by the writing duo under the penname of Katherine Greene is a murder mystery with the thriller part scratched out. The premise is this: in 1998-1999, four girls go missing at their North Carolina university. Their families never got any answers but, 24 years later, remains are found at a local lake and the cases are reopened, garnering public interest thanks to a true crime podcast. We get a dual POV: of Jessica Fadley, during the months leading up to her disappearance, and of her sister Lindsey in the present, trying to find out the truth about her sister by teaming up with a charming but shady reporter.
I recently binge-watched “Only murders in the building”, so I was particularly interested in the podcast element. Unfortunately, this served absolutely no other purpose than decoration. Short transcripts of the beginning of the episodes were used as interludes between chapters, along with stuff like social media posts, but we actually didn’t get any information from it, it didn’t factor at all in the investigation, and the hosts were obnoxious - on purpose, but again, I didn’t think it added anything to the story, so it was just annoying.
Even putting that aside, the book was lackluster on the whole. The ending was both predictable and out of nowhere, if that makes sense. Predictable in that you could easily suspect it halfway through; out of nowhere in that it just wasn’t consistent with the characterization we’re given. And I mean, obviously, you don’t want to show your hand too early in a murder mystery; the killer reveal has to shock you. But it also has to make sense, and I can’t say that I bought it.
I enjoyed the authors' first work, “The woods are waiting” (2023) better than this one, but I felt like the issues I had with it were also present here in ways that were harder to overlook. There was a slightly cartoonish veneer - in the character motivations, in the themes, in the actions, in the messages, that made it not feel realistic enough or just wasn’t done deftly. In addition to that, there was a repetition of statements that felt unnecessary - I don’t need to have everything spelled out and reiterated!
This was a pretty fast read and not a terrible one if you enjoy murder mysteries and want to be entertained for a while. I enjoyed Lindsey and her perspective as a sister who didn’t get to be her own person because she was marked by this tragedy for so long. But I thought that it could have used more work. The theme of older men abusing their power to prey on younger women had potential, but I felt like it was undermined by the resolution. I get what the authors were trying to do, but it needed a lot more buildup for it to work, imo.
This could have been good…
“The lake of lost girls” by the writing duo under the penname of Katherine Greene is a murder mystery with the thriller part scratched out. The premise is this: in 1998-1999, four girls go missing at their North Carolina university. Their families never got any answers but, 24 years later, remains are found at a local lake and the cases are reopened, garnering public interest thanks to a true crime podcast. We get a dual POV: of Jessica Fadley, during the months leading up to her disappearance, and of her sister Lindsey in the present, trying to find out the truth about her sister by teaming up with a charming but shady reporter.
I recently binge-watched “Only murders in the building”, so I was particularly interested in the podcast element. Unfortunately, this served absolutely no other purpose than decoration. Short transcripts of the beginning of the episodes were used as interludes between chapters, along with stuff like social media posts, but we actually didn’t get any information from it, it didn’t factor at all in the investigation, and the hosts were obnoxious - on purpose, but again, I didn’t think it added anything to the story, so it was just annoying.
Even putting that aside, the book was lackluster on the whole. The ending was both predictable and out of nowhere, if that makes sense. Predictable in that you could easily suspect it halfway through; out of nowhere in that it just wasn’t consistent with the characterization we’re given. And I mean, obviously, you don’t want to show your hand too early in a murder mystery; the killer reveal has to shock you. But it also has to make sense, and I can’t say that I bought it.
I enjoyed the authors' first work, “The woods are waiting” (2023) better than this one, but I felt like the issues I had with it were also present here in ways that were harder to overlook. There was a slightly cartoonish veneer - in the character motivations, in the themes, in the actions, in the messages, that made it not feel realistic enough or just wasn’t done deftly. In addition to that, there was a repetition of statements that felt unnecessary - I don’t need to have everything spelled out and reiterated!
This was a pretty fast read and not a terrible one if you enjoy murder mysteries and want to be entertained for a while. I enjoyed Lindsey and her perspective as a sister who didn’t get to be her own person because she was marked by this tragedy for so long. But I thought that it could have used more work. The theme of older men abusing their power to prey on younger women had potential, but I felt like it was undermined by the resolution. I get what the authors were trying to do, but it needed a lot more buildup for it to work, imo.