Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous. One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHHHH! Oh my good lord, is this book a trip. If you read my blog pre-hiatus, you might remember that I’m…not the biggest fan of Sager’s work. I’ve READ them all (ok, except for last year’s Survive the Night, which I couldn’t finish because it was too silly), and I’ve enjoyed moments of them, but they are a fucking mess. And usually problematic to boot.
This new one seems less problematic in some ways, because it stays focused on idiotic white people and their white people problems, but it’s probably the most bananas of his books. Well, the back third is bananas. The first chunk is pretty slow and languid, but Sager writes in an all-too-consumable way, so I flew through that and got to the bonkers bits quickly enough. But before I get to full-on spoilers, here are a few semi-spoilery hints that were my initial reactions:
-The requisite Sager ‘twist(s)’ here are fucking hilarious, and fairly out-of-left-field for him. Props of a sort (I guess?) to him for going there, this time. I don’t think he can get away with doing it again, at least not to such shocking effect.
-I was almost CRYING laughing as I finished it, even before the FINAL final twist. He’s certainly got chutzpah to have kept going beyond that point, is all I’ll say.
SPOILER TERRITORY
Ok, so basically this book goes full Behind Her Eyes (from what I gleaned of that book based on anti-hype and spoilery reviews). So, instead of teasing the supernatural and instead getting idiot-parental coverup (hello Home Before Dark) or rich-bitch-organ-harvesting-club (looking at you, Lock Every Door), here we FINALLY get ‘everything seems to be a straightforward domestic disturbance until BAM! Undead possession.’ And, like, it was so, so goddamn silly. But it WAS surprising, because it was completely random and not remotely telegraphed at all. Sager’s buy-in to the ‘secretly supernatural’ subgenre is pretty balls-to-the-wall, with our heroine learning the ghost of her husband (a serial killer she drowned in the lake, which…ok) has possessed her newfound BFF, who drowned in the lake briefly before she could rescue her. So there’s that.
And so the new BFF’s husband isn’t trying to kill her for nefarious reasons, he’s just disappeared her and tied her up because he knows she’s possessed by a serial killer dude’s ghost. And once our intrepid heroine learns this, she ALSO buys it pretty immediately, because only her serial-killer-ex could know the things he knows about his own death. (There’s very little “wait, how can this paranormal shit be happening?!” which I did appreciate.) Turns out, the lake is magic (!?!?!) or the guy was so bad HE was magic (!?!) or…reasons, so the guy’s spirit has remained in the lake and can possess anyone who dies in it. But ALSO, the dead guy REALLY wants to possess his ex-wife, which he might be able to do via kissing her (because…reasons? Please don’t ask me OR Riley about this, I guess), so she gets her possessed BFF into a boat, kisses the shit out of her, gets possessed by her ex, and tries to drown herself so that he’ll truly die (or something). BUT THEN, her newly revived BFF plunges into the water and rescues her. (YAY for friendship, I guess.) All’s well that end’s well, and they’ll tell the cops and media that the BFF was just lost in the woods, instead of being tortured by her husband.
BUT WAIT. It wouldn’t be a Sager book without another twist or two.
Soooo THEN, it turns out that BFF’s husband did INDEED want to kill her, it’s just that this possession temporarily interrupted his plans. (At which point I’m DYING, because WUT.) So he goes over to our heroine’s house with a wine bottle to bludgeon her with, only she somehow manages to kill him. BUT THEN his body falls into the lake water at the edge of the shore, so he gets possessed by her dead husband again. BUT THEN, she kills him AGAIN, so it’s all good now. Only maybe she’ll have to live at the lake forever as a guardian against her ex (and maybe also this new murder-dude) coming back. THE END.
And I’m just…this book was so much. And this is to say nothing of the ridiculous red herrings and other characters we get, none of whom make much sense if you think about it for more than a minute. (Again, Sager’s books are designed to be read FAST, so that your brain won’t have time to stop and wonder how the fuck any of this is supposed to work.)
Is it good? Hell no. Was it entertaining? Yes, because I am a dumbass and also because I haven’t read any of the ‘secretly supernatural’ thrillers that have been coming out lately. As I said, I REALLY don’t think Sager can pull this trick off effectively more than once, and he was helped immensely by his earlier, shittier ‘bait-and-switch’ plots that teased the supernatural and then gave ‘realistic’ soap-opera explanations instead. Which all makes me wonder…is he pretty much out of ideas? I guess we’ll see next year, when I will surely give his next offering a try.