Book Review: Stranger in the Lake by Kimberly Belle

Title: Stranger in the Lake
Author: Kimberly Belle
Pages: 352 pages
Published June 9th 2020 by Park Row
Source: Edelweiss

GoodReads Description: "When Charlotte married the wealthy widower Paul, it caused a ripple of gossip in their small lakeside town. They have a charmed life together, despite the cruel whispers about her humble past and his first marriage. But everything starts to unravel when she discovers a young woman’s body floating in the exact same spot where Paul’s first wife tragically drowned.

At first, it seems like a horrific coincidence, but the stranger in the lake is no stranger. Charlotte saw Paul talking to her the day before, even though Paul tells the police he’s never met the woman. His lie exposes cracks in their fragile new marriage, cracks Charlotte is determined to keep from breaking them in two.

As Charlotte uncovers dark mysteries about the man she married, she doesn’t know what to trust—her heart, which knows Paul to be a good man, or her growing suspicion that there’s something he’s hiding in the water."

Charlotte has won the lottery with Paul her much older and much richer husband.  She has the dream house and the dream life.  But the whole town thinks she married him for the money and that she'll pay the price.  Rumors of Paul's involvement with his wife's drowning never bothered her... until another drowned woman turns up under his dock. Maybe everyone was right?

I really liked Stranger in the Lake in the beginning.  I thought it was going to be a solid 4 stars.  But it took a turn for me at some point.  I thought I was going to click with the characters, but I never really did and then in the last half of the book, the characters became less than realistic. It is hard to explain without giving a lot away...

Charlotte, the main character, is from a rough background.  She basically raised herself and her brother because her father was in jail and her mother was an addict.  And I know that lovely people can come from that situation, but they usually are a little more broken and a little more rough around the edges than Charlotte is.  As time went on in the book, she became a little self-righteous for me.  They were dealing with some pretty tough decisions and a girl who grew up in her situation with a police chief that everyone knows is dirty, would not have thought - you should have gone straight to the police.  It's just not realistic.  I know people that grew up like that and they would hide anything and everything from the police.  AND there were other mitigating circumstances as well that I can't discuss without giving away key points in the plot.

So all in all, her sense of morality was pretty black and white for everyone else, and not so much for herself.  She pretty much admits several times that she is a gold-digger - then backtracks and says she's not - but it seems pretty clear that she was motivated by money subconsciously at least.

I don't know... I just got where I really didn't like her character at all toward the end.  That line where she says that her blinders are off and he just looks old... Nope.  She just didn't have any feelings at all toward him it seemed to me.  Then, aside from all that, I figured out "whodunit" way too soon....

I liked Belle's writing style, I think she is a great writer, but this story wasn't the best and I just wasn't a big fan of the characters.

MY RATING:
Story: 3
Characters: 2
Overall: 2.5

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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