NETGALLEY – The Cry of the Lake, Charlie Tyler – A Review.

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The Cry of the Lake by Charlie Tyler. Published 21.7.2020 by BooksGoSocial. Provided by NetGalley.

Synopsis… “A gruesome discovery unravels a dark trail of murder and madness. A six-year-old girl sneaks out of bed to capture a mermaid but instead discovers a dead body. Terrified and unable to make sense of what she sees, she locks the vision deep inside her mind.
Ten years later, Lily is introduced to the charismatic Flo and they become best friends. But Lily is guilt-ridden – she is hiding a terrible secret which has the power to destroy both their lives. When Flo’s father is accused of killing a schoolgirl, the horrors of Lily’s past come bubbling to the surface. Lily knows that, whatever the consequences, she has to make things right. She must go back to the events of her childhood and face what happened at the boat house all those years ago. Can Lily and Flo discover what is hiding in the murky waters of the lake before the killer strikes again?”

Overall rating 3.5 out of 5 stars.

My review…

This book was not at all what I expected, even reading the synopsis could not have prepared me for what I was about to embark upon… The opening of this book grabbed my attention from the start.

The writing is excellent, Charlie Tyler weaves this perfect web of lies and deception that have us questioning every single person and every turn of the page. I didn’t know who to trust or what was going on.

Each chapter was from a different perspective and character POV, which I do feel helped to really build up the story. However, at points it did get quite confusing, and it felt as though some chapters weren’t quite fitting in with the rest of the story.

At points I really struggled to connect to the characters, I felt like I couldn’t form a proper opinion on them throughout the book as we just didn’t have enough from them. Which was really disappointing for me as I loved the way the author wrote the book from their different perspectives.

Once everything started to unravel I was hooked. I couldn’t stop reading because I needed to know how it ended. I was sucked in and when I completed the book I wanted to applaud the author for weaving such a clever web of lies!

That being said, I did feel at points like I was walking through treacle trying to read this book, some paragraphs were just way too long and I could feel myself skim reading them because they were taking too long.

On the whole, I have really mixed feelings about this book. There is no doubt that it was very cleverly written and that Charlie Tyler has a talent and I was gripped from the outset, there were just a couple of things that knocked this book down for me.

I did enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who was interested in this genre!

Until next time, Em xxx