Book Review: the Stillhouse Lake Series

You guys, I love to read. Really, truly, love it. Need it, actually. Since I was very young, books have been my way out. They are my way of entering new worlds and escaping my own reality- worlds where anything is possible, where characters come in every conceivable size, shape, and kind. You can imagine those characters as you please (the downside of TV & films), and you can keep imagining them long after you’re finished reading their story. Books are my only path to visiting different universes, they are a constant and cherished friend, and always there to help me escape when I need them. For that reason, I am deeply and intensely grateful for their existence.

Annndd, since today is World Book Day, it seemed like a very fitting time to post my first book review (or series review, more accurately!) This is a new type of writing for me – the only book “reviews” I’ve ever done were book reports when I was in school. But hopefully I pull it off and you will be left with your curiosity about these novels at least piqued.

The series I’ll be discussing is The Stillhouse Lake series by Rachel Caine. Only 2 of the first 3 books have been released, so those are the ones I’ll be talkin’ up here, but there is a third coming out in December (which, as you fellow bookworms know, feels like a 1 million year wait.)

To give you some context: the series centers around a normal Midwestern housewife who finds out (in shocking fashion) that her dear husband is in fact a sadist serial killer. The first book, Stillhouse Lake, revolves around her life a few years after his conviction & death sentence, living with her 2 children in hiding from those that think she had a part in his crimes and blame her for it. Gwen (formerly Gina) is much different than the woman who found out her husband was a psychopath; she has been forged into steel. But when bodies start showing up in the lake she’s living on, she has to decide whether to take her kids and run once again, or stick it out and fight for the little slice of home they’ve established in their new town in Tennessee. I do not want to give too much away about the plot of the second book, Killman Creek, but suffice to say that the battle she fights at home in the first novel gets taken on the road in the second.

The books themselves are well-paced, smart, and keep you thirsting for more. I tend to test how good a suspense/mystery novel is by how fast I read it, as I usually find myself reading too quickly and rushing ahead if it’s really entertaining. That happened with the Stillhouse Lake novels numerous times. I consistently had to tell myself, “Slow down, Ash, you’ll get there.” There are surprising twists, a quasi love story, and at its core, a mom who just really loves and wants to protect her kids. It’s a story of becoming something bigger and better and different when life cuts you down to nothing, a sort of phoenix rising from the ashes. Well, as much as a suspense novel can establish that sort of thing.

The books are well written (though not outrageously so). While Rachel Caine is absolutely efficient at driving the plot,  she still manages to flesh out the characters as well as you can in a book driven by suspense and whodunnit. The one problem I had with the series was actually only in the second novel. She switches from single character narration to multiple (four in all). I understand the necessity to do this as the story has to develop around multiple fronts, but it made the reading experience a bit choppy and weird as we jumped from one character to another. The second book is also home to a rather frustrating part as a reader (where you want to scream at a character “WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT!?”)  But I find that it ended up increasing my enjoyment in the long run, despite my initial annoyance.

All in all, I’d give this series (well, these 2 books anyway) a solid 4 out of 5 stars. They’re not perfect books by any means, but they’re highly entertaining, and a perfect way to escape for a few hours while you’re by the pool. If you pick one up, let me know what you think! Would love to hear your postulations about what is going to happen in book 3…