This deals with an assault that happened 25 years ago. The 4 women come back to the cottage and a local lawyer is found dead. Who did it? Was it one of his many enemies or one of the group of friends? This was a slow burn mystery and I liked it.

Bitterroot Lake by Alicia Beckman pulled me in from the very beginning. I loved the setting of an old Montana lodge. I could envision so many details. The twists and turns were great! Thank you #NetGalley and #Dreamscape Media for letting me review the book. I fully enjoyed it.

Bitterroot Lake - I could just see Whitetail Lodge in all its glory over the years. Sarah McCaskill returns to the Lake after becoming widowed. Little did she know her friends and sister would show up where they would all have to relive a tragic accident that occurred years ago. A little slow for me, but the premise of the story was good.

I alternated between reading and listening to this book. I really liked the narrator's tone and listening kept me more engaged with this book than reading it.

Bitterroot Lake by Alicia Beckman is a story that revisits past traumas while also dealing with present-day ones. Sarah McCaskill revisits the family’s summer home when her husband passes to spread some ashes where their story began as well as a place where they lost a friend. When she arrives she finds a friend that was there on that day that brings news of another death in which they work together (as well as with another friend and her sister) to find out what happened. While searching Sarah is able to patch old friendships and find out about family history.

I was lucky enough to get access to the audiobook. The narrator did a great job and was easy to follow. This book deals with certain aspects of death, murder, and abuse which can be triggering for some. At times it did feel like some details were unnecessary. Overall it was a great read and a solid 4 stars for me.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

#BitterrootLake #NetGalley

Sarah lost her husband to cancer and her mother encourages her to come home to the lodge to help her make some decisions. The lodge holds a lot of heartbreaking history. Twenty-five years ago a weekend turned deadly and ripped Sarah and her closest friends including her sister apart.

This was such a super slow moving audiobook. Unfortunately I couldn’t get into the characters or the storyline and DNF’d it. I really wanted to enjoy this one after reading the blurb.

I love a fast paced thriller/mystery. I need something to grip me immediately and this one just didn’t do it for me. This one wasn’t for me but you may have a completely different reading experience.

Bitterroot lake is a fast pace thriller that keeps you guessing until the end.

I really enjoy the build up that author creates within this story. I binged the audiobook in a day and had a hard time pausing it. This story winds the events of a tragic night 25 years before with current and past events involving the lodge they all love and built a lot of memories in. I think its done in a perfect way and gives this story enough events to unfold that it never gets slow. This is one of my favorite thrillers of 2021.


The characters themselves were also complex. They weren't just people that knew each other before. They are friends who have each other's backs and have a good amount of depth to them. Even the side characters but it's not provided in a way that bogs the story down.


The narrator of the audiobook carries this story particularly well. Her voice and tone suits the characters age and it was easy to tell characters apart with how it was read. I think this is a story that can be enjoyed both as a novel and an audiobook.

Was so excited to read this one but wow what a slow moving story.

I think this one missed the mark on my expectations mostly because the description doesn't actually describe what the book focuses on. This one is more of a small town, intertwined story that is heavy in history, family drama, ghost stories and developing the main character.

We never really discover much more than what is laid out in the beginning, beyond the looming mystery of who killed the second guy, which I didn't event really care about by the time I was finished with the book.

I usually start with a quick synopsis, but I honestly don’t know where to begin in summing this book up. First of all, this was a slooooow burn; so slow, even the synopsis can't be quick. There were so many moving parts, which is not necessarily a bad thing if they all tie together. However, I feel that the author never really made strong connections between all of those parts. There was a murder, which never really seemed like a big deal, letters reminiscent of “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, and some family history and weird dreams thrown in. The women central to the plot were all in their mid to late 40s, and they bickered like 17-year-olds. This was particularly annoying given I was listening to the audio version of this book .I didn’t really find any of the characters likeable, although the writer did demonstrate some character growth as the novel progressed. There weren’t many twists or turns to the plot, and the answer to who committed the murder was pretty obvious. The author did do a nice job painting the setting on Bitterroot Lake, the imagery was very nice. All in all, I really can’t recommend this book. Unless you enjoy the aforementioned things, then have at it.

I didn’t like the narration of this book & the story quickly lost me. I hope others loved this one but it just lost me too quickly on.

This is a new to me author that I looked forward to trying out. I felt it had all the right elements with the college group of childhood friends with a small town close knit vibe, throw in a murder and you have yourself a setting! But, I struggled with relating to the main character and her mom and friends. When the author threw in a little paranormal activity, she lost me…. I am thankful to Netgalley for an ARC. All of these opinions are my own, perhaps another reader would find this to be the perfect balance of nostalgia and intrigue.

This was an interesting listen. It kept you wondering what the back story was and how all the characters were connected. Things from the past keep coming forward to the present that keep them from letting the past go. Sarah has come home to heal and has reconnected with her friends, but things don't work as hoped.

Bitterroot lake had me guessing until the end! I loved the real life mystery mixed with the supernatural nice. I must admit, this book was a nice surprise :)

Thriller aspect was good but it was slow in the begging I almost gave up on it but once I got halfway through it picked up

Man, this one didn't really do anything for me. I'm surprised I finished it. I didn't care for the supernatural elements weaved in to the murder mystery. And the murder was not all that interesting to begin with. The only thing I liked here was the main character's accurate depiction of grief at the loss of her husband, and the pennies. I wish I had more to say but I found this altogether forgettable and primarily dull.

I was upset that I wasn't able to finish this book. From the description, I had such high hopes going into this one. But by the middle of the book, I just felt like it fell short. There were parts in here that reminded me of the 90s horror films but in the end it just was not for me.

<b>Bitterroot Lake</b> was a murder mystery set at Whitetail Lodge near/on Bitterroot Lake, Montana. The story followed Sarah McCaskill who had returned to help her mother clean up the old lodge. While there old past secrets were dug up as she was reunited with an old friend and an accident that occurred twenty years old.

This novel was a slow mystery novel that had great elements which could have made the novel amazing. Instead the plot was slow with far too much description and history. Yes the reader did need to know some history about the lodge but not every moment for the last century. A quicker and more condensed version would have been just as sufficient. The actual investigation into the murder was unbelievably slow. It was nicely wrapped up with a quick confession but the plot too so long to get to that point that I didn’t really care.

The characters were good with Sarah becoming phenomenal. I loved reading about her self-healing and dealing with her grief. Not much time was focussed on the secondary characters so I couldn’t get to know them as well as I would have liked.

The pacing was off as the middle really dragged on. The middle focussed more on the heritage of the lodge and the history of Bitterroot Lake and its cottages. I thought the appearance of a ghost and visions would have peaked my interest, especially when there was a feminist element to them, but it didn’t. It was interesting and well written but by that point in the novel my interest wasn’t in the novel anymore.

Overall this was an okay murder mystery novel with a supernatural element to it. There was too much background and landscape description which dragged the novel. I loved the main character and her healing process.

I listened to Bitterroot Lake and I must confess, this wasn’t my favorite book. The story was too slow-moving for my liking, and I was questioning what the point of the story was until close to the end.

There were lots of characters in this book, but I managed to keep them straight, for once, in my head. My only issue is that there wasn’t lots of character development. We heard lots about Sarah’s story, but I felt it was just being repeated over and over throughout the story but not particularly evolving throughout.

There was a spooky aspect to the story as Sarah kept hearing and seeing different weird things at Whitetail Lodge but turns out it was just for effect and this novel isn’t a paranormal novel. Which is fine by me, I usually don’t tend to like those.

Having said that, I still enjoyed the story, and the ending. It’s just not my usual preference and even though we didn’t get a lot of character development I still like the characters and liked how the story unfolded.

If you like general fiction books and slow-moving books, you might like this one. It just didn’t hit the mark for me as an avid high-intensity mystery/thriller lover.

A women who lost her husband recently returns to a place where she lost a friend years ago. When returning she relives the whole event over again with the people that were there at that time and has to go on and figure out what they are all being brought back to Bitterroot Lake for. It is a good suspense book for a light read day.

Thank you @netgalley @dreamscape_media for the #gifted copy of this audiobook.

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

While this book wasn’t as intense or as suspenseful as I thought it might be, it was still really enjoyable. While this book opens up with a murder, it didn’t seem to be the focus of the story. Instead, this book focused more on grief that Sarah was dealing with as a recent young widow, the relationships between the women in this book, and uncovering the history of Whitetail Lodge.

What I enjoyed:
✨ Small town setting, where you knew everyone and they knew you
✨ The relationships between the women and how different they all were
✨ I loved the pennies (iykyk)
✨ The past being pieced together throughout the story
✨ I loved the Society and what it stood for!!
✨ A lot of this book was about women uplifting other women, even if it was quietly done

What I didn’t love:
✨ I’m still not 100% clear on what the purpose of the dreams were
✨ I guessed the killer well before the end
✨ I wish there was a little bit more tension and sense of danger sprinkled throughout the story, not just at the end