Thank you so much @netgalley for my copy. Although I enjoyed Carter’s previous book better, this was a slow burn. I enjoyed the concept as it was unique.

I struggled to get into this one and also found the alternating POV to be hard to follow at times. The writing style also felt a little bit off/robotic for me, which led to me skimming parts. Not my favorite, but appreciate the opportunity to read an advance copy!

I expected a mystery or psychological suspense, but this actually a gothic novel of obsession, a broken family, and toxic envy. Some of the prose is memorable, but overall I was disappointed. I appreciate the opportunity to read an advance copy.

Thank you to Minotaur and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest review. I found this book a little confusing at times. Some conversations and plot seemed cut off, unfinished, and awkward. The book was really giving tell tale heart at times with the way she was spiraling thinking about how she would get caught. I felt like I just didn’t connect with the characters and I wasn’t satisfied with the ending either. It was pretty fast paced and short though.

📚 E-ARC BOOK REVIEW 📚

Marguerite By The Lake
By Mary Dixie Carter
Publication Date: May 20, 2025
Publisher: St. Martin's Press | Minotaur Books

📚MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐✨
(Rounded Up To 4⭐)

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books, and NetGalley for this #gifted e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!

📚MY REVIEW:

Marguerite By The Lake is an atmospheric and slow burning psychological thriller about a woman with an apparent imposter syndrome who slowly unravels as she attempts to become part of a world in which she has always wanted to belong

This entire book felt like I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, with an underlying tension that propelled me to keep reading. This is the story of a female MC Phoenix, the garden designer for wealthy Marguerite Gray and her husband Geoffrey at their beautiful Rosecliff estate. Phoenix has worked so hard to carefully craft the gardens with which Marguerite has branded herself after becoming famous as an artist's muse. Phoenix seems to become obsessed with Marguerite's world, and this book is ultimately the story of Phoenix's slow unraveling as she immerses herself into Marguerite's world, following her unexpected and tragic death.

Essentially, this book was a stunning glimpse into the mind of the unhinged Phoenix as she grapples with insecurities about the have-not world from which she came and an imposter syndrome that challenges her to achieve control of the wealthy world into which she's entered.

While I enjoyed the psychological aspects of this slow burn thriller, there were several unfinished storylines in the book that left me with questions. I'm not sure if the purpose of these storylines was to create red herring diversions in the plotline, or if they were merely threads in the storylines' fabrics which were never intended to be pulled. But the twisty ending to this one felt sudden and left several paths in the plot which felt unfinished to me.

If you're a fan of psychological thrillers with unraveling main characters, atmospheric plotlines, and dark secrets that are constantly threatening to bubble to the surface, you're going to love Marguerite By The Lake. This one publishes May 20th!

#MargueriteByTheLake #MaryDixieCarter #StMartinsPress #MinotaurBooks #NetGalley #NetGalleyReviews #ARCs #thrillerreads #thrilleraddict #thrillerlover #psychologicalthriller #booklover #bookreviews #bookrecs #bookrecommendations

If *Rebecca* had a rendezvous with Martha Stewart on an affluent estate haunted by grief, control, and secrets, the result might look a lot like *Marguerite by the Lake*. This novel is steeped in atmosphere - both lush and oppressive - and I found myself entirely caught in its unsettling current.

From the first page, there’s a sense of something deeply wrong lurking just beneath the pristine surface. The writing captures that gothic unease beautifully, and the audiobook brings it to life in a way that only deepened my immersion. The narrator does an incredible job evoking the slow unraveling of the main character, Phoenix, whose descent felt painfully real and disarmingly close.

After Marguerite’s death, her presence lingers - not just in the curated perfection of the house she once ruled, but in Phoenix’s psyche. Phoenix isn’t haunted by a ghost in the traditional sense, but by the *idea* of Marguerite: her elegance, her control, her absence that somehow feels more powerful than most people’s presence. The house becomes a mausoleum to a woman who was always more image than intimacy, and Phoenix begins to erode beneath the weight of that image.

There’s a brilliant tension between aspiration and resentment. Phoenix admires and loathes Marguerite in equal measure, desperate to belong in a world that was never hers, and perhaps never truly Marguerite’s either. Her fixation becomes a kind of possession, a psychological haunting that slowly strips her identity away. Grief, envy, and obsession blur into one. In that way, the novel leans fully into its gothic roots: the beautiful but cold home, the emotionally distant marriage, and the lingering presence of a dead woman who somehow remains the center of every room.

There’s not a likeable character in sight, which - oddly enough - is one of the things I loved most about it. Everyone feels a little too brittle, a little too carefully constructed, and that emotional distance only adds to the sense of claustrophobia. You can feel Phoenix unraveling in real time, and it’s equal parts tragic and chilling.

The ending, while evocative, felt a touch too abrupt for me. There were several threads I wished had been pulled tighter or brought more fully into the light. Still, the ambiguity works in a way that mirrors the novel’s themes: we’re never quite sure what’s real, what’s imagined.

Dark, elegant, and quietly devastating, *Marguerite by the Lake* stays with you long after the final page. A haunting in every sense of the word.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the advance copy. All opinions are entirely my own.

I thought I would love this book, but it really didn't work for me. I couldn't get into it easily and at times I skimmed the text. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

💭: First off, love the cover! Something about that color scheme draws me to books!

Moving on from that, this one wasn’t really my cup of tea. It held my interest enough but I felt like it took me forever to read. I have heard the audiobook really makes the story, so if you are into those, maybe try that route. The beginning showed promise, but then it turned into a major slow burn, which are hit and miss for me. I did enjoy the mystery and complicated family dynamics!

A tense story about jealousy, death, and gardening. Secrets and affairs are revealed after one falls to her death and leaves the rest to pick up the pieces.

The alternating timelines were just a little bit hard for me to follow, and didn't really capture my attention in the way I was hoping. Overall, a decent story; however, nothing super interesting or crazy to me.

Marguerite by the Lake is about Phoenix, a master gardener/landscaper who unexpectedly steps into the life of Marguerite, the wealthy Martha Stewart-esque influencer, after her sudden death.

I'm going to he honest, nothing about this book worked for me.
- I was very confused about the timelines.
- psychological thriller but I was waiting for the psych part to happen and it never did
- there is not a single redeeming character in this book, everyone is awful
- tone and pace felt off, it didn't flow
- I feel the author spoon fed me everything - lots of show not tell

I will say, remove all the annoying people and i want to live in this garden - i will say the author did a phenomenal job of painting this picture (no pun intended).

Thank you to Netgalley and publishers for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

Unfortunately, this is a DNF at 13% for me. The writing felt off, as though it was written by AI. The only way I can describe it is robotic and not realistic, but trying to be. I just didn't like it.

Marguerite by the Lake by Mary Dixie Carter ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This book was completely atmospheric, and it drew me in immediately with the opening scene. I did find the plot points to be clunky. I didn’t understand how we got from gardener to mistress to moving in to the ending bits. But I loved watching the downward spiral of the very unlikable main character. I think underneath it all it was a study in guilt, and it very much succeeded in that.

I read this one pretty quickly though I didn’t think it was fast-paced. The ending was abrupt, so I wish we had a little more there. All in all, I was pulled into this atmospheric read that brought nature to me with all the lush descriptions of plants and the heavy focus on the MC's gardener position.

Fans of descriptive stories, suspenseful, character-driven reads, and family dramas will find plenty to enjoy in this one.

2.5 stars, rounded up

I had both the digital and audio copies of this book, and enjoyed following along with the digital copy while listening to the audio version. This review encompasses both.

I knew I wanted to listen to this book because anything narrated by Helen Laser goes on my TBR immediately! Helen never fails to bring the drama and this book is no exception. In this story, our main character Phoenix is haunted by a secret, and she is ANXIOUS. You can feel the stress coming off of her in the way Helen voices her inner monologues and her interactions with others. And the ending! The rage was real!

I would have liked more background on the characters. We hardly know anything about Phoenix and why she made the decisions she did, or about Geoffrey and his motivations. This is less of a mystery and more of a psychological suspense without much substance to move the plot forward. There are some dramatic moments and interesting symbolism through natural elements, but I wanted more character development, more understanding of the characters' actions, and more action to the plot.

This book could have been great. It had a good premise and interesting parts, but it seemed like the ideas weren’t thoroughly developed. When the affair started, it was sudden and there was no real relationship there. The scenes felt very disjointed. I became more interested in the story once I pushed past the first half or so. It still wasn’t great but it held my attention. I didn’t find myself caring about any of the characters and read quickly just to get through the book. Once I got to the end, there were a lot of plot holes and unanswered mysteries. Books don’t always need everything tidied up but there were instances where the author was leading on to things then that line of thinking abruptly ended. The author has good ideas but needs more time/editing to fully flesh out the stories.

This one fell short for me. It started out really well and progressed nicely but I really didn’t like Phoenix’s character. Maybe we aren’t supposed to? I just didn’t like her development. The ended was a bit confusing as well. Like it didn’t really end. There was no conclusion. Maybe there will be a sequel but I don’t think I’d read it.

2.5 stars. This is a suspenseful, character-driven novel, and the author does a good job of fleshing out the characters and making them interesting to the reader. However, even though the novel started out holding my attention, it soon seemed to go off the rails a bit. I found the storyline becoming increasingly odd and strange, so much so that my attention really wandered. Although the writing style made this novel quite readable, the ending seemed too abrupt and ambiguous, not really tying everything up as I generally hope for in an ending. Overall, this was a decent read. I had not read anything by this author before, but I am interested in reading another of her works.

I think this is mislabeled as a mystery/thriller. It is a slow paced character driven story without much mystery at all. It’s the slowly driven descent into madness of the MC, who’s being haunted by the thought and presence of Marguerite.

I felt like I knew exactly how this would play out, and I don’t think it was meant to be some big mystery. It felt very gothic, but not scary. Many of the characters felt like they were written strange, and it made me feel like I couldn’t understand them or connect with them. I especially did not connect with the MC Phoenix. I liked that parts felt ambiguous, but at the same time I would’ve liked more of her back story to understand her better.

I liked the prose and how this was written. It kept the eerie quality of the story. I would recommend if you’re in the mood for a slower, character driven story with an unreliable narrator.

Marguerite by the Lake by Mary Dixie Carter follows gardener Phoenix as she works on the grounds of well known lifestyle icon Marguerite Gray. After Marguerite dies under suspicious circumstances, Phoenix struggles to keep herself focused on work and becomes involved with Marguerite's husband Geoffrey.

I thought I would really enjoy this book as it sounded like it had murder, mystery, and intrigue all based at the estate of a wealthy woman. Unfortunately this was not a good fit for me. There wasn't the mystery I was expecting and I just didn't enjoy the main character. I felt like she kept making ridiculous decisions that then of course ended badly for her. The ending also didn't work for me. This might be a great read for others, but wasn't my cup of tea.

Marguerite by the Lake felt more like a family drama vs a true thriller. It was a little bit of a struggle to get through and maybe just wasn't for me. On a positive note, I thought that the characters were well developed. I enjoyed the setting of a established estate. I also enjoyed the story kind of centering on landscaping more than I thought that I would.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.