Thanks to @macmillan.audio and @netgalley for the ALC.
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Jamie Day does it again! I’ve loved her previous novels, so I went into The Lake Escape with high expectations and she delivered. Tense, twisty, and soaked in summer secrets, this one pulled me under and didn’t let go until the final chapter.
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The story follows three childhood friends, Julia, David, and Erika. They return to their Vermont lake homes with baggage in tow: moody teenagers, stale marriages, and a vault of unspoken truths. When David unveils his shiny new lake house, which conveniently blocks everyone else’s view, and introduces his much younger girlfriend, the reunion vibe takes a sharp turn. Then the girlfriend goes missing.
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What begins as a slow boil of nostalgia and suburban dysfunction quickly morphs into a chilling mystery, tangled with long buried secrets and a lake with a sinister history of its own.
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The dual narration by Lisa Larsen and Phoebe Strole was perfectly done. Each voice brought depth and nuance to the shifting perspectives, amping up the suspense and emotional stakes.
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This one’s for fans of layered domestic thrillers, old friendships with cracks beneath the surface, and summer settings that feel a little too perfect.

This was such a fun summer read! It's a bit of a slow burn, and there were quite a few twists along with way, many of which I was not expecting. I loved the multiple perspectives and how to relationships between the characters unfolded.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this gripping summer mystery. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is the second book I’ve read by Jamie Day, and once again, he delivers an atmospheric and twisty read that’s perfect for summer. Set against the backdrop of a lakeside cottage community, The Block Party follows longtime friends David, Erika, and Julia, who have been spending summers together at the lake since childhood. This year, however, tensions simmer—especially for Julia, whose lake view is now obstructed by David’s massive new three-story build.

When David’s girlfriend Fiona goes missing, the mood quickly shifts. Her disappearance echoes that of another woman who went missing in the same area decades earlier. Could there be a connection?

Told from dual perspectives—Julia and Izzy, the nanny working for David—the story kept me guessing with well-paced twists and layered characters. Every time I thought I had it figured out, the narrative surprised me again.

This was a fast, suspenseful read that would pair perfectly with a quiet day at the cottage or beach. Highly recommended for fans of domestic suspense and multiple POV thrillers.

This started out a little interesting, then got very lost, and ended up a hot mess. It got really ridiculous. The Block Party and One Big Happy Family were okay for me but this was just not very good.

3.5 stars (rounded up)
OUT NOW!

Thank you Netgalley, St. Martins Press, and the author for an #ARC in return for an honest review!

Read if you like:
-Summer Themed Mysteries
- Multiple POV's
-Domestic Suspense

Overall, I think that this book was just okay for me? I liked some bits and others I did not. I think that the first 40% of this book was quite slowwww and I found myself bored. It was very character driven with little to no breadcrumbs left behind for the readers to get excited about. But after 40%, I feel like this picked up a bit more and I was intrigued with the mystery of it all. The cast of characters is quite large- almost too large if you ask me. It was hard to keep track of everyone. I think that the tension and well-crafted mystery of it all kept me reading. Slow burn. unreliable narrators, eerie vibes, and a great setting! I love a book set on a lake. It is the perfect summer vibes. Lots of twists thrown in to keep you hanging until the end. Although, sometimes less is more!

Jamie Day writes a great suburban thriller, and now has been cemented as a thriller author I will read anything by!

"WILL THIS BE THE BEST WEEK OF THEIR LIVES... OR THE LAST?"
The Lake Escape is about a vacation that goes wrong when a disappearance occurs. These lake homes are owned by a group of friends that have secrets. When one friend decides to show off his new renovated house what could possibly go wrong? The lake has a mystery and the friends have their secrets and to find out what is going on then make sure to read this page turning read. The author wrote this well and every character in this was interesting. This is a great summer read that I enjoyed and would recommend to any reader who likes thrillers. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this read in exchange of my honest review of The Lake Escape by Jamie Day.

Julie, David and Erika's annual vacation is anything but relaxing from the first. David's rebuilt house is made of glass and now blocks Julie and Erika's lake view. David, an obnoxious and self-focused man, shows up with his new, much younger girlfriend. The new girlfriend disappears, and the history of previous missing women, which may or may not be connected, becomes part of the mystery. There is so much going on in the plot that it felt forced and convoluted. Mafia characters? The best part of the book belongs to the nanny, hired to care for David's children. The character was multifaceted, smart, and felt authentic. I found "The Block Party," Jamie Day's previous book an enjoyable read. This one was not for me, but I am a Jamie Day fan and will be waiting for her next book.

If you love a good mystery with multiple points of view, this is one to check out! From the very start, I was intrigued but I’ll admit, there were quite a few characters introduced early on, which made it a little hard to keep up. That said, once the story found its rhythm, I had no trouble following along and was pulled into the drama and suspense.⁠ I really enjoyed the narration from both narrators.

While this one wasn’t my absolute favorite from the author, I still really enjoyed the ride. There’s something about a lake setting that always adds an eerie, atmospheric touch.

📚 Worth adding to your TBR if you enjoy:

✨ Multiple POVs
🔍 Twisty mysteries
🏡 Small-town secrets⁠
🎙️ True crime podcasts

🔎🔪 Mystery Thriller 🔪🔎

Women continue to mysteriously disappear at a lake 30 years apart.

This was an intriguing thriller. Right from the start the drama unfolds and continues to intensify at a nice pace.

I really enjoyed the beginning, the setting of the scene. I was curious about all the characters and their motives. There were so many little moments that really caught my attention.

Having different storylines layered so skillfully made for a great reading experience. I was genuinely surprised over many of them.

However, the ending felt a little disjointed from the beginning. There was a lot of information that came to light towards the end. It would have been nice to have had it slowly revealed throughout rather than all at once.

I think if you like thrillers that are mysterious and suspenseful, you will enjoy this one!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

✨ Thriller
✨ Suspense
✨ Mystery
✨ Drama
✨ Twist and Turns

🙏🏼 Thank you @stmartinspress for this #gifted copy of #thelakeescape !!

A summer retreat turns into a revelation of deadly secrets. When the nanny investigates a series of missing persons, things get very tricky! With a good number of characters, this one will have you trying to guess what on earth is going on in this small lake town!

This was not good as her debut. I absolutely loved the debut but this was too slow and uninteresting. DNFed

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3.75 rounded up)

A lakeside mystery with deep secrets, messy friendships, and an ending that left me squinting.

Jamie Day knows how to stir up drama at a summer home, and The Lake Escape delivers just that—secrets, betrayal, nosy neighbors, and a Vermont lake that may or may not be swallowing people whole.

I was hooked from the start: three longtime friends, their rocky adult lives, a much-younger girlfriend with her own secrets, and a nanny who rolls in with major “I’m not here to just fold towels” energy. The tension crackles as old resentments bubble up like lake muck, and when someone goes missing, the facade of their perfect summer unravels fast.

Julia, David, and Erika were all flawed in very realistic ways—sometimes infuriating, sometimes relatable—and their intertwined past made for juicy reading. The dual mystery (past and present disappearances) added a nice chill to the atmosphere, and I loved trying to piece everything together.

That said… the ending. Whew. While I appreciated the ambition, things definitely veered into “Okay… wait, what?” territory. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say I had to suspend a fair bit of disbelief in the final chapters. Twisty? Yes. Grounded? Not quite.

Still, if you’re into layered domestic thrillers with tangled friendships and lakeside creepiness, this one makes a splash.

* Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, for sharing this eARC with me in exchange for my honest opinion.

Julia Crawford, David Dunne, and Erika Miller are returning for their annual summer getaway, a family tradition they've continued into adulthood. They have been going here since they were babies. Lake Timmeny has a dark past. Two young women with no known connection to each other, aside from their shared vacation spot, vanished without a trace exactly thirty years apart. Lacking evidence, the vanishings gave rise to a legend that the lake take them, it is a legend that continues to this day. But it is not only the lake that's hiding something. All three friends have secrets and deceptions that lurk just beneath the surface. On their first night at the lake, they celebrate as it is tradition. There are burgers and hot dogs and Julia’s special blue (alcohol) drink. Everyone is having a good time until the nanny realizes Becca is missing. Fortunately, she is found. When David's new girlfriend mysteriously vanishes after a night of drinking and tension, the lore of the lake resurfaces. As the group searches for the missing woman, long-buried secrets emerge, and an intricate web of lies, deceit, and betrayals stemming back generations is gradually revealed, putting all of them in grave danger. Can the friends keep their heads above water, or will they, too, succumb to the lake's dark history?

If you like reading an exciting thriller with lots of twists and turns and several secrets to be revealed, you will enjoy this novel. Even if you think you know where the story is going, there will still be plenty of surprises. Plus, all of the twists and turns make sense.

The Lake Escape
by Jamie Day
Pub Date: Jul 15 2025

A great summer thriller set against the backdrop of a serene Vermont lake with a haunting past, the story follows Julia, Erika, and David—longtime friends who return to their lakeside homes each summer. The story is told through the POV's of a couple of characters and slowly secrets emerge as do memories.

What a great thriller to enjoy this summer! Wonderfully written, well thought out, and gripping.

Many thanks to #NetGalley, #StMartinsPress for providing me an E-ARC of this summer's 5 star book, #TheLakeEscape.

David, Erica, and Julia have been friends since childhood, returning to their lake retreats together every summer. But this summer is different. David has renovated his house into a glass monstrosity that blocks Julia and Erica's views of the lake. There is resentment and plenty of secrets.
But then David's new girlfriend goes missing and everyone is a suspect.

The past few summers, books by Jamie Day have been a great summer thriller read. Sadly, this one was my least favorite so far. There wasn't a lot happening besides the nanny's questionable background and motives for joining David on this trip for the first third of the book. Then the ending felt rushed with way to much happening and everything thriller trope thrown in.

"The Lake Escape" by Jamie Day is a summer book: something you can quickly pick up and read sitting in a beach chair and sipping iced tea, then promptly put it aside when a seagull tries to steal your snack.  In the style of recently popular movies and novels, "rich people behaving badly", the story takes place at a Vermont lakefront.  Julia, Erika, and David used to come there as children, and although now they're in their forties, with families of their own, they still look forward to their annual vacation reunion.  However, the place is not as idyllic as it used to be, especially since David built a modern glass home there, in his eyes an architectural masterpiece. At the same time, Julia finds it an eyesore, blocking her view of the lake. As if he didn't prove himself to be a jerk, David also brought his new, younger girlfriend, Fiona. Nobody likes her, but they are still shocked and upset when Fiona disappears. It had happened before: thirty years ago, two young women also vanished.  People keep saying that "the lake took them." Did Fiona meet a similar fate?

The novel starts slowly, but it picks up halfway, bringing the past events and new characters. I didn't find all the twists unexpected, probably because I've read many thrillers and mysteries and can often guess the author's intentions.  Also, without giving too much detail about the novel, some ideas seemed to be rather far-fetched. I did like the main character, Izzy, a nanny freshly hired to take care of David's children, although she irritated me at times.  She was the best-developed character, and her constant mentioning of Mary Poppins as an ideal nanny was sweet, as it was her crush on a moody young musician.

The novel is easy to read, and although, in my opinion, it is not as good as Jamie Day's first book, it can still be an enjoyable read. After all, as the song goes, it's "summertime and the living is easy," so we may look for books that are easy beach reads and as refreshing as a glass of iced tea.

Jamie Day does it again, providing us with another suspenseful summer read that had me hooked from the beginning. An atmospheric thriller, "The Lake Escape" unravels a mystery that has surrounded a lakeside Vermont town as a woman goes missing, exactly 30 years after another woman went missing, and 60 years after another woman before her.
This was an engrossing mystery-thriller that I wish I got to read while relaxing on a lake.

I read the book while also listening to the audiobook, narrated by Lisa Larsen and Phoebe Strole. Both did a great job depicting their characters, as the story is told through a dual POV. I highly recommend this book and audiobook.

Thankyou NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Macmillan Audio for the arc. All opinions are my own.

An entertaining read with lots of twists but also a lot of loose ends. I enjoyed the dual povs and the setting.

I love a good summer lake house mystery with a legend tied to the lake. And this one did keep me entertained. I enjoyed the massive amount of twists but I was a little bit let down that the book left some plot holes. What actually happened to Fiona?? And what happened to David?

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review

🛟 The Lake Escape - Jamie Day

3 ⭐️ - I am a sucker for a lake setting, but this one missed the mark for me. Rich people doing stupid things, teenagers obsessed with true crime, and icky men. I wanted to love it way more than I even liked it. I was interested in seeing how it ended but as the story went on, I just didn’t get it. You have to suspend your beliefs for this ending and I already wasn’t in it. Meh, it was just OK.