
Title:- Lakeview House
Author:- Helen Phifer
No. of pages:- 483 pages
Date published:- will be published on 8th April 2022
Publisher:- Bookouture
Genre:- Psychological Thriller
Rating:- 2.5/5

Icy water laps against the wooden jetty. But the girl doesn’t notice the cold as she slips slowly under the freezing surface…
Running from a devastating relationship that almost cost her everything, Maddy Hart impulsively accepts a job as a live-in caretaker at imposing Lakeview House. She has no memories of having visited the crumbling mansion on the banks of Lake Thirlmere before, but when she arrives, something about the house feels familiar…
The more time Maddy spends in the house, the more unsettled she feels. Why does the local story about the last woman who lived here, who drowned on her wedding day, chill Maddy to the bone? By day, she clears out the dusty rooms, but in the dead of night it’s hard to explain away the eerie noises or crackly radio she hears hours after she turned it off. Slowly, Maddy begins to fear that her worst nightmare is coming true, has her past caught up with her…?
When a soaking wet wedding dress is left on Maddy’s doorstep she feels completely trapped. It is her exact measurements. Is her ex trying to send her a message? Or has Maddy’s digging uncovered an even deadlier secret? Will this perfect escape become the perfect trap?

Ever since I got fascinated with Detective Morgan Brooks, Helen Phifer has become one of my favorite authors. So I requested Lakeview House written by Helen Phifer and Lakeview House is actually a standalone novel.
Maddy moves to a dilapidated-looking house overlooking the lake, leaving behind bustling London and her abusive boyfriend,. She then meets Seth who lives around the area. While Maddy gets used to living inside the lakeview house, there is a serial killer out there, who has hidded a body close to the house. Meanwhile, Maddy’s ex- boyfriend Connor is determined to get back at Maddy…
There are good points and bad points in the books. Let’s start with good points
- The writing was really great–Phifer’s writing is engaging.
- The plot of the story is really great that was the main reason why I was drawn into the book.
Now the bad points.
- OK, the characters in the story are messed up–I mean Stella, who is Maddy’s friend literally end up flirting with Maddy’s ex-boyfriend Connor. Characters are all bland.
*If this is a thriller, this wasn’t a fast paced thriller like I would have expected normally from her books. The story was direct, not much of twists and turns that you would expect in a thriller, I was bored in the first part of the book.
*The ending was predictable and I felt like I was watching some sort of lame crime show on the TV.
*Dreams that Maddy is seeing seemed to be unnecessary in my opinion but maybe that was just me.
Overall, this is a slow burner, not really a page turner in my opinion. I hate to say, this wasn’t really her best book.
Worth 2.5 stars
Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

Helen Phifer is the #1 Bestselling crime and horror novelist of the Annie Graham, Lucy Harwin and Beth Adams series. Helen lives in a small town in Cumbria. Surrounded by miles of coastline and only a short drive from the beautiful Lake District. She has always loved writing and reading since the days she learnt how to in infant school. She loves reading books that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and make her afraid to go to the toilet, alone in the middle of the night. She is eternally grateful to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Herbert and Graham Masterton for scaring her senseless in her teenage years. Unable to find enough of the scary stories she loves to read, she decided to write her own.
Her debut novel The Ghost House was released October 2013 and introduced readers to police officer Annie Graham. It went on to be an Amazon #1 bestseller in Canada. It reached #1 on the Amazon Contemporary Horror Charts in both the UK and the US, pushing her idol Stephen King off his #1 spot many times. She was thrilled when the second book in the series The Secrets of the Shadows managed to push The Ghost House off its #1 spot even if it was a little surreal. This was followed by The Forgotten Cottage, The Lake House, The Girls in the Woods and The Face Behind the Mask.
The Good Sisters is a standalone old, fashioned horror story which Helen admits scared her so much when she was writing it that she couldn’t write once it got dark. Set in an abandoned convent it will definitely give you the chills.
March 2017 saw the publication of Dark House, a gripping psychological thriller which introduced readers to the dangerous world of Detective Inspector Lucy Harwin. This was followed by Dying Breath and Last Light.
The Haunting on West Tenth Street is a supernatural thriller set on the streets of New York and features Homicide Detective Maria Miller.
Her brand new series featuring Forensic Pathologist Beth Adams is published July 16th 2019