Stranger in the Lake by Kimberly Belle

Stranger in the Lake by Kimberly Belle
Published by Park Row Books ISBN 9780778388104
Hardcover, $28.99, 336 pages

Kimberly Belle has staked out a claim writing domestic thrillers about troubled marriages, and her latest, Stranger in the Lake, fits that category well.

We meet Charlotte as she is heading to her husband's architecture office where she also works. Charlotte married Paul a few years after his first wife was found drowned under the dock next to their gleaming mansion.

Paul loved Katherine, but people in the small resort town gossiped that he must have had something to do with her death; after all, she was a competitive swimmer. How could she drown so close to the dock?

Charlotte is eleven years younger than Paul, and she comes from the "wrong side of town", having grown up in the trailer park. Her father was in prison, and her mother was a drug addict who neglected Charlotte and her younger brother Chet.

People (including Paul's mother) also gossiped about "gold digger" Charlotte, digging her claws into the wealthy widower Paul. But Paul and Charlotte were in love, and hoped to start to a family soon.

After seeing Paul talking to a strange woman in town, Charlotte finds the woman's body the next day drowned under their dock. Two drowned women under his dock doesn't look good for Paul, and when he tells Charlotte that he must go away for three days after he lies to the police about meeting the dead woman, things go from bad to worse.

There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, and something that happened in Paul's past may have come back to haunt him. Back in high school, Paul was best friends with Jax and Micah, now Paul's neighbor. Jax went off the grid years ago, living in the woods, and Paul has helped him over the years by giving him money and clothes.

Did Paul kill the woman? Does he think Jax killed the woman, as the police suspect? Now that Charlotte has lied to the police to cover up for Paul's lie, she is determined to get to the truth.

Clever readers may be able to follow the breadcrumb clues as to who killed the woman, but there are so many layers to the book, the underlying elements to the story will keep the reader guessing why. Fans of books like The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl will want to add Stranger in the Lake to their summer reading list.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Summer Reads Blog Tour.