Caitlin never meant to stay so long. But it’s strange how this place warps time. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, it’s easy to forget about the world outside.

It all happened so fast. She was lonely, broke, about to give up. Then she met Jake and he took her to his ‘family’: a close-knit community living by the lake. Each day she says she’ll leave but each night she’s back around their campfire. Staring into the flames. Reciting in chorus that she is nothing without them.

But something inside her won’t let go. A whisper that knows this isn’t right. Knows there is danger lurking in that quiet room down by the lake…

Most of us have wanted to do this at one time or another, haven’t we? When life got too stressful and there didn’t seem to be any way you could find a happy ending. So what if we could  pack a bag, buy a ticket to anywhere and disappear until we sorted ourselves out? Caitlin doesn’t just think about it, she acts on it and sets off for New York.

Dibdin gives the reader a sense of the desolation and confusion Caitlin feels after the loss of her mother as she wanders the streets of Manhattan, filling the endless hours, and introduces Jake who takes advantage of her vulnerability and whisks her off to the Lake House to meet his family. Except the reality of his family was not what Caitlin had imagined.

We immediately get a strong sense of Caitlin’s fragile mental state that leads to her making the choices she does – it is all so  plausible, and as we read we are unsettled by a growing unease that all is not as it seems.

A gripping thriller that explores how vulnerable we can all be given the circumstances and how easily it is to fall prey to false appearances.

The Room by the Lake RRP £7.99

AUTHOR

Emma Dibdin grew up in Oxford, and now lives in New York. She is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Total Film. This is her first novel.