Spoiler Discussion for The House Across the Lake

If any book needed a spoiler discussion, it’s The House Across the Lake! What. Is. Happening? Let’s figure it out together. Find a plot summary, character list, neighborhood guide and the ending explained in my Spoiler Discussion for The House Across the Lake.

Spoiler Discussion for The House Across the Lake

Here’s what this post will contain:

Character List for The House Across the Lake

Lake Greene Neighborhood Guide for The House Across the Lake

Plot Summary for The House Across the Lake

What Was the Ending of the House Across the Lake

Spoiler Discussion

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Character List for The House Across the Lake

Casey Fletcher: widowed broadway actress with a drinking problem

Tom Royce: CEO of Mixer, a tech company 

 Catherine Royce: Tom’s wife, a former supermodel 

Lolly Fletcher: Broadway actress and Casey’s mom

Leonard Bradley: Casey’s husband; drowned in Lake Greene

Detective Wilma Anson

Marnie: Casey‘s cousin; lives in Manhattan.

Eli Williams: Lake Green resident and a novelist who was big in the 80s. After his wife’s death, he moved to Lake Greene full-time.

Boone Conrad: handyman for the Mitchells

Neighborhood Guide to The House Across the Lake

The House Across the Lake is set at Lake Greene in Vermont. Five houses sit around the lake:

The Fletcher house is the oldest house on the lake, built in 1878

The Mitchell house is next door to Casey Fletcher’s house.

The Royce house sits on the other side the lake. It was built twenty years ago on the former site of a bungalow. It’s modern, with an all-glass side facing the water.

The Fitzgerald house is a charming cottage on the Royce side of the lake.

Eli Williams’ house is a ramshackle chalet style cabin to the right of the Royce house.

Plot Summary for The House Across the Lake

Prologue:

Casey is talking about childhood memories of spending time at Lake Greene in Vermont with her cousin Marnie

The Present:

Detective Wilma Anson is interviewing Casey. She asks if Casey has been watching the Royce house and tells Casey that Thomas Royce is missing. His car and keys are at the house but he’s gone. 

Detective Anson mentions that Casey broke into the Royce house. When the detective leaves, Casey goes to a bedroom where someone is tied up. She asks him what he did with Katherine.

Before:

Casey is at Lake Greene, drinking heavily and thinking about how her husband drowned in the lake the year before.

She hears someone call for help and swims out to find a woman’s body, floating, cold and blue. The woman suddenly wakes up. She’s Katherine Royce, a former supermodel. She and her husband own a house across the lake

Casey gets a call from her cousin Marnie, who thinks the lake is haunted.

Casey grew up hanging out backstage at her mother’s Broadway plays. She married a screenwriter, Leonard Bradley. She recalls the time she and Len vacationed on the lake. One morning a neighbor came to say that their boat was loose. Casey knew Len often went fishing in the mornings. Len’s body was found on the lake shore.

After that, Casey started drinking. She showed up at the theater for a performance drunk and was photographed by the paparazzi and ended up in the tabloids.

Then Casey was sent to the lake by her mom to dry out.

Her mom sent her to the site of her husband’s tragic death? Nice!

Casey starts watching her neighbors with binoculars. She meets Boone Conrad, a handyman who works for the Mitchells.

Novelist Eli Williams, another neighbor, comes over to Casey’s house. He has known her since childhood and is bringing her more alcohol. He tells her that she and Boone have something in common: Boone’s wife died. 

Eli stays for dinner. Casey, as usual, drinks heavily.

After dinner Tom and Katherine arrive by boat with an expensive bottle of wine. Tom wants to thank Casey for rescuing Katherine from the lake. 

Casey thinks Katherine seems afraid of her husband. They all discuss a girl who vanished nearby a couple of years earlier,  Sue Ellen Stryker.  

Katherine reveals that she and Tom were renting a house there the summer that Sue Ellen disappeared. Eli tells some crazy stories about how the lake traps souls which can then enter the living.

In retrospect, I should have paid attention to this. Did you?

Just before the Royces leave Katherine passes out on the lawn and is very embarrassed about it.

Katherine texts Casey the next morning and comes across the lake to have coffee with her.  Katherine tells Casey that Tom needs her too much to agree to a divorce and that he would kill her before letting her leave him. After Katherine leaves, Casey wonders how Katherine got her phone number.

Later that day Casey is watching the Royces again. Casey is convinced that she sees Katherine discovering a secret about Tom on her computer.

Casey sees Tom and Katherine arguing and is sure that Katherine knows the Casey’s watching them. The fight between Tom and Catherine gets physical and she punches him. Casey calls and asks Katherine if everything is OK. Katherine says she’s fine.

Late that night Casey hears a scream from across the lake.

The present:

Casey asks her prisoner what he did to Katherine. First he says he doesn’t know, then refuses to tell her, and finally says that Katherine is in a place where no one will never find her. Casey threatens him with a knife.

Before:

Casey wakes up the next morning and remembers the fight and the phone call and the scream. She texts Katherine and invites her over for coffee. When Casey doesn’t hear back she calls Katherine.

Casey goes to the Royce house by dock to invite Catherine over for cocktails. Tom says Catherine went back to New York City because she didn’t want to be there for the coming storm. 

Casey tells Tom she heard a scream on their side of the lake just before dawn. She can see the mark on Tom’s face where Catherine hit him.

Casey texts Katherine again. She calls her cousin Marnie and asks Marnie to go to the Royces’ apartment building in New York and check on Katherine. But Katherine’s doorman said that she’s in Vermont.

Casey decides to use the Mixer app (made the company run by Tom) to check in on the people at the lake. She finds icons showing that Tom, Eli, and Boone are there. Also Katherine, or at least her phone.

Boone comes over to Casey’s and asks her if she also heard a scream the night before. They both agree that it sounded like Katherine screaming and discuss whether they should call the police. Boone tells her that his wife died after falling down the stairs. 

Casey and Boone watch Tom with the binoculars and see him unpacking a tarp, a rope, and a hacksaw. Boone says they better call the police. 

Detective Anson shows up. Casey and Boone tell her they heard a scream from the Royce’s side of the lake. 

Wilma accuses Casey of spying on the Royces. Casey shows Wilma that Katherine‘s phone shows up on the Mixer app as at the lake.

A storm is coming. Casey reads a news story saying that the Mixer app needs money and is seeking investments. In the middle of the night, Casey wakes up to see someone with a flashlight in the woods by the Royce house.

Casey walks across the lake. She sneaks into the Royce house to look for clues. She finds Katherine‘s phone hidden in her underwear drawer. Someone calls Katherine‘s phone and Casey takes a picture of the phone number. 

Next, Casey checks out the Royces’ computer. In their search history, she finds that someone was looking up missing women in Vermont. Also Casey’s tabloid story and the article about her husband‘s death. 

Casey also finds an article about a man poisoning his wife and decides that when she found Katherine near death in the lake she was being poisoned. She hears a car coming and gets out of the house.

Casey tells Boone about her clues, but he says that none of them are admissible.  She believes that Katherine was being poisoned, which explains why passed out on the lawn after they were drinking.

Detective Anson says she’s going to trust Casey with some information: she believes that Tom is responsible for the disappearances of three young women in the area and the Katherine wrote an anonymous note to the police saying that her husband was reponsible.

The present:

Casey asks her prisoner about the missing women and he admits to having something to do with it.

Before:

Boone and Casey decide to start investigating the missing women. Boone seems to think the girls’ disappearances have something to do with the Mixer app. 

Casey and Boone are flirting as they spy on the Royce house. They watch Detective Anson show up at Tom Royce‘s house to talk to him. 

The next morning, Boone comes to check on Casey. She decides to call the number that she saw on Katherine‘s phone and when she calls it, Boone‘s phone rings. Uh-oh!

The present:

We realize that the man that Casey has tied up is not Tom, because the prisoner asked her what she plans on doing with Tom.

Who is he? My thought at this point was Eli, and that Eli was the serial killer.

Boone says he was just calling Katherine because he was worried about her. Boone said they were close friends but not having an affair and that he didn’t do anything to her. Hmmmm…

Casey does an internet search on Boone Conrad and learns that Boone‘s wife wanted a divorce before she died.

Casey calls Detective Anson and asks if Boone is a suspect. Wilma tells her to stop snooping about everything. Casey drinks some more and begins to wonder if Katherine is actually alive.

The storm arrives. A bit anti-climactic after all that!

Here’s where things really take a turn for the weird!

Casey breaks into the Fitzgerald house and goes to the basement where she finds Katherine tied up. Tom arrives and says that the woman, who looks like Katherine, is not really Katherine.

In fact, an evil spirit entered Katherine‘s body when she almost drowned in the lake. Hey, Eli tried to warn us about this! 

Katherine says she’s Len, Casey’s husband. Whaaaatttt?? Len is the evil spirit?

Casey (and all of us) thinks they’re both “bat shit insane.”

Katherine/Len then accuses Casey of killing him/her. Well, then…

Who is Casey’s Prisoner in The House Across the Lake?

Casey is questioning the prisoner who tells her Tom is fine. Casey is convinced her prisoner murdered the three women.

Whoa – so the person Casey tied up is the body of Katherine whom Casey believes is possessed by the spirit of her dead husband Len, who is the serial killer.

WHAT????

Before:

Casey now tells us that  (whoops) she forgot mention to the reader that before she got drunk and wound up in the tabloids she discovered that her husband was a serial killer. 

Casey! That was important information.

When Casey and Len were at the lake last summer, she needed a lighter. Len said there was one in his fishing tackle box. In it, Casey found some locks of hair and the drivers licenses of missing women.

So … Len sent her there deliberately?

Shocked, Casey checked Len’s alibis for the time the women were killed. For each date he had a hotel reservation and never showed up.

Over dinner Casey drugged Len’s wine with antihistamines. Then she took him out into the boat and got him to admit to the murders and pushed him in the water. Bye, Len!

This is some Verity-level marital problem solving! I’ll link my spoiler post to that down below!

Katherine is screaming that Casey killed her/him.

So Katherine went swimming in the lake, and then Len’s soul entered Katherine’s body, just like Eli described in his crazy story? What happened to Katherine’s soul? Is it now in the lake?

After Casey dumped Len in the lake, she hid his serial killer trophies in the basement wall. Then she staged the scene of Len going fishing in the morning. After that, she got drunk and showed up at work and ended up in the tabloids. 

Casey reveals that SHE was the one who wrote the anonymous note that convinced Wilma that Tom was the killer.

Casey unties Katherine/Len but Tom shows back up at the Fitzgeralds. Katherine/Len and Casey trap Tom in the basement and flee back to Casey’s house where she ties Katherine/Len up again.

I can’t even re-read to figure out why that happens.

Wilma shows up.

What Was the Ending of the House Across the Lake

Present:

Len is telling Casey about the murders he committed, using his pet name for her, Cee. The power goes out. Casey finds a lighter in the house and realizes that Len sent her to the tackle box on purpose.

Yes, Casey, we knew that!

Katherine/Len tells her there might be a way to bring Katherine back. Casey goes to get another drink and Katherine/Len escapes. She finds him and Eli shows up and helps Casey tie Katherine/Len to a chair.

How many times has Len/Katherine been tied and untied at this point?

Casey realizes all the missing girls must be in the lake. She kisses Len and sucks his soul out of Katherine, Harry Potter dementor-style. What happens to poor Katherine at this point? She needs to go to the lake to get her soul back.

With Len’s soul now inside her, Casey jumps into the lake. She’s going to kill him once and for all. But why in the lake? That didn’t work before, so I think she should have come up with a more reliable option.

But somehow (?) Len’s soul gets poured back into the lake and Casey is ok. Was her soul in there with Len’s? And was Katherine’s soul somewhere in her body while Len’s was in there. I need WAY more explanation.

Casey, Tom and Katherine come up with a story for the police: after the fight with Tom, Katherine left her phone and took off for an off-the-grid hike to clear her head.

 Boone comes to tell Casey that he’s leaving town and that his wife actually killed herself by throwing herself down the stairs. He didn’t kill her!

Casey gives Wilma the drivers licenses and tells her that the girls are in the lake. Wilma guesses that Casey killed Len.

Now that this is all settled, Casey decides to stop drinking.

But wait! Casey suddenly realizes that Katherine said she was feeling weird BEFORE she nearly drowned. Tom really WAS poisoning her to get her money for his app.

Casey tries to call Katherine to warn her but Tom shows up and tells Casey she never should have meddled in all this. He needs Katherine dead. He’s going to kill Katherine and then Casey.

Well, maybe she should have kept Len’s soul inside her, because then HE could have killed Tom!

Tom chases Casey to the lake but she is able to smash him in the head with a wine  bottle. They both end up in the lake, under the water.

Casey thinks Tom is dead but he jerks back to life and calls her Cee, Len’s nickname for her.

No way, Len is inside Tom now. Len is the serial killer with nine lives.

Casey stabs Tom/Len in the neck with a piece of glass, killing him.

The police find the missing women in the lake.

The official story form the police: Tom was poisoning Katherine but stopped (and killed) by Casey who also found out her husband was a serial killer before his tragic accident drowning.

Casey stops drinking.

I could use a drink myself. Is Len dead now? Where is Katherine’s soul?

Spoiler Discussion

Wow. Where even to begin?

I assumed this would be a domestic thriller, so I didn’t pay that much attention to Eli’s story about souls drifting around in the lake, waiting to sneak inside someone’s body.

I also remember thinking it was weird that when Casey rescued Katherine, she was blue and cold and seemed dead, but I also shrugged that off.

Did you see the pararnormal stuff coming?

I don’t mind paranormals, but I felt that aspect of the book needed more development and explanation.

Why was Len’s the only soul who seemed to be able to sneak inside bodies? What about the souls of the women? Michele in comments explains that you have to die in the lake to have your soul hanging out in there. The women were killed elsewhere. Okay, that is one thing that makes sense. Relatively speaking! Thanks, Michele!

Had this happened before? It seems like yes, since Eli told a story about it.

Does no one else but Katherine swim in the lake? Or are there other people whose bodies have been taken over?

And what happened to Eli’s wife? I had my eye on Eli for the serial killer, but I was wrong.

On the one hand, I was genuinely surprised to find out that Casey had not kidnapped Tom, but Katherine, who was actually possessed by Len. But on the other hand, the only reason I didn’t figure that out was because it was SO WEIRD.

This book was giving me Lock Every Door vibes, because that Riley Sager book also took a super-weird turn at the end.

PLEASE leave a comment. Don’t leave me with all these questions. I need to know what you thought!