Little Miss Bookmark: Book Review: Beneath the Lake by Casi McLean

Reeling from her boyfriend’s indiscretions at a party, Lacey Montgomery escapes into the throes of a torrential storm. Her car spins out of control and hurtles into the depths of an icy, black lake. She awakens in the arms of a handsome stranger, in a place she’s never heard of—thirty-four years before she was born.

Bobby Reynolds is smitten the moment the storm-ravaged woman opens her eyes. Learning the truth about her origin does nothing to stop the passion taking root in his heart and leaves him torn between finding a way to return Lacey to her time and convincing her stay with him.

Will the couple be able to discover the key to a mysterious portal before time rips them apart? Or will their spirits wander forever through a ghost town buried beneath the lake?

This is the first book that I've read by Casi McLean and I believe the first that I've read about time-travel. I'm thinking that I'm wrong about that though ...

Before sitting down to write this review, I really scoured other reviews to make sure that I wouldn't leak a secret that would really ruin the book for someone. This was not a fun task ... I absolutely hate reading what someone else thinks of a book right before I write my review, I don't want their thoughts to sway what I think, you know? Anyhow ... I ended up writing down my thoughts and then taking out spoilers. Worked out pretty well, I think.

Okay ... it's no secret that this book is about time-travel. It's all over Goodreads and it's not something that everyone is keeping quiet. I'm a-okay with the idea of time-travel. Buuuutttt ... when the story jumps from 2011 to 2012 to 1949 ... it's a bit much. I almost got whiplash just trying to keep up with the times. The switching was so confusing at the beginning of the book that I almost put the book down a few times. It just really stole something from the book. I wasn't able to completely immerse myself into the story because I never felt like I was on steady ground because of the disorienting time changes.

The meat of the story was good but then again, there was just so much going on that I couldn't fully enjoy the crux of the whole book. For it to read as slow as it did, you wouldn't think that there would be too many things going on. There was a lot of inner dialogue and explanations that were a little too lengthy for my taste.

When you mash the POV flip-flops, the time changes, the slowness and the amount of plots and sub-plots going on ... it just didn't end up well for me. I wanted to like it and I did at some points of the story but those times weren't frequent enough to redeem the entire book for me.

Also, at the end, there were quite a few typos. They came out of nowhere! There weren't any at the beginning of the book and then I'm on my last few pages and BAM! Typos. It was so weird and almost as if someone was editing and then chunked a deuce, said f-it and walked away ten pages from the end. Very strange.

Not the book for me but it's a sweet story. Quite a few people have enjoyed it ... apparently, I'm the mutant at table 9 on this one.

* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *

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