When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.
But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather's words.
Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.
The Paynes family has always had good fortune and better luck than most people. Until that day when Samantha Payne saw her father burying a dead child. Samantha became an outcast as the child of a murderer. Her grandfather cut her off for having told what she saw her father do. After being estranged from him for so many years, she never expected to be remembered in his will. She is shocked to learn that she has inherited the most valuable part of his estate. All of the lakefront land, where the old family cottages still stand, is worth millions of dollars. But of course, there is a catch: Gramps has placed a stipulation in the will that states she must live on the property for a full month because he claims he wants her to remember what really happened to the murdered boy.
As a child, Sam was warned to stay away from the lake at night. She was told nighttime swimming was forbidden and that even dipping your toes in the water's edge was dangerous after dark due to rip currents and undertow. She was too young to question how a lake would have giant waves to sweep her away as if it were an ocean. She was told when she awakened to the sound of hoof beats at night that she was only dreaming.
The author weaves a chilling story of folklore, legend, domestic drama, and supernatural horror in an isolated woodsy setting where people have a tendency to go missing. There is just the right amount of tension between Sam, her fiercely protective aunt Gail, and the reluctant caretaker, Ben. The spooky occurrences begin almost immediately upon Sam and Gail's arrival at the oddly preserved family cottage and the eerie atmosphere is deliciously dark.
5 out of 5 stars.
My thanks to St. Martin's Press for the advance copy through Netgalley.
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