This mystery follows DI Alex McKenna as she, her son, and boyfriend, all take off for a weekend away. But there's a problem with the reservation and the only other place in the area with a vacancy is The Loch House. When they arrive just ahead of a snowstorm, The Loch House owners greet them with the rules: no smoking, no loud music, no phones, and no leaving their rooms after 9pm. Over dinner with the other guests, Alex learns about the grisly history of The Loch House and starts to wonder if they'll be able to leave or if they will become the next mark on its bloody history.
This read had a lot of interesting elements, but they didn't quite come together for me as well as I would hope. We have a great cast of weird characters, a detective MC, and an isolated setting. This should have been a slam dunk. Unfortunately, I didn't love some of the narrative structure choices which really knocked the whole reading experience down a bit for me. Obviously mileage may vary with my complaints, but the parts that did work for me were great so it all evened out to just an okay read at the end.
I did not enjoy the true crime podcast element at all. I'm not a big true crime enthusiast on a normal day, but I have enjoyed books in the past that use these podcasts as framing devices for the plot. In this case, it felt very removed from the main plot. The podcast hosts were not characters at The Loch House nor was anyone listening to the podcast. Instead, it felt like an easy way for the reader to be told background information or to flesh out information in a way that wasn't just having the characters give pages of exposition. Since it was so removed from the main plot, every time we switched to a podcast transcript, it took me out of the story. I do think we needed the information in the podcast for the ending reveals to really come out, but I wanted it to be integrated into the story in a more natural fashion.
The setting was by far and away my favorite part of this read. Mitchell wastes no time getting us to The Loch House but still manages to give us so much atmosphere to really set the scene. The descriptions were absolutely wonderful and I loved how they really toed the line of being quirky but also sinister. As the narrative goes on, we get to revisit similar areas or pieces of the setting but they come across as completely different because of the plot reveals. Mitchell really uses the isolated setting to her advantage and it often feels like a separate entity that our characters are battling against.
The cast of characters - especially the strange owners of The Loch House, were such a fun group to follow for this read. We do get both Alex and her boyfriend's POVs, but I wish this was more of a full-cast of POVs type of book. These characters were so interesting and the right amount of over the top that I wanted to spend more time with each of them. I didn't love our MC Alex as much as I was expecting too. I found her characterization was a bit off for me and she seemed to oscillate between two main personalities, neither of which I felt particularly interested in. There is a bit of domestic suspense with her relationship, but even that felt like it wasn't used to bring as much tension to this read as I was expecting. There was significant domestic violence in her past that is brought up but it didn't really add anything to the character for me as is.
The ending reveal was interesting, but the way it played out on page felt like it really deflated the moment. We do find out what is going on with The Loch House and why everyone there is so strange and I did like the reveal from a plot perspective. However, when it comes to the big finale scene, we skip over seeing the action on page and instead have like a 30 min fast forward moment only for our characters to then flash backwards and recount the events that happened. It felt really strange to read, especially for the moment where all this building tension was boiling over.
Overall, this was an okay read that I enjoyed some parts of but not all parts. I felt like this just fell into the "not for me" category and I didn't have any significant plot holes or other complaints.
Thanks to NetGalley and Embla Books for the ARC. Expected publication date is April 9, 2024
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