Monday Book Review: Asylum Lake by R.A. Evans

From the Amazon Synopsis:

Memories are like water. Some float on the surface bright and clear. Some lie deeper – blurred by time and distance. Others rest far from the light in the depths of the darkness. These memories are best forgotten. At the bottom of Asylum Lake the unremembered are growing restless.

After the sudden death of his wife, Brady Tanner moves to the small Michigan town where he spent summers as a youth. But he soon learns that small towns can be stained by memories…and secrets too. As Brady is drawn into unearthing the secrets of the town and of the abandoned psychiatric hospital on the shores of Asylum Lake, he discovers a new love in an old friend. But there is an evil presence lurking beneath the waters of the lake. What is the source of this evil–and what does it want with Brady Tanner?

My Review:

Being a paranormal/supernatural buff myself, I was intrigued about Asylum Lake and since it was free, I downloaded it Friday and read it Saturday night.  Right away, R.A. Evans caught my attention with the creepy trial of a young man convicted of mass murder of a family, then a cutaway of another man returning home to his parents town in the northern midwest. Slowly and methodically, Evans weaves and spins the tales, seemingly separately, until they smash and crash together in one ultimate showdown. Only to need another book to finish the tale.

Reading Asylum Lake, one must suspend a certain amount of belief in physics and ‘life’ to believe the tale. The book  is well-written, the characters are two and sometimes three dimensional in their lives and interactions with others.  The storylines are well thought out but get convoluted, dry and misleading somewhere in the middle.  I could not follow the trail that Evans was leading, not with breadcrumbs, but sesame seeds.  There was a lot of wordplay involved and you had to really pay attention to where the seeds were going. I had to skim a lot to keep my attention on the book.

Evans finished well enough, stretching the believability of personhood, individuality and likeability of characters to bring the story to a close and onto the next one. Nonetheless, i’ll be reading the next book in the series, Grave Undertakings.