THE WOMAN BY THE LAKE - Kristen Ashley

4.5 stars

The third mystery romance from Kristen Ashley's Misted Pines series, and my personal favorite?? This was so adorable, sweet, and engrossing.

Characters: ★★★★★
Setting: ★★★★
Plot: ★★★ 1/2
Writing style: It's a KA book, so keep this in mind as her writing style is Very Dramatic and she loves a good one-sentence paragraph (like, REALLY loves it)

New to the Misted Pines series? I recommend readers start with book one, The Girl in the Mist, because this series of interconnected standalone romance pairings is best enjoyed in order.

My review of The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines #1) here.
My review of The Girl in the Woods (Misted Pines #2) here.

Nadia Williams is trying to recuperate and figure out her life in the wake of tragedy. When the cozy cabin shows up on her online search in the quaint small town of Misted Pines, Nadia has a gut feeling that it's the right spot for her. She abandons her high-rolling Chicago life for the woods.

Riggs, a single-dad bachelor who works high-end craftsmanship commissions, lives on the small lake that Nadia's rental cabin sits on. He's a good time guy, a loner who's never wanted for temporary female company, and he's not pressed about Nadia living down the way.

After all, no one stays in that cabin for long.

But this good time guy and this healing woman with deep secrets are about to fall into each other in a big way, as Misted Pines is becoming known for one thing in particular: murder and drama.

There's a legend of ghosts on Nadia's cabin property, with a long history of renters being run off the property in the middle of the night. People died on that land violently and the community has never fully recovered. Somebody has secrets to keep, and at the heart of the mystery is Nadia's small cabin property.

Riggs and Nadia are caught right in the middle of it. With an attraction between them, individual baggage behind them, and an uncertain perpetrator in the woods, these two find that sometimes fate has a path in store for you—whether you're ready for it or not.

The Woman by the Lake was a romance novel that took me partially by surprise. Which is probably on me, because I knew I was a huge KA stan and I knew that I had fallen in love, slowly, with this series. Why I was totally blown away with my love for this one in particular, who knows.

For frequent KA readers like myself, the Misted Pines series is very unique. Kristen Ashley is known for her romantic and plot-based drama, her usually metropolitan settings, and her very large ensemble casts. Misted Pines has very little of those tropes—it's a minimal cast (single digits!), the drama is centered squarely on the plot and not the romance element, and it's so far into small town territory that it's in the literal woods.

So that means all the "fluff" is scraped away from these stories, leaving the reader with what is at the core of all great KA tales: the romance itself and the character dynamics.

If you're a romance reader, odds are that you love the character dynamics. That's what those stories are often about—the feel goods, the journey to love, the dialogue, the angst between the two leads, and the emotional core of the tales. (And for the smut readers, some seriously good times in the sheets too.)

The Woman by the Lake shines with its romance dynamics and the sweet love story at its core. It's bottled up feel good, and I loved every second of it.

Thank you to the author for my copy in exchange for an honest review.