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The Cry of the Lake Kindle Edition
- Kindle
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A six-year-old girl sneaks out of bed to capture a mermaid but instead discovers a dead body. Terrified and unable to make sense of what she sees, she locks the vision deep inside her mind.
Ten years later, Lily is introduced to the charismatic Flo and they become best friends. But Lily is guilt-ridden – she is hiding a terrible secret which has the power to destroy both their lives.
When Flo’s father is accused of killing a schoolgirl, the horrors of Lily’s past come bubbling to the surface. Lily knows that, whatever the consequences, she has to make things right. She must go back to the events of her childhood and face what happened at the boat house all those years ago.
Can Lily and Flo discover what is hiding in the murky waters of the lake before the killer strikes again?
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJuly 21, 2020
- File size465 KB
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Editorial Reviews
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Product details
- ASIN : B088PWPMPT
- Publisher : darkstroke books (July 21, 2020)
- Publication date : July 21, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 465 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 263 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #968,454 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #849 in Ghost Suspense
- #995 in Kidnapping Crime Fiction
- #1,035 in British Horror Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Charlie signed with Darkstroke Books in May 2020 and The Cry of the Lake is her debut novel.
Charlie lives in the UK and is very much a morning person. In fact, she likes nothing more than committing a fictional murder before her first coffee of the day. She studied Theology at Worcester College, Oxford and now lives in a Leicestershire village with her husband, three teenagers, golden retriever and tortoise.
She is currently working on her next novel 'The Serpent Noose'. A dead body is found down a sealed up priest hole within the grounds of Collyhurst Convent; a sixth-form boarding school for girls run by nuns. It is the charred remains of Mother Agnes who went missing ten years ago and is found with an emerald cross stuffed inside her jaw. DS Cally Simmonds is sent in, undercover, to investigate. She must puzzle her way through well-dressed scarecrows, bonfires, emerald crosses and fallen oak trees before she breaks the wall of silence and discovers exactly why Agnes was killed and by whom.
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Top reviews from the United States
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I highly recommend this book if you can stick with it and try to ignore the fact that you are sure you have no clue what's going on. It will all become clear and it will be worth the momentary confusion.
There is so much to admire here from the tautly paced plotlines to the evocative details to the excellent writing. But what I am most drawn to (and in awe of) is the stellar characterization. I love the two teen heroines and their lingo feels so true to life for that age group. Also, in the end, I actually felt sympathy for the unbelievably horrid monster of a villain/murderess. To me, this is a true sign that Tyler has done her job as a writer in being able to evoke that. Five stars! (Wish I could give it six!)
There are only a few characters.....all cleverly intertwined. The book is fresh and entertaining. There was a short walk down a supernatural path. A little out there for some, I’m sure, but this IS a thriller and I thought it was a nice twist in the plot. My recommendation would be READ THIS BOOK, but pay attention and slow down if you get confused. Make sure you understand what you just read before moving on (some things are subtle). The ending was cool!
Top reviews from other countries

But you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right? Bear with me and I’ll try to explain. The cover has a dark blue background with a floral pattern in a lighter shade of forget-me-not blue snaking across it, a bit like vintage wallpaper. It’s the kind of cover I’ve seen on books like The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry; a cover that says to me ‘literary fiction’. But take a closer look. I have terrible eyesight and didn’t see it at first but, lurking beneath the chintzy weave is something far more chilling: a human skull. Now I know I can expect a thriller (which The Cry of the Lake most definitely is) and that it will be written in a literary style. That could be a heavy burden of expectation for a book. But Tyler pulls it off with great finesse.
The Cry of the Lake grips from the first page where we meet Grace and Lily, two of the main characters, calmly wrapping up a corpse with packing tape before dumping it in the lake. Story questions race through your mind. Who are these people, why are they doing this, who is the victim and why did they kill her? And why is the author revealing so much information so soon? But this is a psychological thriller and the mystery is not so much about the ‘who dunnit’ as the ‘why dunnit’ and this provides plenty of page-turning reading.
In The Cry of the Lake very little is above the surface. All is murky and buried in the past and the novel explores themes of identity and reinvention, notably the identities of central characters, Grace and Lily, which are especially slippery. The third narrator, Flo, is Lily’s school friend and, when the story opens, Grace is in a relationship with her father, Tom.
Seventeen year old, Lily is an elective mute and, while her condition is rooted in past trauma, it gives her a small degree of protection because no one is sure how much she understands about what’s really going on. There are some dark and twisted incidents in the opening chapters as we explore the complexities in the relationship between Grace, Lily, Flo and Tom, and the local police officer, Annie, who just happens to be Tom’s ex-girlfriend. Prepare for some graphic details and gross, fishy smells. Just as you think you know where the plot is headed, a new set of characters from the past, notably the sinister Uncle Frank, are introduced. As the past is uncovered, the pace picks up and violence erupts. No one is safe.
The Cry of the Lake is a well-written, twisty debut with some unusual themes and a great sense of place. Highly recommended.

It was really baffling at the beginning as well, trying to figure out who Grace was and how she is related to Lily.....nothing is very clear and just more puzzles are thrown in without really explaining the last one. If I'd been enjoying it more no doubt all would become clear, but I was annoyed that it wasn't sticking to the original description deep-down. I did wonder about the chlorine that was mentioned a couple of times as well.......odd. As was the strange aside when Tom and Grace stayed together one night....all little remarks that just confused the reader too much, I thought. I reached the juncture where some cutting was involved and I'd seen enough......it was all a bit too bonkers for my tastes.
She also has a problem using punctuation and this always manages to get my back up. I think may authors these days consider it an unimportant addition, since so many people choose to communicate in text-speak, but this is the wrong assumption to be making.
There are missed question marks, view-master and facebook should be capitalised, and many, many times she refuses to use commas !! As in this sentence, "You do the champers, darling and Lily you hand out the plates please" which loses a couple, or "Sandwich anyone ?" also needing one.
I'll be interested now to read what other people think of this book now I've completed my review.

Lily is a young girl who chooses not to speak and Grace is her 'mum', none of them are who they say they are. The book opens with a murder and we clearly know who has done it, but the question is why? As the story unfolds, the treachery is unbearable as the aim is to frame an innocent man for murder. The secrets and lies that come to light are like a spiders web, all spun together and make one extremely large and creepy, horrific story.
I really loved Lily, I felt her every pain and sorrow.She is harangued by Grace at every turn and Grace is such an unlikeable woman, selfish, cold and jealous. I wanted to sweep Lily up and bring her home away from the cruelty of Grace. Even knowing Grace's dark, sad past didn't raise too much empathy within me, as I was horrified at the things she took out on Lily. That takes a cold, hard person, as you will discover when you read the book.
A fast paced story beautifully told with heartbeaking detail. A book I really devoured.
Huge thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for allowing me to be a part of this haunting novels Blog Tour today.

The narrative is powered by three different perspectives: Grace, Lilly and Flo. Grace and Lilly are sisters, but for reason which are revealed later in the story they pass themselves off as mother and daughter. It is primarily Grace who adopts this new, alien to her psyche personality to ensnare Tom, a man the two sisters seem to have an unfinished business with. He is the father of Flo, the third narrator.
At the outset, you cannot comprehend why anyone would want to destroy such a nice, kind man as Tom. You instinctively loathe the sinister, duplicitous - and murderous - impostors who have snaked their way into his and Flo's perfect family life. Lilly is the weaker of the two, more likely to crumble under pressure. Grace seems unstoppable in her mission of hatred. Slowly, people from their past enter the scene and revelations are made to shed some light on her motives. At times, it makes for a disturbing reading: abuse, self-harm feature among other difficult themes. A great read.
