So I'm giving this one 3 stars simply because I finished it. I think the summary reads like a completely different story than the actual book itself. The book basically is Maddy moving to a house the town avoids because they think it's haunted, because somone died in the lake years ago, and a serial killer uses it as his burial grounds. When we get the serial killer's point of view it's literally him upset that Maddy is there and might uncover his secret. The dead bride and Maddy feeling like she's been there before are not even related to the plot at all. I think the author tried to put too much into this with various plots, to mask who the killer could be, but in that everything got lost.

It's pretty evident before the reveal who the killer is. I think the story would have been much more interesting if the author had chosen to focus on the drowned bride aspect of the story instead of having a serial killer element. I really thought that was the direction we were going after all. The book's conclusion doesn't solve anything and makes no sense. I spent the entire time liking hardly any of these characters, and none of them experienced any growth or development by the end of the story... a story which just abruptly comes to a close with lots of unanswered questions. It just felt like every action in this book was to help give the character a reason to behave a specific way in the next chapter. I feel like the author had picked one angle or even used less character's the story could have been a bit better. It just felt rushed. We got no reasoning for why the killer did what he did. It was just disappointing. ( )