Short Story Review - The Lake by Tananarive Due (3/5 stars)

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Horror
Size: 125 KB
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: August 17, 2011
ASIN: B005BOP5T6
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Free for Kindle
Rating: 3/5 stars

This is a short story that I picked up free for Kindle. This story is one of the stories released in The Monster's Corner Anthology. It was a decent story, fairly short, but engaging enough.

Abbie LaFleur has just moved to Graceville from Boston to start her life anew. Unfortunately for her nobody tells Abbie not to swim in the lake behind her house. As Abbies goes for increasingly lengthy nighttime swims she begins to develop strange side effects from her swimming that end up turning her into something monstrous.

This was a pretty short story and while it wasn't anything super special, it was kind of creepy and engaging enough.

Abbie is your typical "I want to start my life anew" type of woman. She's just gotten out of a bad relationship and is starting a new job in hopes of remodeling her life. As a result of her nighttime swims her live does get completely remodeled, just not in the way she was hoping.

The story is well written and it was easy to imagine the setting. Abbie was a very realistic character and easy to engage with. I thought the story itself was a bit predictable...as soon as Abbie started getting a bit fishy I totally knew how things were going to end.

Overall if you like creepy stories about monsters this is a decent read. It is well written, if a bit predictable. It never really gets scary but was a fun quick read. I didn't like it enough to pick up more by this author, but I enjoyed it well enough for what it was.