Orphanage by the Lake

Hazel wants a new life.

She’s thirty years old, single, and her private investigation business is months away from folding.

Her luck takes a turn when Madeline Hemsley, a mysterious socialite, pays Hazel a visit with an offer too enticing to resist. An orphan girl has disappeared from a children’s home—The Orphanage By The Lake, as the locals call it—and Madeline wants Hazel to find her.

At first glance, it appears to be a standard runaway case, but as Hazel plunges into the investigation, she finds signs of something more: unexplained blood stains, cryptic symbols, sinister figures shadowing her every move. The more she digs, the more she realizes that The Orphanage By The Lake holds terrifying secrets, and even worse…

…so does Madeline.

• The Orphanage by the Lake by Daniel G. Miller
• Series: Orphanage by the Lake #1
• Also in this series: The Red Letter (release date July 2025)
• Published by: Independently on April 23, 2024
• Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense
• Pages: 300
• Dates Read: 5.4.25 – 5.9.25 (5 days)
• Format: eBook
• Add to Goodreads
• Purchase on Amazon
• ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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I’d seen this book pop up on a few of my social media feeds, so I knew it was a popular book. All you have to say is “For Freida McFadden fans,” and I’m pretty much sold on it already! One of the Facebook groups that I participate in also picked it as their monthly read-along, but the local library didn’t have any copies available at the time. It wasn’t released in paperback or eBook until March of this year. One of the great things about being able to borrow from your local library is submitting a request for a book they don’t have yet, and if they obtain any copies of it, you will be notified. Which is exactly what I did for this book. As soon as I got the notification, I snagged it right up!!

I understand why the book is widely popular. It has all the great things that a thriller/mystery should have. There is a solid plot, with some twists here and there. But I gotta say…they were pretty lame, and none of them were totally jaw-dropping like you’d expect from a thriller/mystery. The author definitely uses a formula for the book, and therefore, it made it kind of predictable to me. He leads you down a few rabbit holes, trying to get you to second-guess their motives, then turns out to be wrong. However, when the two perpetrators do finally show up in the book, I immediately suspected them. They were entirely WAY too suspicious for me. To find out that I was 100% right was disappointing. I was even able to predict why the girls were going missing. I found the FMC very likable and relatable. She had a little bit of sass to her, and I always love a strong female character that doesn’t take shit from people.

You know how people say, “That woman’s got a body that won’t quit”? Well, mine does, and it quit right after I graduated from college. It’s not that I’m unattractive. It’s just that when you used to be better, everything about you feels worse. – pg. 22

For all of these reasons, that’s why I gave the book only 4 stars. I still found it quite entertaining and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys thrillers or mysteries. It had no problem holding my interest, and the author did a great job of using some cliff-hangers at the end of chapters, so you just had to find out what was going to happen next. It only took me 5 days to read it, and that’s largely because I had to work 3 of those 5 days and didn’t have much free time. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series and can’t wait to find out what Hazel’s been up to.