The Boy By the Lake: A Small Town Riveting Kidnapping Mystery Thriller

By: Marie Wilkens

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When Phillip is abducted, his family's hidden secrets and the town's dark mysteries come to light. Josie must confront the prejudices of their small community and uncover the sinister truth to bring her son home. A tale of courage and resilience, this story dives deep into family bonds and the shadows lurking in a seemingly peaceful town.

Poorly written and narrated

My first & last virtual voice book. Many times repetitive. Maybe written by a virtual voice? It was strange.

Not The Best Story

This author is repetitive in her story writing. All the ones I have listened to by her involve kidnapping boys, mothers that are absolute witches, arrogant to everyone, knowing more than the professionals, all have this wonder woman female friend, they do everything outside the law. Why spouses would stay with them after the way the female character treats them is crazy. The author writes the spouses up as real idiots, and the local police/law enforcement are depicted as evil in all of her books that I have listened to. I would call these fantasy stories, and they really put a disrespectful light on women.

Not bad not good

Narration at times sounded like AI with poor inflection conveying the text but was overall fine. Story spent almost as much time setting up the characters as it did focusing on the issue. It took a long to get into it and I felt like it was relatively cheap. While I know books don’t have to be realistic, the fact that the amber alert didn’t immediately involve state authorities and mutual aid from other agencies was hardly believable even with a massive corruption issue.

The AI was a bit flat.

I loved the story. I like strong female characters. The Mom, Josie is amazing! She and her best friend made a great team and a great read.

Maybe a decent narrator could have saved it?

Just awful. Repetitive sentences were mind numbing. Could have easily been a short story, so many wasteful words. And the emotionless AI narrative made it absolutely painful to listen to. Bummer!