A secluded Vermont lake, a disgraced actress, and a glittering couple across the water set the stage for Riley Sager’s blend of voyeuristic suspense and uncanny hauntings. As strange sightings ripple across Lake Greene, hidden histories and unreliable perceptions collide, twisting neighbors into suspects and loved ones into threats. This cast moves through a world where grief, addiction, and the supernatural blur the line between reality and nightmare.
Main Characters
Casey Fletcher
Bold, barbed, and broken, Casey Fletcher is the novel’s protagonist and unreliable narrator, a once-famous actress exiled to her family’s lake house after a public meltdown. Drunk on both bourbon and curiosity, her compulsive watching of the house across the water—an act of voyeurism born from isolation—pulls her into a mystery that mirrors her own spiraling grief. Haunted by her husband Len’s death and numbing herself to its trauma, she sees danger everywhere, especially in Tom Royce’s chilly control over Katherine. As her investigation deepens, Casey uncovers the rot beneath the Royces’ facade and the far darker truth about Len, forcing her to confront her guilt and need for atonement. Through alliances with Boone and Eli—and a final, near-fatal act to save Katherine—she claws her way toward clarity, accountability, and the possibility of sobriety.
Katherine Royce
A luminous ex-supermodel with a soft voice and steady poise, Katherine Royce first appears as the neighbor in peril—woozy, secretive, and seemingly trapped in an unhappy marriage. Her quick friendship with Casey humanizes the woman behind the camera lens, even as fainting spells and strange behavior deepen the aura of vulnerability. When a major twist reveals her body as a vessel for Len’s vengeful spirit, Katherine becomes the battleground where the novel’s supernatural possession collides with domestic suspense. Her marriage to Tom curdles from glossy perfection to predation, while her bond with Casey evolves into genuine solidarity; once freed from Len, she and Casey embrace the dark joke of being “Merry Widows.” Katherine’s arc reframes the story’s central question—from “Is Tom a killer?” to “What if the danger wears a beloved face?”
Tom Royce
Polished, wealthy, and unnervingly controlled, Tom Royce is the book’s human villain and a cunning red herring. His clipped evasions, lies to police, and suspicious purchases make him an obvious suspect in Katherine’s disappearance, only for the possession twist to momentarily recast him as a man frantically managing the unthinkable. The mask slips in the end: Tom has been poisoning his wife for money, and he’s willing to kill Casey to make the problem disappear. His dynamic with Katherine exposes a marriage built on calculation rather than love, while his clash with Casey escalates from icy stonewalling to lethal violence. Ultimately, Tom’s death at Casey’s hands confirms that the initial instinct about him was right—even if the reason was worse than imagined.
Len (Leonard Bradley)
Introduced as a sainted memory, Len Bradley is the book’s true nightmare—the charming husband whose drowning shattered Casey, later revealed as a secret serial killer and, finally, a malevolent spirit. In life, he weaponized charisma; in death, he lingers in Lake Greene, able to possess the bodies of the drowned and torment those who loved him most. His return inside Katherine turns the domestic thriller into a supernatural siege, forcing Casey to face the lies of her marriage and the terrible choice she made to end it. Len personifies the novel’s obsession with deception and misleading appearances, transforming from ideal spouse to predator to unquiet horror. His defeat is both an exorcism and a reckoning, freeing Katherine and allowing Casey to begin forgiving herself.
Supporting Characters
Boone Conrad
Handsome, steady, and watchful, Boone Conrad is the neighbor handyman whose past as a cop—and as a recovering alcoholic widower—mirrors Casey’s pain while modeling a way through it. Initially a plausible suspect due to a secret friendship with Katherine and the shadow of his wife’s death, he ultimately proves himself a loyal partner in the investigation and in life. Boone’s bond with Casey, his ties to Wilma, and his measured instincts keep the story grounded when the supernatural intrudes.
Wilma Anson
A pragmatic state police detective, Wilma Anson is the novel’s reality check—skeptical of Casey’s theories, protective of Boone, and quietly pursuing a years-long investigation into missing women. She treats the case methodically even as the evidence skews bizarre, and she becomes a crucial ally once Boone corroborates key events. In the end, Wilma bends just enough to help the right people survive the truth.
Eli Williams
The lake’s year-round resident and a kindly novelist, Eli Williams supplies both neighborly caretaking and ominous lore about waters that hold onto the dead. As Casey’s confidant, he believes her when no one else will, ferrying supplies, perspective, and courage when the investigation turns deadly. His presence threads the everyday with the eerie, foreshadowing the reality of the haunting.
Minor Characters
- Marnie: Casey’s cousin, best friend, and manager, whose calls from the outside world offer pragmatic affection and persistent warnings against self-destruction.
- Lolly Fletcher: Casey’s Broadway-legend mother; their strained relationship fuels Casey’s exile to the lake house and underscores the cost of public image.
- The Missing Women (Megan Keene, Toni Burnett, Sue Ellen Stryker): Len’s victims, whose disappearances anchor Wilma’s long investigation and sharpen Casey’s resolve to expose the truth.
- Maria Conrad: Boone’s late wife, whose suicide—kept private to protect her family—once made Boone a suspect and ultimately pushed him out of the police force.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
At the heart of the novel is a tense triangle across the water: Casey watches Katherine and Tom—first out of morbid curiosity, then out of urgent concern—until she is tangled in their marriage. Casey’s fixation on Katherine becomes an imperfect lifeline; she wants to save the woman she pulled from the lake, even as Tom’s hostility and secrecy make him look like a killer. When Len’s spirit commandeers Katherine’s body, the triangle collapses into a confrontation between past and present: a widow battling the man she loved inside the friend she’s sworn to protect.
Boone enters as both mirror and anchor for Casey, sharing her history with addiction and loss while offering steadiness she struggles to muster. Their partnership evolves from wary collaboration to romance, balancing Casey’s impulsiveness with Boone’s trained caution. Wilma functions as the institutional counterweight—skeptical but fair—whose loyalty to Boone and commitment to justice keep the investigation from spinning into pure obsession.
Around them, informal factions form and fracture. The Royces project perfection while hiding rot; the “neighbors” (Casey, Boone, Eli) build a fragile alliance to uncover it. The lake itself becomes a character, knitting the dead to the living and forcing everyone—Tom out of fear, Eli out of lore, Casey out of necessity—to accept that the horrors here are both human and otherworldly. In the end, loyalty, not certainty, decides who stands together: Casey and Boone choose each other, Eli stands with them, Wilma shields the survivors, and Katherine, finally herself, reclaims her life beside a friend who refused to look away.