Midnight in Soap Lake by Matthew Sullivan
Read By Kristen Sieh
Publication Date: April 15, 2025
Summary from NetGalley:
A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake.
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington, for her husband’s research, she expected old-growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the world’s largest lava lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town haunted by its own urban legends.
When a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding the death of his mother, Esme. In Abigail’s search for answers, she enlists the help of a quirky cast of friends to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study. But as she gets closer to the truth, her own life may be in danger, too.
A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters and puzzle-hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.
ARC provided by Harlequin Audio via NetGalley for an honest review.
Confession:
I really enjoyed this murder mystery set in a real small town in Washington. I have never been to Soap Lake but I have heard about it. It is in a somewhat remote area of the state, but it really sounds like a lovely place to visit.
Kristen Sieh does an excellent job narrating this murder mystery. She is able to capture both narrators voices and make them sound like different individuals. She also does a nice job with the emotions of each characters. She certainly brought this story to life and made it a wonderful listening experience.
The story is told by two women in two different time periods. The first is Abigail, who is the woman who finds the body in the present. I really liked Abigail and really appreciated her strength and her growth as a person in this story. The other part of the story is told from Esme’s point of view and starts back when she was a young girl and comes up to the present and to her death. It was very interesting seeing her grow up and the significance of the events in her life and how they shaped her. She not only had a rough life growing up in a small town, but she had many tragedies in her short life.
The author does a great job of capturing small town life and I loved all of the quirky people that populate this story. There were lots of suspects in this story and lots of people that both woman befriend. I loved the recovering addict that Abigail becomes friends with, I think her name is Sophie, who was also struggling with finding her place in the world. Esme brother was also a character that stood out to me as well done and someone I really felt for.
When most people think of Washington state they think that it is all green and rainy and pretty much looks like Seattle. That is only a very small part of the state. Once you get past the mountains into Eastern Washington you are in high desert territory where it it hot and dry in the summer and cold and dry in the winter. Not the most hospitable place to grow apples, but somehow they do. The author did an excellent job of conveying what it is like to live and work in this part of the world. I could feel the dry heat and how tired and irritable it made everyone. This setting also played into the story as the real life Soap Lake was an important part of the murder and the mystery surrounding it. I learned alot about Soap Lake and what makes it so special, but all of this information was sprinkled throughout the story so it was never boring.
There is a bit of creepiness built into this story in the form of the local legend of Treetop. He is a sort of boogeyman that parents use to scare their kids and is sort of the town’s mascot. His presence in the story felt supernatural at the start of the story, but the real life story behind this legend is scarier than anyone realizes. I really liked how the author wove this aspect of the mystery together.
The writing was wonderfully descriptive, the characters and dialogue well done. The pacing was pretty steady throughout and only got a little bogged down in the middle. The ending and the big reveal of what was really going on was a bit mind boggling and was even more convoluted than I had imagined.
A well done small town mystery with a dash of creepiness that I highly recommend.
Confessions of a Serial Reader 
This sounds like an excellent. read. I love books that have a real life setting and the dual timeline sounds really interesting .
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It was good and Soap Lake is now on the list of places I want to visit.
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