Edit: the more I think about this book the more frustrated I get about how anticlimactic it was. I've lowered my rating from a 3 to a 2.5.

This, for me, was pretty mid. It has all the boxes ticked to make me anxious:
✅️ underwater 
✅️ claustrophobia 
✅️ dark spaces 
✅️ creepy basement
✅️ haunted house

But the story was just not there for me. When they did finally get to the big spook it was pretty anticlimactic. 

The narrative style didn't do it for me, I think because of all the headhopping. I didnt get to know enough about the characters to actually care about them, so it was more about the house. 

There are some interesting themes and the house feels like a metaphor for that rush of first love you get as a teen. Which is maybe heavy handed? 

The story wasn't awful, and I didn't hate it, but there wasn't anything about it that I feel like was missing in my life. There was a lot more romance than I was expecting and it felt like an afterthought to the story itself. But I would have found it more enjoyable if they were just friends hanging out.

I dont like their physical intimacy seemed to wake up the cosmic horror part of the house

especially since they're kids. If the romance needed to be a part of it, why couldn't they have just been 18 or 19?

I'm sad. I really wanted to like this. And I liked the beginning and I loved the idea, setting and the ending. But the rest? Eeeeh. I loved the idea of exploring a house underwater... but this was done in the most boring way possible. It didn't feel scary or creepy or uncomfortable (well, unless we count the sexy times, these scenes felt really uncomfortable) to me at all. There were like 3 sentences that made me shiver in the book and the whole ending. That was really cool and unsettling. I also didn't care for the characters at all, maybe that's why I was so bored. 

Wow. Josh Malerman's "A House at the Bottom of a Lake" was a pretty incredible read. I don't even really know how to describe this book. Malerman pairs the anxiousness of falling in love with an anxiety-inducing scary story. It gave me real feelings of dread, panic, and eerie calm. The title itself helps to illuminate how strange this story is. Imagine finding a house at the bottom of a lake. Would you go inside? Would you explore? Would you ask questions? Would you tell anyone else? I wanted to be scared, and Malerman really gave me a good one. I literally could not hang my feet over the edge of my bed or the couch because I felt like something was looming beneath me waiting to get me. "A House at the Bottom of a Lake" was another great read for my spooky tbr, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a creepy page-turner. 

Eerie, not scary