Ever read a book that worked for you despite having some seriously ridiculous plot points? That was the case for me with The House Beyond the Dunes. Some things about the story had me rolling my eyes so hard I thought they would fall from my head, but the writing created a compelling, chilling, atmospheric thriller that kept me turning the pages until the very end.

Lane McCord hasn’t been lucky in life or love, but meeting Kyle has her hoping that will all change. When they head to his beachfront house on the Carolina coast, Lane has plans to eat, sleep, and consummate the relationship – but instead, she wakes up in a hospital after falling down a steep set of stairs in Kyle’s luxury home. Her insurance is a joke, so despite having a banged-up hip and some pretty bad bruising, she insists on leaving the facility against the doctor’s orders. She has to borrow a phone to call a neighbor to pick her up since her bag was left at the vacation house. Lane knows she’s lucky, though. Kyle was the unlucky one – he didn’t survive the fall. All she can remember about the incident is lying in a pool of his blood, having no idea how either of them wound up on the foyer floor.

That’s a question that Detective Donald Becker would love to have the answer to. When he shows up at Lane’s door, he is skeptical about her insistence that she has no recollection of the events surrounding Kyle’s fall. Especially since he has been looking into the disappearance of two women – Stevie Palmer and Nikki Kane – who vanished after spending time with Kyle.

Detective Becker leaves without getting the answers he wants but assures Lane he’ll be back for them soon. A short time later Lane finds something in her mailbox – several pages of Stevie Palmer’s diary. As she starts to read them, she gets a deep sense of foreboding. Stevie left notes referencing Lane – but what ties her to this woman? Lane has a feeling the answers to both her questions and Detective Becker’s lie at the beach house, so in spite of the fact she should be on bed rest and that there is a severe storm on the way that will isolate her on the property, Lane decides to head back there. She has a good excuse: she needs her luggage – especially her handbag which contains her phone and wallet. She is hoping that being back in the house will jog some memories. Instead, it raises a plethora of questions.

Some mysteries are about the reader solving the puzzle, and others are about watching the characters do so. This narrative is the latter. By the thirty percent mark, I had already figured out the major plot points and only needed a few more details to work out who the secondary characters were and how they fit. The main impetus of the tale is watching – and worrying – for Lane and Stevie, whose diary recounts her search for the missing Nikki, as they investigate Kyle.

Of the two women, I liked Stevie a bit better than Lane. She is tough, jaded, and street-smart. During the story, she is living in her car and working off the books at a bar. Stevie is experienced and competent, and has a knack for knowing trouble when she sees it, unlike her rather naïve and inept co-worker, Nikki. When Stevie first sees Nikki flirting with Kyle, it sends her danger signals flying. The well-dressed, educated, big-spending stranger would have no serious interest in a pretty but vapid waitress at a dive bar. When Nikki disappears, Stevie is determined that it not go unnoticed and uninvestigated. Since no one else seems interested in the case, she begins her own pursuit. I loved her intelligence, caring nature, and street savvy.

Lane is smart but a lot more unsophisticated, which is odd given that she is a psychology student working with young female runaways, and also a former foster child. At times, she seems almost too trusting and sweet, and although an explanation is given for that in the text, I found it unbelievable. That’s not the only way in which Lane is unrealistically written. She’s also running around on a hip banged up enough that the doctors thought it might be broken. I’ve got personal experience with those injuries and if you are hurt so badly they are willing to keep you overnight in a medical facility, you will not be doing much of anything without crutches. She also doesn’t bear the emotional wounds of someone who escaped a near-death experience and woke up to find themselves covered in their dead boyfriend’s blood.

That said, I appreciated how the mystery is deciphered. Both Lane and Stevie are piecing together clues that are more innuendo than fact. Many times, that leaves them questioning if they are actually pursuing a real villain in Kyle or if they’re just putting a bunch of circumstances together and seeing what they want to see. Detective Becker fares only slightly better; he, too, is more following hunches than concrete evidence. So often, villains leave physical proof that a ten-year-old would know to hide so our characters can crack the case, but here, it’s clear that the bad guy wasn’t caught because he was darn careful not to be suspicious.

However, the ultimate resolution comes down to two factors that are downright ludicrous regarding Lane, Stevie, and Detective Becker ,and a denouement by a secondary villain that is almost cartoonish.

This leaves me with a conundrum regarding the grading. On the one hand, I enjoyed the book enough to finish it quickly and be somewhat satisfied with the ending. On the other, I will openly admit it has plot elements that can exist only in fiction. My personal score is a B and I would recommend The House Beyond the Dunes to fans of this author, Sandra Brown, Karen Rose, and Karin Slaughter.