HOLIDAY CLOSURE: All WPL locations will be closed on Wednesday, July 1 for Canada Day.

Venom Lake: When Book Club Turns Bloodthirsty

If you’re in the mood for a compulsive read set in beautiful Ontario cottage country featuring a quartet of messy friendships, then this impressive debut from a new voice in domestic thrillers is for you.

In Venom Lake, Marta, Imogen, Bernie and Celeste are in a thriller book club and while they consider themselves friends, with all of their underlying tension and rivalry, they’re more like “frenemies.” They head to a remote part of cottage country for some downtime, book chat and copious amounts of wine, but when one of them ends up dead, these armchair detectives start to eye each other as suspects.

This is a well-thought out thriller that provides readers with multiple POVs of the four toxic book club members whose unlikability makes them oh-so-interesting. Add in the revelations of their secrets and alliances, not to mention the threat of another murder, and tensions are high. The addition of a True Crime podcast further adds to the story and will keep readers turning ‘just one more page’.

This is one book club I’ll take a hard pass on joining, but it sure is fun to watch this group of ‘friends’ implode as their secrets, backstabbing and true feelings for each other come to the surface. Armchair detectives, get cozy, pour yourself a glass of Rosé, prep a cheeseboard and settle in for a twisty, dysfunctional read!

We were thrilled to welcome author Emma White to our Eastside Branch earlier this month and learn more about writing this book. Be sure to check out our Author Events page for upcoming author visits.

Laurie P.
Library Assistant, Eastside Branch

Laurie loves interacting with her library customers and seeing WPL’s newest branch become a vibrant community hub. As an avid reader, she enjoys giving book recommendations to customers and providing Readers’ Advisory training to WPL staff. She has a large personal library but often brings home an armful of library books by the end of her shifts. She loves reading physical books as well as using the Libby app to read eBooks or listen to digital audiobooks – particularly when she’s on a walk, hitting the gym or trying to make household chores more enjoyable. In her spare time, she is the book blogger behind The Baking Bookworm and reads voraciously in a variety of formats and genres – thrillers, contemporary fiction and CanLit being her favourites. She regularly attends author events, loves promoting public libraries and connecting with people about all things bookish – in English or American Sign Language (ASL).