“The House Beyond the Dunes” by Mary Burton is a combination of memory-loss and psychological mystery. The story completely revolves around Lane McCord after she has miraculously survived a fall down a flight of stairs; Lana has no hampering injury but is unable to remember the events leading upto the fall. All she remembers is that she was in her new boyfriend Kyle’s house when the accident occured and she can think of no reason why she, would have fallen down the stairs, along with Ian. The fact that Kyle had died in the same accident only increases her distress and confusion.

And when a police officer tries to question her about two missing women who were last seen around Kyle, her confusion only increases. Soon after, Lana starts getting snippets of the diary written by one of the missing women. As she starts reading them, Lana begins to suspect that she never really knew Kyle, thus prompting her to visit Kyle’s house and try to get to know the real person behind his persona.

As Lana tries to navigate the strange people involved in Kyle life and their conflicting accounts about him, the reader along with her, are taken through a maze of lies, deception, vengeance and manipulation, while questioning themselves – did Lana push Kyle deliberately or was it an accident as she thinks? Was Kyle as good as he seemed to be or did he have sinister intentions towards her?

The premise of memory loss along with the seemingly sinister atmosphere conjured by the author, seemed like it would be a great read. And the story started off on a promising note. The author Mary Burton tells the story primarily through Lana and I felt Burton didn’t make her complex or interesting enough. Her actions lacked sense some times and I couldn’t understand her motivations most of the times. The story itself seemed directionless till about half way through and got thrilling only after that. But certain plot twists were glaringly obvious to me by that point and hence, it was not as great a reading experience as it could have been.

In my opinion, this is a story which had great potential but doesn’t get there because of the lack in character’s depth and certain narrative choices.

This book gets 4 out of 5 stars.