If you had a gut feeling about something and just knew that an injustice had been done or that the perpetrator of crime had got away with it, would you be able to let it go? Could you move on with your life?
Well, in Kate Morton’s latest novel, The Lake House, one character can and the other cannot.
As usual with Kate Morton, this was a book that I disappeared into by the end of the first two chapters. The reader is led easily into a moody world of suspense and uncovered secrets. Fans of Morton’s previous novels such as The Distant Hours and The Secret Keeper will happily recognize various “Mortonisms” that make her books such a tangible delight: a big, thick plot that slowly and carefully reveals new layers of information, strong characters that continue to develop as the story winds along two plot lines that intertwine but are separated by time, an English estate with a murky past, and a mystery that will keep the reader flipping pages all the while trying to slow down and savour the narrative.
Alice Edevane is 16, in love, and can hardly wait to share her first novel, a murder mystery, with Ben, the handsome, older gardener who has encouraged her literary efforts. She loves Ben and Loeanneth, a lake house in Cornwall where she grew up that has become her soul. The world is her oyster and she is full of promise and possibilities.
Unfortunately for our heroine, Alice’s life doesn’t go as she hoped but immediately takes a drastic turn for the worse during a midsummer party. Fast forward 70 years and Alice has become a famous crime novelist and has left the secrets of her family’s tragic past behind and has no desire to unearth them. Enter Sadie, a young detective with secrets of her own who reluctantly leaves the police force to visit her grandfather in Cornwall. But as fate and Kate Morton would have it, Alice’s and Sadie’s lives begin to connect, and they are inevitably drawn back to their own personal histories but also drawn forward together as they unravel a mystery.
As you can probably tell, I liked this book. It is definitely one to get lost in. The only downfall I found with this installment into Kate Morton’s legacy was that I figured out the ending early on. It was a little conventional and predictable. Perhaps I’ve read too many of Morton’s books and figured out her pattern or perhaps this one wasn’t as intricate as her other novels.
Either way, I do recommend this book but because of my perceived liability I give The Lake House a 3.5/5.
