Review | The Lake House

Title: The Lake House by Kate Morton

Date Published: October 2015

Dates Read: July 29th - August 5th, 2021

Current Goodreads Rating: 4.05/5

Yes, the Year of (Re)Reading Kate Morton books continues. I'm coming to the realization that I have already read about half of Morton's books. The Lake House was a new read for me and I think it was probably my favorite of all her books. All of Morton's books have the same feel to them - they all have a modern protagonist who lived through a war torn England - but they're all so uniquely different that I don't think I could ever really get tired of reading her stories. Honestly, despite the mystery and occasional tragedy in her stories, reading Morton's books really just make me crave a rainy day, a cozy blanket, and a warm mug of tea.

Ok, so what happens? One unassuming midsummer eve a family's life is torn asunder. Theo, the baby of the family, disappears without a trace and remains lost decades later. Alice, one of three of Theo's older sisters, has lived with her guilt throughout the years. In her mind it's her fault he's gone, her fault that the man she had once loved had kidnapped him, and her fault that Theo was murdered. This is all because of her overactive imagination and her love of writing mystery novels.

Alice's beloved lake house falls into ruin and is found one day by young detective Sadie Sparrow during some forced time away from her desk. The mystery becomes too much for the detective and she becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of the missing Theo. Along the way she uncovers more than what happened that fateful night. No family secret is safe.

Ok, so what did I think? Of all of Morton's books, this book has probably the most moving parts than any of them. Sure, The Clockmaker's Daughter covers a greater span of time than her other stories, but the depth in which Morton goes into each one of her characters in this book is greater than the others I've read this year as well as Clockmaker's from a few years ago. At the risk of sounding like a Shrek film, the layers to this book just kept coming. Like every Morton book we start in the modern times with Sadie Sparrow coming across the mysterious lake house before we dive through the years to when Alice was a girl living in that house, but where Morton may have stopped there in previous books, she keeps going in this one. After learning about headstrong Alice and her incredible writing ability, Morton takes one more deep dive through history to tell us more about Alice's family - specifically her mother, Eleanor. Even after that Morton takes one more small slip through time to explain a bit about Eleanor's mother, Constance, and by that point your brain is practically spinning by all the time travel.

I've read some reviews that talk about how confusing the time skipping can be, but I personally didn't have any issue. Perhaps I'm just used to the skipping as that is how Morton's books are usually laid out - we get a taste of the ending, just enough to have us wondering how things got to be that way, and then she starts from the beginning - but I can see how the sudden shift from Sadie to Alice to Eleanor to even crotchety old Constance can be confusing. As someone who's recently become fascinated with how someone's upbringing shapes the person they become, I really loved seeing how each woman was molded by her circumstances.

I read this book at a particularly difficult time in my life. Escaping into this world was practically my life raft for a solid five or so days. While I am by no means comparing my mental health journey to the debilitating PTSD Eleanor's husband dealt with after returning home from World War I, I will say that reading the passages of Eleanor's strength as her husband suffered did speak to me on a deeper level than it would have earlier in my life. Though Anthony never fully recovers from the horrors of war the fact that Eleanor was there to help however she could no matter what honestly helped me ground myself and keep going. If they can survive that kind of mental horror then I could get through my issues and continue on as well. Perhaps that's not what Morton intended when she originally wrote this story, but it's what I took from it and I appreciate it to this day.

Finally, I don't want to spoil anything, but I did have one small issue with this book. From what I've seen of the other reviews on its Goodreads profile, its the same issue that a lot of readers had and its that this book was tied up in too neatly of a bow. The mystery is solved and - SURPRISE! - it's someone we've already met. Each lingering question is answered (which don't get me wrong, I'm glad there were no loose ends), but answered in such a way I did have a moment of confusion because I thought maybe I had started reading a Charles Dickens book instead. Regardless, I loved this book despite the fairytale ending and highly recommend it and, obviously, any other Kate Morton novel.

Also, just as a fun fact, some nosy anti-masker sitting next to me on my flight home was so intrigued by the cover of this book that I basically had to give him a review of it just so he'd stop asking me about it. So, if it can inspire an idiot to read, isn't that a good sign of a good book?

Long Story Short:

• How many times do I have to tell you Kate Morton is a genius before you believe me?

• Shit man, this book hit hard

• If someone who can barely read is interested by something then maybe its worth checking out?

My Rating: 5/5