The Lake House, by Kate Morton

 

Well then, so this one is a different type of read from the ones I'm used to, but I certainly did enjoy it nonetheless :) The Lake House is a Historical Fiction, mystery novel set in England in different timesets between the 1910s and 2004.

"An abandoned house...
June 1933, and sixteen-year-old Alice Edevane is preparing for her family's Midsummer Eve party at their country home, Loeanneth. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night skies, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever.

A missing child...
Seventy years later, after a particularly troubling case, Detective Sadie Sparrow retreats to her beloved grandfather's cottage in Cornwall. Once there, she stumbles upon an abandoned house, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

An unsolved mystery...
Meanwhile, in her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family's past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape..." (Goodreads)

I find historical fiction very much interesting, mainly because of the work that needs to be done in order to match the fiction with the reality of the history. I imagine it must be very hard not to miss out on any small detail, and it certainly requires a lot of work research-wise. Just for that, I admire historical-fiction writers. You must really like history and literature in order to write a book of this kind. And I really like reading them - you kill two birds with one stone for you can also learn a bit of history while reading ;) It had been quite a long time since I had read a book in this genre, so it was time!

The Lake House is one of those books in which everything happens for a reason. At first it might seem like the author just added a bit of a detailed description just because she wanted to make a great book, but as the story goes on you realise that she really did make a great book, just not for her outstanding descriptions ;)

If you've ever read a book by Kate Morton (which I have to admit I hadn't though I was certainly dying to read The Forgotten Garden), you have probably realised her outstanding writing abilities. Every single word from The Lake House is gold to the mind. I love her choice of words, her sentence-building... Everything. Her style is just perfect, beautiful.

The story is different. It is told from  different timesets which you connect the more you read, the transition very smooth. It is a mystery in which there is a mystery novel writer directly involved, so at some point you realise Kate Morton is doing to you what the fictional writer explains about her novels. That's interesting, to say the least. There are some plot twists which I think did not quite wow me because they were done relatively smoothly, and therefore I don't think the book is meant to be remembered for its plot twists. It is good enough to be remembered for the story per se.

The characters are outstandingly developed. You almost feel as if you could predict their behavior because you know them so well. You learn about their lives, their fears, bit by bit. Suddenly, a particular character that did not seem to have much importance is at the centre of everything.

I really enjoyed this novel. I've honestly become a complete fan of Kate Morton's! I give this book a 3.5 out of 5 stars, and I recommend it to those people that like rather lengthy reads or that are up for some really good historical fiction, which, from what I've seen, tend to be lengthy :) hope you give it a try!

Happy reading!