Autumn Book Club | Kate Morton’s The Lake House

Hot on the heels of this morning’s The Versions of Us review, please say a big hello the reader Emily who is here to share her views on The Lake House.

I am rarely seen without a book in hand. However, at the end of last year I looked back on my “Books Read” spreadsheet (yes, I’m that person) and realised I was stuck in a crime and science fiction rut. So when Rock My Style announced they were doing a book club I was delighted! It was an excellent chance to broaden my horizons and read something a bit different. Naturally, I leapt at the chance to be a guest reviewer, and was pleased to start with Kate Morton’s intriguing novel The Lake House, a mystery about a child who goes missing from a Midsummer party in the 1930s.
I stopped halfway through Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend to read The Lake House by Kate Morton. What I didn’t initially realise is that I was swapping one unsolved historical mystery about a child for another. But whereas I found Donna Tartt’s book to be slow and difficult to get into, I was immediately absorbed into Kate Morton’s. No time was wasted getting down to the mystery, a toddler missing after a big family party, and the various twists kept me hooked until the last page. I love a mystery, so this was just my cup of tea. I would even say it has hints of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone in it, one of my all-time favourite mystery novels. I thought it was excellently set up because at the beginning, you seem so sure about who’s involved, but the picture shifts dramatically as the book progresses. It’s very cleverly done too, with flashbacks from various members of the family from different times in the early twentieth century. Sometimes I find jumping around in time a little jarring in books, but in this case it fit so well with the story.
Aside from the plot, there was much else to like about The Lake House. The house, Loeanneth, with its fantastic gardens, forest and (obviously) lake, is so wonderfully imagined. I also liked the theme of womanhood running through it, I found this very much to be a tale of what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother. It also deals with the sacrifices we all make to protect ourselves and our families. I thought Kate Morton dealt with this all wonderfully.
I will admit that I found Sadie, our modern-day detective, to be slightly irritating in the first half of the book, when she won’t talk to her obviously lovely and very understanding grandfather. Still, characters shouldn’t always do exactly what you want and if anything it just made Sadie’s character more real to me. Which is why I found myself frustrated with the ending. I’m not going to spoil anything but I found it to be all too neat and tidy for my liking, and therefore less credible. I definitely don’t just want believable plots from books I read (I love fantasy and science fiction) but in this case, I felt slightly cheated by Morton at the end, for making everything just a little too convenient.

What did you think about The Lake House? Did you find frustrations with Sadie too? What were your thoughts on the ending?
Emma and Emily will be back to review And The Sea Will Tell by Vincent Buglios and Spectacles by Sue Perkins on December 29th.

{The Autumn Line-Up}