Media Reviews
"Starred Review. Morton's plotting is impeccable, and her finely wrought characters, brought together in the end by Sparrow's investigation, are as surprised as readers will be by the astonishing conclusion." - Publishers Weekly
"An atmospheric but overlong history of family secrets and their tormented gatekeepers." - Kirkus
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Reader Reviews
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Cathryn Conroy
A Can't-Put-It-Down Novel That Is Totally Captivating The best way to describe this can't-put-it-down novel by Kate Morton is: multilayered. No, wait. Multi-multi-multi-layered. There is SO much going on here! And every bit of it is a literary delight.
At its very core—deep, deep down—this is a mystery. But because it's so much more than that, the mystery can sometimes get lost. This is really two stories all interwoven into one. The setting is a summer house mansion by a lake in Cornwall, England. The book opens on a hot June day and evening in 1933, where the Edevane family is hosting the traditional and very lavish Midsummer party for 300 guests. But when they wake up the next morning, 11-month-old Theo, their fourth child and only son, is missing. The parents, Anthony and Eleanor, are understandably distraught. Daughter Deborah, age 18, is still reeling from discovering a shocking secret about her mother. Alice, age 16 and a budding writer, appears to know more than she tells the police. Clementine, age 12, who is accustomed to taking her baby brother on long walks around the beautiful rural property, is very jumpy. Who kidnapped—or killed!—baby Theo? Interspersed with this is the 2003 story of Sadie Sparrow, a London police detective with a long personal history of her own who has been disgraced by how she handled a tough case and has been forced on a vacation. (And that tough case is its own mystery—a mystery within a mystery!) Sadie retreats to her beloved grandfather's cottage in Cornwall where she learns about the 70-year-old cold case of Theo Edevane's mysterious disappearance.
Yes, the mystery is riveting and Kate Morton is an expert at dropping clues along the way so only the most astute readers will be able to solve it before the end. But even better than the page-turning suspense of the whodunit, are the vividly-drawn characters with backstories so deep and so multifaceted that you will be totally drawn into this captivating tale. With sophisticated storytelling that is rich in historical detail, this magnificent book is one of those special novels I will want to recommend to everyone!
HRLady
The Lake House by Kate Martin There were a lot of characters over two separate time frames which at times got a little confusing, but having said that I loved the story and you never figure out what happened until the very end. The end was superb!!
Elizabeth of Silver's Reviews
LOVED The Lake House Alice the author and sister of Theo and Sadie the detective.
Would these two women be able to find information about the disappearance 70 years ago of 11-month old Theo - if they worked together on this cold case even though the police had not been able to find one clue or to find Theo?
Alice had lived the nightmare of her brother's disappearance, and Sadie wanted to investigate the years-old case after she found the sprawling, abandoned estate of the Edevane family.
I LOVED exploring the estate and finding the clues of the case with Sadie and finding things that were left by the family. I would have loved to live on the estate as well as to be a part of the investigating.
THE LAKE HOUSE goes back and forth in time and is filled with mystery, hidden passageways, intrigue, family secrets, and all of Ms. Morton's wonderful, creative writing skills, marvelous story lines, and descriptions that get better each time you turn the page and that put you right at the scene or definitely wanting to be there with the characters.
?Ms. Morton knows how to keep her readers interested and not want the book to end.? Twists and turns seem to be Ms. Morton's trademark along with marvelous, surprise endings. And what a spectacular ending THE LAKE HOUSE has. You will love it!!
Ms. Morton had me hooked on her book THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN, and THE LAKE HOUSE is going to be right up there with it as one of my all-time favorites. 5/5
This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.?
dbsprings
Great winter read Kate Morton delivers another great book. This is a perfect winter read because you will not want to put it down. Very good plot with just the right amount of twists and turns to keep us guessing.
Diane D.
I loved it! This is the first of Kate Morton's books I've read, but I will be reading more of them...for sure! It was a Christmas gift, but I just started reading it a few days ago & finished it about an hour ago.
Since the person ahead of me wrote a lot about the book, I will just say that I was fascinated by all the twists and turns of these mysteries. Only one of the endings turned out the way I expected, and I wish that had gone into more depth. Who knows? Maybe Kate Morton will write about it in another book; I hope so!
The characters were so interesting, and it was good to have so much of their backgrounds brought into the book.
I am going to have to recommend this to my book club. I'll also put another of her books on our list of books to read, since we only read older books, due to the fact that we get them through inter-library loan & can't get enough of the newer ones.
Cloggie Downunder
A brilliant read “We are all victims of our human experience, apt to view the present through the lens of our own past”
The Lake House is the fifth novel by Australian author, Kate Morton. DC Sadie Sparrow has had to take leave from the job she loves. She got so deeply involved in a case, following instinct over evidence, that she secretly did something that would get her suspended if her boss knew. A month in Cornwall with her widower grandfather, Bertie, and she’s itching to get back to London, where the real action is. But then one day, while running through the woods with the dogs, she stumbles upon an abandoned house by the lake. Bertie’s neighbour mentions that this was the site of the tragic disappearance of 11 month old Theo Edevane, a mystery still unsolved after seventy years: Sadie is hooked.
When successful mystery writer A.C. Edevane receives a letter from the young police constable enquiring about her family’s past, she fears that the secret she has kept for seventy years is about to be revealed. Alice is sure that when she was sixteen, consumed with fervour for both her writing and a certain unsuitable person, her foolish actions leading up to the Midsummer’s Eve party were instrumental in the kidnapping of her baby brother.
Morton sets her novel over two time periods. The events that led up to, and followed on from, the tragedy in the early to mid-twentieth century are narrated by many of the key players: young Alice, her mother, her father, her grandmother, a gardener, a close family friend and even baby Theo; what occurs in 2003 is told by Sadie, Alice and her assistant, Peter. And while the time periods are clearly indicated at the start of the chapters, the style of prose, the descriptions and dialogue also reflect this.
Morton gives the reader an expertly crafted mystery. At first she has the reader wondering about Alice’s role in Theo’s disappearance, then, with each new revelation, has the reader discarding one theory concerning Theo’s fate and postulating another. There are miscommunications, misunderstandings, secrets and misplaced guilt. And while the main mystery involves baby Theo, there are at least three other mysteries to distract the reader. There are twists and red herrings and surprises, and the ending holds a delicious irony. And all this is done with characters that are interesting and beautiful prose that evokes the wonderful setting.
“Those afternoons in the library, breathing the stale sun-warmed dust of a thousand stories (accented by the collective mildew of a hundred years of rising damp), had been enchanted. …. Peter was beset with an almost bodily sense of being back there. His limbs twitched with the memory of being nine years old and lanky as a foal. His mood lifted as he remembered how large, how filled with possibilities, and yet, at once, how safe and navigable the world had seemed when he was shut within those four walls”. A brilliant read.
