ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015!

House – the name conjures many different things to many different people. And in my readings I have come across quite a number of books where houses are pivotal to the overall scheme of things. While the house may not actually figure in the title, many readers may recollect that in Gone With the Wind it was central to the story. You can feel their heartbeat as if they are living creatures. In The Lake House by Kate Morton, the house where the characters dwell play as much important role as the characters themselves.

The story begins in 1933 with a couple named Eleanor and Anthony Edavane, living in Cornwall in a house called Loeanneth with their three daughters Deborah, Alice and Clemmie and their 11 month old son, Theo, along with grandmother Constance and several other people. Theirs was a happy and contented family, and nothing seemed to disturb their peaceful and tranquil life until a midsummer eve party throws everything out of gear. Nothing the Edavanes did could undo what happened. Broken and shattered, leaving the lake house for good, the family moved to London where the girls grew up.

Fast forward seventy years later to 2003, and we have detective Sadie Sparrow of the Metropolitan Police, with strong views and a no-nonsense attitude, who is forced to go on leave while handling a case involving a grandmother, mother and a supposedly abandoned child. Sadie visited her grandfather Bertie in Cornwall, and it was during her stay at Cornwall that she stumbled on a dilapidated Loeanneth, and learned of how it came to be abandoned after an infant went missing. With nothing else to occupy her, Sadie started investigating into the disappearance of Theo many years earlier. One of Theo’s sisters, Alice, now a septuagenarian, and a writer of mystery books, seems to know more than she is willing to tell. Sadie must unearth the secrets that kept Theo’s disappearance a mystery for over seventy long years.

In The Lake House by Kate Morton, there are different threads which the author brilliantly knitted together. The case which leads to her disciplinary leave, and thereby the visit to Cornwall, was also superbly resolved. Author Kate Morton also filled in with flashbacks to more than twenty years before the beginning of the story which gives us an idea about the characters and their background. The nail-biting suspense, twists and fine storytelling will keep you late into the night, refusing to let go until you uncover the family secrets that plagued the lake house, Loeanneth, and its owners for over seventy years. Kate Morton is as brilliant as ever, and I’d rate The Lake House as one of her best works to date, and definitely one of my best reads of 2015.

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