Book Review – The Lake House by Kate Morton

I begrudgingly admit that this book sat on my shelf for five years while I read other books. I had tried reading it twice before, but both instances left me frustrated with the first chapter. It followed a teenage girl in 1933 whose thoughts were so scattered that it bounced around between lamentations of the girl’s mother, the crush she had on the handyman, and memories of earlier childhood. Both times, I sat the book aside to read at a later date when I had more patience. Apparently, that would be July of 2025.

Fortunately, once I made it past the first longwinded chapter, I found the book a more enjoyable read. At least, for the most part. It is told through dual timelines, and I usually find one of the timelines to be far more interesting than the other whenever I pick up a book like this. This book was no exception. Perhaps that is why I found the first chapter so cumbersome. It is told through the less interesting timeline.

The past, 1920s-1930s, is told from the perspective of several members of the Edevane family. Grandmother. Mother. Father. And four children. Oh, and near the end, the handyman, Ben. Alice, the middle daughter, is an aspiring writer and is spending her days talking through her first novel with Ben. It is the day of the annual Midsummer party at the family lake house. The youngest child will be missing by the following morning, never to be found.

The present, 2003, is told through Sadie’s eyes. She is a policewoman in London who is put on leave because she leaked information to the press about a case. She stays with her grandfather who lives conveniently across the way from the Edevane estate, now abandoned. Sadie uses her time to investigate the cold case of the missing little boy who was never found.

In 2003, Alice is now a famous writer. When Sadie contacts her about her missing brother’s case, Alice wants nothing to do with it at first. Then her only remaining family member, her sister Deborah, tells her something that makes her realize she does not know the entire story of what happened that fateful summer in 1933.

It is the cold case, and her time with Alice, that helps Sadie see the case she was suspended from in new light. Alice soon realizes that her father suffered from PTSD from the first world war and her mother was not faithful in their marriage. The two women are able to put the pieces together and by the time they do, they realized that their lives are more intertwined than originally thought.

This is one of those books that I found myself wanting to skim through a lot of the stuff from the past since it would be talked about in the present anyway, especially when it came to the chapters from the father’s perspective. I really did not need to know the exact particulars of where the PTSD came from. He was in the war. That’s all I needed to know. But the last third of this book really wanted me to know more and it made getting through it harder much in the way that the first chapter did. It just didn’t need that much longwinded detail. There is also a side plot about a family friend who died that night, but it seems unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.

That said, one of the book’s strengths was how drawn out the story was by the author. Morton managed to put misleading hints throughout her story that lead both reader and character to make assumptions that were untrue. The more information you discover, the more you learn to not assume where Morton is taking you. It is her strength as a mystery writer. She has a wonderful way with words that I find enjoyable.

If you’re going to pick this up, know that it likes to ramble and dwell on things. Sometimes, for too long but also in a way that immerses you in the worlds of Alice and Sadie. It’s really their story even if they both obsess over what happened to the little boy in 1933.

4 out of 5 stars.