Review: The House of the Lake- Kate Morton

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The year is 1933 and a big party is going on. Everything goes well, but the next day they discover that the little boy Theo, of only 11 months, disappeared. In 2003, the case was not solved, but the detective sadie, who made a mistake on the job and is visiting his grandfather while his suspension is in effect, comes across the old house where the boy was born and decides to investigate the case. Thus, his path crosses with the famous writer of detective novels Alice, Theo's sister who has some secrets about the day her younger brother disappeared, when she was still a teenager.

In a nutshell, this is what romance is all about The Lake House, but in practice it turns out to be much more complex than that. Kate Morton delivers a very interesting web of intrigue, solving more than one mystery at a time and putting together several facts to assemble an extremely satisfying puzzle.

For this, the author uses a divided narrative, wave navigates between the past and present to take the reader from the 30s to 2003, between interspersed chapters. This choice of writing works, however not as well as desired. It ends up being the biggest flaw of the book, since the author only presents the lives of the different characters at the beginning and it takes a long time for the reader to become familiar with them and the countless details that, at first glance, seem irrelevant. The result is a very good work, but it only manages to really hold your attention halfway through the plot, making the beginning of the reading very slow.

The world had its own way of keeping the scales in balance. Guilty characters may escape prosecution, but they never escape justice.

it makes The Lake House a conflicting work -in an interesting way- because it ends up being a wonderful book, but very time consuming to read. At about 460 pages, it's the kind that any avid reader would read in just a few days, but because it starts so slowly, it takes at least twice as long as expected. It's curious how such a good mystery book can take so long to read.

However, once the reader manages to pick up the pace and situate himself in each character's life, the reading flows wonderfully and Kate manages to present increasingly logical theories, which rarely coincide with what actually happened on that fateful day. The outcome is really satisfying - even with a small detail that ends up being predictable -, it doesn't leave any loose ends and manages to gracefully end the story of all the characters presented, regardless of the time they lived.

Therefore, it is safe to say that The Lake House I have an impressive plot, but only from a certain point. It's a story that deserves your attention, just with the warning to be patient and, if the reading doesn't flow at the beginning, persist, because at some point the plot will surprise you and become one of the best mysteries you've ever read.

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