The Lake House
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4.4 • 12 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The morning after the Edevane's exclusive Midsummer Eve party in Cornwall in 1933, their youngest child, Theo, is nowhere to be found. After months of futile searching, the family pack up and leave their beautiful country home, never to return. Until, in 2003, a young female police officer stumbles into the lost gardens surrounding the abandoned house and determines to find out what happened.
A missing child
June 1933, and the Edevane family's country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. Alice Edevane, sixteen years old and a budding writer, is especially excited. Not only has she worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she's also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn't have. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night skies, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever.
An abandoned house
Seventy years later, after a particularly troubling case, Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police. She retreats to her beloved grandfather's cottage in Cornwall but soon finds herself at a loose end. Until one day, Sadie stumbles upon an abandoned house surrounded by overgrown gardens and dense woods, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.
An unsolved mystery
Meanwhile, in the attic writing room of her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family's past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Kate Morton intertwines breathless suspense with historical fiction. When police detective Sadie Sparrow stumbles across a crumbling house in the woods, she learns it was abandoned after a child went missing there decades earlier. Shifting between the present day and the ‘30s, The Lake House is a slow-building, richly satisfying gothic mystery filled with family secrets and dark spaces. It’s perfect for readers looking for a thriller without violence or gore.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestselling storyteller Morton (The Secret Keeper) excels in this mystery set against the gothic backdrop of 1930s England. In Cornwall, the wealthy Edevane family prepares for its annual midsummer ball at Loenneth, their isolated estate. That night, teenager Alice Edevane is lingering near the nursery when someone kidnaps the cherished Edevane son, Theo; despite a lengthy investigation, he is never found. The story moves forward to 2003 London, where Det. Sgt. Sadie Sparrow is suspended after speaking to the media about a missing-person case, recently closed, that haunts her. Sparrow seeks refuge with her grandfather in Cornwall. On her first morning run there, she finds the now-dilapidated Loenneth mansion deep in the woods. Curious, Sparrow peers through the windows into tumbledown rooms abandoned in haste long ago. She begins to investigate the 70-year-old Edevane case with help from the Cornwall locals, including a retired copper who was there in 1933 when Theo disappeared. Sparrow locates the now-elderly Alice, a celebrated mystery writer in London, who hands over the keys to the estate so Theo's case can be reopened. The compelling story moves back and forth in time as Sparrow uncovers what happened to Theo in 1933 while also resolving the recent missing-person case. 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.
