This is one of my favorite books of 2015 and I just couldn't recommend it more highly. Clean off your calendar, curl up and enjoy the read. Regardless, Sadie had absorbed enough as a citizen of the world to know that people went missing in fairy tales, and that there were usually deep dark woods involved. People went missing often enough in real life, too. Sadie knew that from experience. Some were lost by misadventure, others by choice: the disappeared as opposed to the missing, the ones who didn’t want to be found. People like Maggie Bailey. This is such a compelling story, which goes far beyond the initial mystery that brings Alice and Sadie together. They don’t write enough of these types of stories anymore, which is sad. Although there are heartbreaking elements to the tale, the ending is simply perfect. She stopped behind the largest yew tree at the end of the stone path. It had been neatly hedged for the party, its leaves tight and freshly cut, and Alice peered around it. Ben was still out on the island, and Mr Harris was all the way down at the far end of the lake helping his son Adam ready logs to be boated across. Poor Adam. Alice watched as he scratched behind his ear. He’d been the pride of his family once, according to Mrs Stevenson, strong and strapping and bright, until a flying piece of shrapnel at Passchendaele lodged in the side of his head and left him simple. War was a dreadful thing, the cook liked to opine, pounding her rolling pin into a blameless lump of dough on the kitchen table, ‘taking a boy like that, so full o’ promise, chewing ’im up and spitting ’im out a dull broken version of his old self’.

The Lake House by Kate Morton | Goodreads

Lynn Collins as Mona, Alex's assistant who is romantically interested in him. He is indifferent to her constant advances. Alice, the middle daughter, never to be seen without her ‘notebook’ was a born storyteller who had the greatest affection and attachment to the idyllic home where she was privileged to have grown up. She grew up to be a prolific and esteemed mystery novelist. She never married, nor did she have any children. As the story progresses, multiple leads are explored and snuffed out. Glimpses of the lives of the boy's family members are provided as letters and other insights are revealed. Alice, the boy's sister, is an esteemed writer and offers many insights into the events surrounding his disappearance. Ben Munro was an itinerant gardener employed by the Edevane family. He was a strong and handsome twenty-six year old who attracted the eye of the teenage Alice.

Flourish

Two of their three daughters, Alice and Deborah, in their prime each offer detailed stories of that night and events leading up to it from different perspectives of what happened. In 2006, physician Kate Forster leaves a lake house she has been renting near Chicago and starts a job at a downtown hospital. She leaves a note in the mailbox asking the next tenant to forward her mail and explaining that the painted-on pawprints on the front walkway were there when she moved in as was the box in the attic. 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. 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. There was no question of the old woman moving with them to London, but she couldn’t be abandoned either. Not entirely. Eleanor searched all over before she finally found Seawall. It was expensive, but worth every penny . . . ‘It’s just right,’ Eleanor had said, signing the admission forms. And it was. Just and right. The unrelenting sound of the ocean for the rest of her days had been precisely what Constance deserved.”

The Lake House – Kate Morton

So everyone's individual reading likes and dislikes definitely play a big role in if they end up being as enthralled by the author's writing as I am. The Lake House by Kate Morton is the mysterious and enchanting fifth novel from the number one bestselling author of The House at Riverton and The Secret Keeper.

Seventy years later, after a particularly troubling case, DC 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.

The Lake House: A Heart-wrenching and Atmospheric Mystery The Lake House: A Heart-wrenching and Atmospheric Mystery

I love it when a mystery novel is written in a literary prose, and this story certainly has that advantage, but in the beginning the story was sort of disjointed and moved very slowly. The truth is, nothing all that exciting comes to pass until the half way mark, when all that came before begins to take shape. From that point on, the story became so absorbing, I couldn’t stop reading and found myself still awake at one a.m., totally spellbound. Fast forward to London in 2003, where Alice Edevane, Theo’s sister, now an acclaimed mystery writer remembers that long ago night, An uncharacteristic maternal streak, vaguely disturbing, had come over Sadie since the dogs had adopted her, and when Ash gave another deep growl she capped her water bottle. ‘Come on then,’ she said, tapping her thigh. ‘Let’s go find that brother of yours.’ Sadie sat up, blinking into the brightness. The world was briefly white before everything righted itself. Lily pads glistened, heart-shaped tiles on the water’s surface, flowers reaching for the sky like pretty, grasping hands. The air surrounding them was filled with hundreds of small winged creatures. She scrambled to her feet and was about to call for the dogs when something on the other side of the lake caught her attention. She reached the place she’d chosen. The bag, with its box inside, was surprisingly heavy and it was a relief to put it down. On hands and knees, she pulled away the camouflage of ferns and branches. The smell of sodden soil was overwhelming, of wood mouse and mushrooms, of other mouldering things. Her father had told her once that generations had walked these woods and been buried deep beneath the heavy earth. It made him glad, she knew, to think of it that way. He found comfort in the continuity of nature, believing that the stability of the long past had the power to alleviate present troubles. And maybe in some cases it had, but not this time, not these troubles.It crossed her mind that she should say something before she left this lonely place. Something about the death of innocence, the deep remorse that would follow her always; but she didn’t. The inclination made her feel ashamed.