At times, it’s a bit too connected or coincidental, but truthfully, isn’t that part of why we read books? We want to experience something new and different, a shock or a twist… if it was all simple and straightforward, there wouldn’t be a lot of drama to dig into. Morton also excels at weaving together multiple stories that have both small and large connections you begin to assemble along the path. Among the always present gardens, large estates, dysfunctional families, and interconnected historic and modern times, you’re carried away into a dreamlike state where you can happily immerse yourself in beauty and lyrical action.

Everything feels like it’s unfolding right before your eyes on a stage. What I love about Morton’s writing is the imagery and depth you see, hear, and experience. This is a story about missing children, lost children, and kidnapped children… there are a few cases going on, but they are not connected in any way other than as situations to help readers reflect on the character’s emotions and lives. Throw in a battleaxe for a grandmother, a fun but peculiar uncle-type, and some very attentive or non-attentive nannies, there’s got to be something bad that happened to the little boy… but was he kidnapped, killed, or is someone making things up about his childhood? When Alice’s book covers some of those true-life situations, people wonder what happened years ago… in modern times, Sadie has been put on leave after she made a mistake during an investigation, so the cop visits her grandfather and gets caught up in the old Edevane case while taking some rest. When her younger brother disappears, and her two other sisters begin to act oddly, something seems off. Alice is the focus, the middle sister who never quite fit in the family and became a mystery writer. In the 1920s, the Edevane family is recuperating from World War 1 where while no one died, the savagery of war has had its toll on relationships.

The story focuses on several characters in England mostly during the 1910s to the 1930s, and then current time which is set in the 2000s.

The lake house a novel