Lost Lake

Sarah Addison Allen

The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband George is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.

It’s a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness, and heartbreak, and loss. Now she’s all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope too, thanks to her resilient daughter Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward. Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer… and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.

One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren’t sure they needed in the first place: love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended. Can they find what they need before it’s too late?

At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places (from Netgalley)

My Thoughts

This is the first book I’ve read by Ms. Allen and my - what a treat. I loved her characters and how she developed them. Every one who is at Lost Lake for what could be it’s last season has some sort of past issue or some level of quirkiness. The author weaves in a little bit of magic, which made the story all that more interesting. I was truly interested in what would happen with each individual. There were those I liked right from the beginning, those who evetually I grew to like and well.... on character I never did like, but I think that was the author’s intent.

An extremely enjoyable read. Definitely an author I will look to when I want a nicely told tale.

My thanks to St. Martin’s Press, via Netgalley, for allowing me to read this in exchange for an unbiased review.