BHBC Review: "The Lake Of Dreams" By Kim Edwards

I just finished reading "The Lake Of Dreams" by Kim Edwards. The book is about a young woman named Lucy Jarrett, who lives in Japan with her boyfriend, Yoshi. She is uncertain of what the future holds for her. When an email from home mentions her widowed mother has been injured in a fall, Lucy decides to return for a visit. While she's home, she discovers her own family's history isn't all that she thought it to be.

Written in the style of a Victorian novel --- which is one of my favorite genres -- I was at first, enchanted by the story that touched me because I grew up in a big old house next to a lake. But Edwards' book doesn't have the engrossing secondary characters that drew me into AS Byatt's "Possession." And the historical mystery at the heart of the story wasn't dark enough and didn't impact the main character enough to make it as intriguing as "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. These two books hold down a place in my top ten favorite books of all time -- so that shouldn't diminish a future reader's interest in "The Lake Of Dreams." It is a wonderfully written book. The descriptions are delicious and the main character is easy to identify with -- but somehow, the book left me wanting more. Maybe you'll find the something that I didn't in the pages. Despite the fact that I'm not adding it to my top ten list, I'd recommend this book for readers who are looking for a book to read in front of a warm fire over the holidays. And now that I've read "The Lake of Dreams", I'm very curious about "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" and am going to take a peek. I think Kim Edwards is a wonderful writer and a very clever storyteller.

This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club, but the opinions expressed are my own.

The Terribly Awful Day

I had a bad day yesterday. I hate when they happen on a Monday. It somehow makes them twice, three times, maybe even four times as bad. To cheer myself, I decided to go for a walk through the neighborhood to see how the decorations were coming at one particular house. For weeks now, we've been watching through the front window as a woman put together a Christmas village of little holiday houses in her living room. She worked all alone with all of the lights blazing. The village fills her entire living room. There is no other furniture. I was thrilled to see the village had been completed and she had decorated the outside of her little dollhouse with dripping icicles and white lights. We took photos and I felt immensely better. I went to bed with a new book and thought that at midnight my terribly awful bad day would be over. And so I got up at 5:20am and turned on my laptop. And it wouldn't start. It was completely dead. And so I got in the car and drove to work. The only thing worse than a really bad day is when it dribbles over into a second day.