Book #9: The Lake House by Kate Morton

I have loved all three books by Kate Morton that I've read so far. Morton has invented kind of her own genre, a mix between mystery and family history work, haha. She always tells the story of some people in modern times who have to uncover the story of what happened fifty or sixty years ago, using journals and talking to old people alive then, and intertwines it with the story of what actually happened back then written from their perspective. It's always so engrossing to get into one of her books--they're really hard to put down. Morton is very good at dropping little hints as the story goes along, in parts from the present and the past, to help you figure out what is happening or how the present investigators are doing at solving the mystery from the past.

This book is maybe the best one that she's done--although I found the ending to be a LITTLE too convenient and happy-ending-ish for everyone. In the 1930s, a little eleven-month-old boy went missing from his bed during a big family party at the Edevane family home. And he was never found and the family left the home forever to live in London. Seventy years later, Sadie Sparrow, a detective with the British police, comes to Cornwall to visit her grandpa on a somewhat forced leave of absence from work after a big problem with one of her recent cases. She stumbles across the huge abandoned house and hears about the unsolved mystery of the missing boy, and decides to delve into figuring out what happened there. Morton writes from the perspectives of all the family members at different ages, but most everything is set from 1933 and 2003, the year the boy disappeared and the year Sadie decides to solve the case. Of course, everything is figured out in the end, with a happy ending (but, like I said, a little too convenient for me).

The one thing I didn't like about this book was the disappearance of the eleven-month-old boy (although, not to spoil it or anything, it's not foul play or anything). Graham is eleven months old right now. I don't even like thinking about it.