Fall Into Reading Book Review

I just finished off another of my books for the Fall Into Reading Challenge list.  I can't believe there is only one month left to the challenge.  I'm feeling a bit behind somehow and I think that is because of the fact I started a book and then decided not to continue it, so that was like a waste of reading time for me.  But it's not a race, right?  It's about enjoying the reading and plugging away at those books that I've been wanting to get to.

"Lake of Dreams" by Kim Edwards


 Lucy Jarret lives in Japan with her boyfriend Yoshi.  Having recently lost her job, Lucy feels unsettled in all aspects of her life, including her relationship with Yoshi.  When news comes that her mother has been in an accident and has hurt her arm, upon Yoshi's suggestion Lucy decides to return to the States to lend a hand until her mother can heal.  But returning to Lake of Dreams has stirred up all the reasons why Lucy left.  The drowning death of her father ten years before still haunts her and she is thrown for a loop when she returns to find her mother dating another man and that her old love now has a glass business in town.  Restless and not knowing where she belongs she comes across some papers in her family's home from the early 1900's as well as a few handwritten notes written by a person named Rose.  Her attention is captured and she sets out to find out who this Rose was and how she was connected to her family.  What she unearths changes her and her family's lives.

I really enjoyed the major parts of  this story though did find it a tad slow going in the beginning.  But once the mystery started building it was hard to put down.  The author's attention to detail about the historical aspects of the suffrage movement of the early century was really interesting and I liked how it was woven into the the contemporary part of the story through the family connection.  The dilemmas that women faced and hard choices they had to make because of the views of the times were told through the life story of Rose as Lucy discovered it.  I enjoyed reading of Lucy's journey to discovering herself through her almost obsession of finding what happened to Rose.  There were a few aspects of the story that were frustrating to me and those were the parts I didn't enjoy.   The whole part of the comet I could have done without, to me it was just another detail that I had to remember and when it came up later in the story I found myself thinking "oh yeah, that was in here".  Lucy's selfishness was sometimes annoying and her reactions were sometimes those of a teenager and not a 30 year old who'd lived around the world but as you read on she seems stuck at the point her father drowned and is not able to move emotionally from there.  A very frustrating part of the story for me occured when a secret was revealed accidentally and the mother in her excitement insisted on disclosing that she knew, no matter the consequence or the fallout or the feelings involved.  I found that quite unrealistic, at least compared with mothers that I know. I  did close the book feeling satisfied with the ending and that the story was complete (not always the feeling I get with some novels).