Lisa is a young mother who is escaping her abusive husband by escaping from London to the wilds of Yorkshire with her son. A parallel tale is also told alongside Lisa's about a young girl who lived in the house some years before who was brought up by her ex-soldier father in a subsistence lifestyle. The plot of the story seems to hold all the right elements of danger, abuse, and people who are not what they seem to be but I'm afraid that I didn't find the writing style to my taste. So much of the book was about how scared Lisa was, how worthless her abusive husband had left her feeling, how much the kid disliked her etc etc. I felt the plot barely moved on at all for most of the middle of the book.

Ať už jsem na základě anotace čekala cokoliv, tohle to rozhodně nebylo. Jsem poměrně zklamaná, hlavní postavy jsou neosobní, mě docela nesympatické a ploché, za srdce mě nechytl příběh ani jedné z nich, i když dle mého byly všechny hrané převážně na city. A i když se jedná v podstatě o 3 samostatné a dost kontroverzní životní příběhy, jejichž aktéři se setkávají a osudy prolínají, přijde mi, že jejich spojením vzniká spíše přehnaně překombinovaný miš maš, než kniha, která rozpoutá emoce.

Okay this was just silly. There were plot holes so big that they were plot tunnels. It unfolds in dual narratives 15 years apart. Lisa is a woman on the run from her abusive husband with her three year old son. She is hiding in a decrepit house in Yorkshire, dusty and neglected, with no electricity or running water. We also learn about Grace, who lived there as a child 15 years earlier and whose diary is still in the house. We know from the prologue that someone kills a man, but we don't know which storyline that refers to.

This is a quick read and it's atmospheric but I didn't believe in any of it and I didn't care about the people or what happened to them.

Rowan Isle House, a single house on a remote lake in the Yorkshire Dales, worn and tired twenty years ago, and even more so now.

Twenty years ago, the house on the lake was inhabited by a man and his daughter. The man has been to war and clearly suffers from severe PTSD, he seems incapable of raising his daughter like any other girl, and has created a kind of army-like environment, treating her like a soldier in training. They live in seclusion, they don’t go to work or school and they live off the land. For the longest time the daughter thinks this is normal, but then she hits puberty and while she doesn’t mind all the soldier stuff – after all it’s what she’s used to – she also wants to do normal teenage things, strike up a friendship, swim in the lake, but her dad can’t deal with that… This part of the story to has a vibe similar to The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne, and it hit it me right in the feels. I felt for the little soldier girl, but also for her father. To me it seems crystal clear that he loves her deeply and he wants her to be safe and happy but his mind is so warped that he doesn’t know how to do that in a normal fatherly manner.

In 2018, Lisa and her three-year-old boy arrive at the house on the lake. Lisa is obviously troubled, running away from something or someone and the relationship with her son is obviously strained. It doesn’t help that the house is in a much worse state than she thought it would be, there’s no electricity, no running water, no heating, and the townsfolk seem to be hiding things from her. This part of the story was very intriguing, however much we find out about Lisa, there always seems to be a part that remains hidden. How did she even know about Rowan Isle House, and what happened to its previous inhabitants?

Jumping back and forth between these two storylines, The House on the Lake captivated me from the shocking prologue to the highly satisfying finale, keeping me on my toes throughout. Once again, Nuala Ellwood has crafted a beautiful, gripping tale that tickled my spidey senses but also hit me in the feels. A story about losing control and taking control, about suppressed anger finding a way out, about friendship, about love, about coming home. Recommended!

Thanks to Penguin Books and NetGalley for the eARC! All opinions are my own.

Every male character in this book is glorified garbage. Lisa has no logic whatsoever, living in a house that has no water or electricity for the most part and think it's a great idea??? Her boy is the most annoying kid character ever and how much he's attached to his abusive and controlling father irks me to the core. Grace's father might suffer from PTSD, but the trauma he put Grace through disgusts me to the core. Yet at the end Grace's father is still somehow shown in a sympathetic light bc his trauma?? But trauma doesn't justify abuse and treating his daughter like shit. This is a thriller with no murder or anything exciting for it going on in the first 40% of the book and it's seriously a perfect waste of time.

Very good book, took a few turns that I’d not expected. It set the scene well and felt quite obvious but it was a real ride!

Kinda creepy but more psychologically