In the Shadow of Lakecrest [book review]

In the Shadow of Lakecrest by Elizabeth Blackwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I bought this book as a Kindle First offering in January 2017 at a highly discounted price. The expected publication date for this book is February 1, 2017.

From the first chapter, this book reminded me of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a Gothic romance first published in 1983. Like Rebecca, In the Shadow of Lakecrest is about a young working class woman who marries a wealthy man with a mysterious background. In fact, the parallels are conspicuous, at least in the beginning—the narrator in Rebecca was a lady’s companion and the narrator in In the Shadow of Lakecrest is a governess, both were on holiday with their respective employers when they met their wealthy husband-to-be, and finally, the story centers around the family manor and family’s mysterious past.

I had read Rebecca a few years ago and the beginning of this book, I would say the first quarter of the book, greatly paralleled Rebecca, so much so that I began to wonder if the author just rewrote the du Maurier novel with minor changes in characters and premise. But Lakecrest soon diverged into its own storyline.

In the Shadow of Lakecrest is a light gothic novel about a young governess and companion to wealthy daughters who snags and marries a rich businessman with a mysterious family past. Kate Moore and her rich husband, Matthew Lemont, returns to live at his family’s estate in the pre-Depression Chicago suburbs, where Kate feels ill-equipped to handle an overbearing mother-in-law and high-spirited sister-in-law. She learns that her husband is not the calm and confident man she married and is instead haunted by nightmares of a past that has affected his mental health. She discovers unsavory family secrets and the mysterious disappearance of Matthews aunt.

The story started out well with the build-up of the characters’ relationships and the suspenseful build-up of the family secrets and mysteries. But I feel like the story devolved by the second half of the book, both in the storyline and in the behavior of the characters, which could not be explained by the events that were occurring. It made it difficult to remain empathic to the characters. The storyline also devolved with the seemingly random occurrence of events, like Matthew’s twin sister suddenly eloping with a British nobleman and the summer storm that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the Lemont’s annual party, pushing the story into its final stages.

The second half of the story was fast and disjointed where the first half moved at a steady pace that carefully laid out the story. I enjoyed reading it up to a point, and then I was just rushing to finish the story and to find out what happens at the end. The build-up and the suspense was atmospheric and gripping, but the reveals and the resolutions were underwhelming, not to mention the uncharacteristic personality twists that Kate’s character went through was ungrounded in her character build-up from the beginning of the book.

There are many great elements in this book that I feel were not fully fleshed-out and was not given the attention that they deserved to be a truly remarkable read, though it is a quick and entertaining read for those not overly-concerned with the writing.

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