Member Reviews
I have no idea why I requested this book as it really isn't my kind of read. However, it was amazing, it had me gripped from the very first page until the end. It was scary in places (I'm a total wimp where thrillers are concerned) and very suspenseful and atmospheric. I could feel the damp in that house, the angst of the small boy and the fear of the little girl. There were 2 storylines that ran alongside one another, cleverly written as you could sense where the stories were heading although the end was quite a surprise. It highlighted many modern day issues in an educated and empathetic way, Nuala has certainly done her research.
Thank you for NetGalley for an advance copy, thoroughly recommend!
Unfortunately I was hoping to read this book before publication date, but life got in the way I have read the NetGalley reviews which make this book sound like a must read, so I’m hoping to get to it in The not to distant future, when I will update my review.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the arc, which I have enjoyed reading.
The House on the Lake by Nuala Ellwood, was an amazing, totally engrossing read, which I have been reading throughout the course of a day.
It tells then stories of Lisa and Grace, two woman who both live at the house on the lake. It is an extremely sad story of the woman and their friend Isabel. It is a storyline of men controlling the women in their lives and the consequences of that behaviour on the individual women.
A masterclass in storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Really good plot, twisty and turny thriller. I loved how atmospheric it was too.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy.
Dark and atmospheric, the house on the lake is told on two time lines, but all based at Rowan house, the house that sits on the lake in a small village in Yorkshire, in the past there lived an unnamed girl with a military father who is trying to mold her into the perfect soldier and in the present Lisa and her 3 year old son Joe have arrived at Rowan house on the run from her ex partner.
This novel has lots of twists and turns, keeping up the suspense right to the final chapter. Definitely worth a read.
An intriguing novel with a lot of secrets between the lines.
I enjoyed this book, it kept me reading but I did feel it was a little drawn out and at times a little obvious.
I enjoyed the differences yet similarities between the two main characters and it was interesting reading them from different viewpoints and ages and times.
However, I didn't feel like this novel was original enough to be the next big thing.
Its a decent read, but not one that will stay with you.
This book tells the story of Lisa and Grace
Lisa is on the run with her 3 year old son Joe and arrives at what she hopes to be a safe place only to find a large run down house with no electricity or running water. Just where has her friend Grace sent her?
The book alternates between Grace in the past and Lisa now. It was an interesting read but I was left feeling like the ending had been rushed and I wasn’t surprised by the outcome either..
I would like to thank Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review
Lisa needs to run away and when a friend suggests Rowan Isle House it seems the perfect place.
However, when she arrives there, with Joe, her son , all isn't what she expected.
What has gone on in the house - who really is her friend and who can she trust?
This will have you gripped from start to finish - Brilliant
A thought provoking book which makes you question other people's realities. It jumped between past and present which I don't usually enjoy but there was enough background setting it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the story. Very atmospheric.
#TheHouseOnTheLake #NetGalley
So addictive that it kept me awake whole night.
Lisa wants to escape from her shitty husband with her son and start a fresh life. Her husband is abusive that's why she has taken that decision.
One day a woman came to visit their house and then she realises that she's not safe there with her son.
Told from two POV's, one of Lisa and one of a girl. This story is so addictive that i finished it in a few hours. The author's writing is great and i was surprised when i read that twist.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK for giving me an advance copy of this book.
This is my third book from Nuala Ellwood and I was looking forward to reading her new one. But unfortunately this one was not my cup of tea.
Spoilers ahead:
Let’s start with something I liked about the book. The atmosphere is creepy and gothic-like. You can tell almost immediately there is something not right about Lisa. She and her little son are on their way to a rural village in Northern England. Lisa has obvious kidnapped her baby boy. The child is behaving strangely. He is crying for his father and it seems Lisa has not a strong bond with him although she loves him very much. So you can tell that there is something strange about her story. She got the address for a safe house from a friend. But the house has been neglected for years. There is not water and electricity. At this point I kept myself asking what the heck Lisa is up to. Who would bring his child into this rotten house with mold on the walls and without a bathroom, heating and light in a freezing cold night.
Unfortunately from this point on the story drags. Lisa is not doing much other than fighting with her child and her thoughts are running in circles. There is another timeline. Here we meet a young girl, Grace, who grew up in this house with her father. He was a war veteran and obviously had PTSD. He raised her like a soldier and at first she was proud about it. But the older she got she senses that there is something wrong with her father and that maybe the world outside their house and the wood is not so dangerous after all.
For me the story was very unbelievable. It seems not very well crafted. There were a lot of ideas but the characters all fell flat and I could not connect to any of them. Lisa acts without due consideration. She wants to stay unnoticed but she behaves extremely odd when she meets with other people. That she stays in this nightmare of a house is very unbelievable. She is desperate for a reason, I got that. But seriously, staying there is a thread to the health of her son. Towards the end the story gets weird. I did not get Isobel, a women Lisa meets in the village, at all. The story gets more confusing with every page towards the end. Isobel is suddenly confessing a crime to Lisa out of the blue; Lisa’s husband arrives and takes their son away in a very weird scene and we never get to know what happened to him afterwards.
Grace’s storyline has also its share of unbelievable points. Her father is running around in the woods and the village with a gun and nobody cares about it. Nobody wonders what he is doing up there with his daughter. You must know that Grace’s timeline is around 2003, so it is not so long in the past. PTSD was already known at that time and I don’t think it is a common thing to run around armed in England.
This story ended in a mess. There were still questions unanswered. The previous books from this author were well written and had complex and believable stories. This one is just weird and not very well worked out.
Lisa runs from her life with her three year old son, Joe. She drives miles and miles to a friend's neglected , deserted and isolated childhood home. Lisa does not want to be found by her husband. However, she is visited by Isabel, a woman from the village and secrets gradually begin to unravel. Motives become apparent and clarity descends. Paralleling Lisa's story is that of her friend's peculiar upbringing in Rowan Isle House. And it was terrifying.
This is a page-turning novel. It is chilling, exquisitely constructed and beautifully written. We have a degree of sympathy for all ithe books main characters., even those we apparently realise we cannot trust. By the novel's end we do gain understanding.
'' Never say you know the last word about any human heart,' Henry James wrote in Louisa Pallant. I loved the line so much that I just read it again and again until I'd memorised it.....no one knows what goes on in my heart and they never will. I shall make sure of that.''
It's an atmospheric story about survival and what the characters do to survive. It's filled with twists and is chilling, suspenseful and wonderful. The pace is superb. I absolutely loved it , could not put it down and shall certainly read Nuala Ellwood's previous novels.
An edge of your seat thriller with an air of menace throughout. Brace yourself for a gallop through PTSD, hyper-vigilance, the messy tangles of love, and damaged parenting. You'll want to make sure the doors are locked and you've got a torch handy in case of power outages while reading this at night.
Really enjoyed this book. enjoyed the back and forth of past and present. didn't see the ending coming.
well written and descriptive for setting a scene.
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.
Lisa had taken her son away to a house she was told would be a safe place. It turns out too be barely habitable. She persists as she would rather live there than return to her overbearing husband, Mark. She meets a friendly local Isobel who helps her manage in the house, making it bearable for her and her for year old son.
Grace is the girl who used to live in the house by the lake. As we follow Lisa's progress we also learn about Grace and the unconventional lifestyle that she was brought up in. The stories of the two women is interlinked, more than first appears.
I really struggled with this book at the beginning. It took a while for me to get into it and it didn’t grab my attention. It got better about half way through but wasn’t really for me I’m afraid
a bit of a rough read two stories of abuse running throughout scary in places .a very busy storyline too busy really .
Lisa and her little son Joe are on the run, their only option a house by a lake - the address scrawled on a piece of paper - where an old friend has promised they can stay for free.
When they arrive, though, it’s not quite what she hoped for. Rowan Isle House is filthy, dilapidated and distinctly lacking in life’s little luxuries (such as electricity and running water). Lisa’s all out of alternatives, though, and she and Joe - screaming, hitting and demanding his daddy - are just going to have to make the best of it for a while. When a local woman, Isobel, turns up at the door she seems to offer something of a lifeline.
In parallel with Lisa’s narrative are diary entries written by a young girl, initially unnamed - she calls herself “Soldier” - who lived in the house fifteen years earlier with her PTSD-suffering father. These are compelling and powerful, if a little unbelievable that they could have lived the way they did for so long entirely free of any outside intervention (people in the village clearly knew they were there).
For much of the book, I found the story really intriguing and compelling, but the last part was vaguely disappointing. It felt like some things - for instance, Isobel’s dolls’ house and its inhabitants, the behaviour of Isobel’s father - were set up to promise more than they in fact delivered. Perhaps I was also half expecting a twist which didn’t come and connections between characters which turned out not to exist.
I never quite got a grip on the character of Lisa, and it felt there was a lack of sufficient information about her husband and marriage to understand how things turned out the way they did.
Overall, a frequently intriguing read which addresses issues of father-child relationships (there are four here, if you include Lisa’s deceased father, who is very present in her thoughts), abuse, identity and PTSD - which it is likely affects more than one character here. Mothers, aside from Lisa herself, are largely absent.
The house on the lake itself forms an atmospherically creepy backdrop to both stories - Lisa and “Soldier”.
A worthwhile read, if ultimately just a little unsatisfying.
The story begins with a mother arriving at a run down house on a lake. A safe house, where she has travelled with her young son. The story flits between the controlling relationship of Lisa and Mark and the previous occupants of the house, a father and daughter. The father is suffering from PTSD and is training his daughter to survive in the woods.
It’s a strange, claustrophobic read that deals with some deep, emotional issues and which, although well written, just felt slow and a tad tedious and difficult.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview this ARC.