Book Review – Lakesedge

Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my bookish little corner of the internet! After sharing my interview with author Lyndall Clipstone for the Lakesedge blog tour recently, which you can read here, I’m now sharing my review of this fabulous gothic book.

Synopsis
There are monsters in the world.

When Violeta Graceling arrives at haunted Lakesedge estate, she expects to find a monster. She knows the terrifying rumors about Rowan Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem.

There are monsters in the woods.

As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably drawn…

There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.

Now, to save Rowan—and herself—Leta must confront the darkness in her past, including unraveling the mystery of her connection to the Lord Under.

Review
In this beautiful mannor by the edge of a black lake, secrets wait. No one is more keen to reveal all those secrets than Leta…. but at the same time, she is equally as keen to hide the secrets that her own brother, Arien, has at his fingertips. She has protected him since he was a babe in arms, beyond an extent that even he understands, and one that we are only slowly allowed to see pieces of as the book continues.

Leta is prickly and protective of Airen, so when the local Lord appears at the tithe and decideds Airen is coming with him, Leta forces his hand into taking her with him too. She quickly regrets her decision but digs her heels in, hoping to make Airen’s life just a bit easier by being close to him – and in turn, maybe make Rowan’s just a bit more difficult.

However, Rowan and Leta have more in common than it first seems, and the grow close, trusting each other with parts of themselves that they’ve been scared to bring to the surface; the secrets they hide, and that one secret they both have that no one else will undertsand… Their coversations with the Lord Under, and the sacrifices they made to him.

The character development we see in Rowan and Leta both individually and in their support of one another is heart warming, as is the love between Leta and Arien. They have the kind of sibling dynamic that makes you look at your own sibling and wonder when you last called him. Or called him names, at least. Arien is another character who grows and grows, utterly thriving in the enviroment that the estate provides for him, and he really comes into himself, and out of himself, all at once.

It’s a beautiful, creepy, wonderful book that I won’t forget for a long time. All the characters – aside from Mother – grew on me, even the Lord Under, and it made me just want to see more of all of them. I wanted the book to just continue but wanted to finish it at the same time, because I needed to see how it all concluded.

Written with eerie skill and a brilliant magic system that fits right in to my list of unique magic systems, I can’t wait to see where this story goes next, and what the author will turn her attention to at the end of this planned duology.

Thanks so much for stopping by for this review of one of my top reads in September. I absolutely adored this book, just in case this review doesn’t make it clear, and I can’t recommend it enough. Be sure to stop by for more posts ranging from interviews to reviews!