The Woman in the Lake

The Woman in the Lake by Nicola Cornick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
I was pretty excited to read this book, having really enjoyed the author’s previous work. Threads of suspense, danger, romance, and the supernatural were woven together through a mysterious yet breathtakingly beautiful golden dress. The dress led to lies, violence, jealousy, and murder when it was created in 18th century England, and it seems to be causing the same kind of problems in the present day. The dress was given to a noblewoman by her abusive husband, and manages to make its way to the present day, where it exerts a dark influence on Fen, who stole the dress while on a field trip when she was young.
The story is told from two main time periods, and from the point of view of three characters—the noblewoman and her maid in the 1760s, and Fenulla in the present day. The dress that the story is based around apparently can cause time travel, because Fenulla takes it from 1763 to her own time. As the book goes on we learn more about each of the three main characters and the events leading to a murder described in the prologue of the book. The sense of mystery, forbidding, and danger intensifies as the reader moves through the story.
While I thought that The Phantom Tree was a very intriguing book, this one just fell flat for me. The characters felt one-dimensional and their motivations didn’t make sense or feel organic. Their backstories were not well-explained and so I did not understand why they were making certain decisions or behaving in certain ways. The story also felt disjointed. The reader already knew what the 1760s timeline was heading to, so there really wasn’t much of a mystery there, also the author did do a good job of evoking an oppressive sense of doom. In the present-day storyline, it felt like the author couldn’t decide if she should focus on problems created by Fenulla’s kleptomaniac tendencies, the seemingly supernatural dress, or a mentally-abusive former husband. While I didn’t want to put the book down because I really wanted to know what would happen next, when I read the last line I just found myself saying, “Oh. Well...okay.”
I needed to know more about the dress. Because it was such an integral part of the story, more details on its creation would have really added to the story. Could it “really” exert influence over its owners? And not to give anything away, but since the dress seemed almost sentient, it certainly picked a strange end for itself.
Also, especially in the present-day, the characters accepted various supernatural events much easier than I would have. “When I was younger we entered a time-warp and I stole a dress, but it has had no real affect on me and I left it at my grandma’s house, but now that she is dead I have it back & it is apparently evil.” “Oh. Ok! Makes sense!” I think most people would have a harder time believing all that.
And the time-travel aspect was not really explained well, or even necessary. The dress was essentially only in the possession of two different people. If it had come down through the years causing its subsequent owners to commit various nefarious and evil deeds that would have added a much-needed depth. But the time-traveling just really served no purpose.
I would call this a quick, light read, but definitely not one of the author’s best. I will read books by this author again, but I’m not sure that I would recommend this one.


View all my reviews