The House on the Lake
by Holly Hill Mangin
I had the pleasure of welcoming Holly Hill Mangin to our
library recently on a visit from her home in France. She had grown up in the
area and went to college regionally but then life took her to France where she
now lives with her family and works.
Prior to her reading and author talk at our library, I had
the chance to read her book. I was very impressed at the level of writing and
editing from a fairly new author. It seems like even with books from long time
authors in big publishing houses, there are a number of mistakes in every book,
but I did not find that here. Her language was very fluid and natural too, a
good balance of sentence structure which you might not notice but is very
pleasing to the reader.
The story itself reminded me of Lois Duncan books of my
teens, the young characters confronted with a spooky situation they must puzzle
out. I can honestly say that out of all the possible outcomes I imagined for
the book, the end was different and very satisfactory.
The story beings when Eve Beckett wakes up in a house on an
island. How this could have happened is a mystery as she is terrified of water.
The two caretakers cannot, or will not, shed any light on how she got there. As
she talks with them, her mirror twin arrives in the kitchen, uncertain how she
got there either. As Eve begins to explore the manor house, the mystery
deepens.
At first the book reminded me a bit of The Haunting of Hill
House as the house itself starts to take on a life of its own with rooms moving.
There’s also the added mystery of the young man who represents the owners of
the house and his brother who is there too. The young man seems okay but there
is something sinister about his brother and yet Eve is drawn to him.
What unfolds is a mix of psychological thriller, young romance,
and house mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the
sequel, which we are assured is coming. In fact, the author told us that the
idea for The House on the Lake came
out of a dream she had about exploring an old house and what she found in the
rooms. As she wrote, she found she had two books in one and when she separated
them out, that was when this book really came to life. The next book she plans
to write will be from the viewpoint of the twin sister. I look forward to
reading it!
We purchased one copy of the book for the teen section of
our library and I gratefully accepted a second copy from the author for the
adult fiction section. I hope some people will find it and enjoy it.
As every author knows, book talks are uncertain for any
author. This was the first time Holly had done one so we corresponded a little
about how to set it up and decided to do a fire side chat in our Reading Room
at the library, where people might overhear and wander in.
This has its advantages and disadvantages. As she was
reading, the conversations from the Circulation Desk were a bit intrusive but
she did very well in maintaining her focus on reading. I can only hope it
wasn’t too much of a distraction for the people who attended.
It seemed to me that a couple people who attended were old
school friends of hers, and several were family members, as is not unusual.
Serendipitously, two board members from another library had stopped in to see
our library after giving blood nearby and decided to join the book talk, buying
a copy of the newest book for each of them and one for their library. They
contributed many questions to keep the discussion lively.
I also had a list of questions for the author about her
writing experience and the book. One of the things I asked was about how she
started writing. Many of us have the interest in writing but need some trigger
to get us started and something to help us follow through. For Holly it was an
author she had followed on Facebook. He had posted that he was looking for
someone to co-write a book with and she responded. After some correspondence,
he decided they would work well together and she co-wrote a book with him.
Holly has several other books available on Amazon and I look
forward to reading them. I wish her well in her writing and publishing journey!
