Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Back in January 2014, I had a glimpse of a prequel short-story, Waking Kate, that Ms Allen had put up for fan of hers. It was enjoyable to get a feel of her upcoming Lost Lake and I was so excited that I grabbed this book days after its launch.

Lost Lake tells us the story after Kate's husband had passed away and how she decided to visit Lost Lake, a place where she held her childhood memories, to get away from her mother-in-law. In this place, she met up with her Aunt Eby and a boy, Wes,  who she almost lost her first kiss to. The sparks between them flew almost immediately after reuniting with each other. When Kate realised that Aunt Eby was going to give up Lost Lake to Wes's uncle as she could no longer upkeep this place and was hoping to return to Paris to relief her memory of her dead husband, Kate decided that she wanted to save this place. For herself and for her daughter, Devin. However, her mother-in-law had better ideas of how she wanted to make us of Kate for own her political benefits so things are definitely not going as smoothly as Kate hoped.

With her aggressive mother-in-law, a man she loved but with a dark secret and her daughter who kept talking about a mysterious alligator, how was she going to save Lost Lake and bring it back to how it was to be when she had first visited.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and it was a pretty good read but I was very disappointed in it. Unlike other books by Ms Allen, the magical feel is just not in this book. Ghost and Alligator does't impress me nor spoke out to me. I had a hard time trying to blend the alligator into the story. What's worse was just days after finishing this book, I almost couldn't remember the characters in it.

For a book that was listed under the magical realism genre, this book definitely did not contains any magic in it. As I knew that Ms Allen is in remission of her cancer and this is her first release since her illness, I am hoping that this is just a book to get her back into writing. Although I have to say that this is my least favourite of her book (Oh yes, I have read every single book of hers and I loved almost everyone of them), I am still looking forward to her future work.