A review by kari_f
Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone

2.5

I had some fairly high hopes for this book. The cover is fabulously gorgeous, the gothic vibe seemed like it would be on point, and the description sounded like it would be along the lines of a Naomi Novik sort of story that felt a bit Beauty and the Beast-ish. Why the book actually delivers though, was none of these things.

The gothic elements felt shallow in this book… so instead of atmospheric creepiness, I feel like we got a very elementary, almost Disney-fied cartoon version of “gothic.” The characters felt shallow as well, with the protagonist being very whiny and the side characters not having much depth. For a first-person narrated story, we didn’t get much depth even in the main character. Her thoughts and actions and even jokes are repetitive.

Much of this is in the writing style, I think, because the reader is told what is happening instead of shown what is happening.

There was an aspect of the book that bothered me… I am all for representation in literature, but it’s upsetting when diversity seems thrown in to be on trend instead of to give us deep stories with a variety of different types of people in them. The LGBTQIA+ representation in this book felt just like this…the mentions felt odd and out of place rather than genuine, which has me questioning the intent in including it.

This feels like a negative review so I do want to mention some aspects I enjoyed! There were a few little twists that I didn’t see coming, and I liked seeing where some of these led. I loved some of the side characters! (Though I wish we’d gotten more depth to them. Florence deserved better!) 

Overall, I was disappointed. I may read another book by the author in the future, but not anything in this series.