Book Review: Daughters of the Lake, by Wendy Webb

Guest review by: Becki Bayley

“How can you be sure it’s her?” Simon said, taking a bite of salad and examining the photo more closely. “I mean, this must’ve been taken, what, a century ago?”

“It’s her,” Kate said. “If I showed it to my dad and Johnny, they’d identify her as the woman we saw on the beach. But that just can’t be, right? It would make her body more than one hundred years old.”

“What if the woman in this photo and the woman on your beach were, say, mother and daughter, or grandmother and granddaughter?” Simon offered. “How do you know for sure it’s the same person?”

“That would make sense, if I hadn’t also been dreaming about the husband,” Kate said, her eyes shifting to the man’s handsome face. “I saw both of them, Simon.”

Kate’s thoughts drifted back to her dreams – there were no cell phones, no televisions, no electronics of any kind in any of the dreams. No cars. No modern music.

“I just sort of took it for granted that she was alive now – well, recently, anyway – but when I really think about it…”

“You think you’ve been dreaming about the past.”

What a fascinating story of  a legend of a bloodline, and the mystery that ensues when the story has not been passed along.

Official synopsis:

After the end of her marriage, Kate Granger has retreated to her parents’ home on Lake Superior to pull herself together—only to discover the body of a murdered woman washed into the shallows. Tucked in the folds of the woman’s curiously vintage gown is an infant, as cold and at peace as its mother. No one can identify the woman. Except for Kate. She’s seen her before. In her dreams…

One hundred years ago, a love story ended in tragedy, its mysteries left unsolved. It’s time for the lake to give up its secrets. As each mystery unravels, it pulls Kate deeper into the eddy of a haunting folktale that has been handed down in whispers over generations. Now, it’s Kate’s turn to listen.

As the drowned woman reaches out from the grave, Kate reaches back. They must come together, if only in dreams, to right the sinister wrongs of the past.

With so many alternating viewpoint books lately, this book was unique. It used alternating viewpoints between the woman Kate imagines from more than a hundred years earlier, and Kate as she experiences her own life and researches who the woman from her visions may be. Besides these viewpoints, there was a narrative of Kate as she viewed the world through the woman’s eyes. How terrifying to find herself trapped in a situation so long ago that she soon knew didn’t end well!

Some authors have a real gift for telling a story like it’s fact, and that was definitely the case here. The characters and their circumstances were given real life. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it for those who enjoy family dramas and mysteries.

{click here to purchase—currently free for Kindle Unlimited!}

Becki Bayley is a Gemini and mother of two. She enjoys reading, tracking her life in her paper planner, and posting to her blog, SweetlyBSquared.com.