Book Review – On Mystic Lake
On Mystic Lake
Author – Kristin Hannah
Pages – 404
Fiction
Annie Colwater has it all….a handsome husband, Blake, who’s a very successful attorney, a beautiful teenage daughter, Natalie, who’s doing her last semester of high school abroad in England before starting college in the fall, a huge house by the ocean in California, and a best friend, Terri. She’s spent the last almost 20 years being the perfect wife and mother and takng care of others. It doesn’t matter if no one takes care of her. As long as everyone else is happy, then so is Annie…..until the day her husband looks her in the eye and tells her he wants a divorce because he’s in love with another woman. All of a sudden Annie doesn’t know who she is anymore, or what she’s supposed to do with her life now.
She heads home to Mystic, Washington to spend some time with her dad, lick her wounds, and figure out what she’s supposed to do with her life now. While there she gets reacquainted with Nick Delacroix, the first boy who ever kissed her, the boy who married her childhood best friend Kathy. It turns out that Kathy is dead, and Nick and his little girl Izzy have completely fallen apart. Enter Annie the caretaker. She helps Nick battle his demons and reconnect with his little girl, and helps little Izzy deal with the grief of not only losing her mother, but of also losing her father for a period of time. The three of them become a family of sorts. Nick and Annie fall in love all over again, and Annie likes the woman she’s become while in Mystic.
But then Blake calls…..and then shows up. He wants Annie back. And then Annie gets news that turns her world upside down and forces her to make a choice that no woman in love should ever have to make.
Nick tells her….Love matters….maybe it’s the only thing that does. But will it be enough?
I have to say, Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read almost all her books and honestly cannot say there’s been one I didn’t like. I highly recommend her. Her stuff would probably be considered "chick lit" by most, but there’s always a lesson, if not more than one, to be learned from her books.