Thursday 12 August 2021

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Quick Fire Review: Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis

Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis

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Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis


Published: 9th July 2020 | Publisher: Penguin | Source: Bought
Kat Ellis' Website

There's something bad in the water...

Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker, and thinks she knows all about Harrow Lake, the setting of his most famous movie.

But when her father is brutally attacked and she's sent there to stay with her reclusive grandmother, she realizes the town is harbouring secrets more horrifying than she could ever have imagined. Not only is this the place where her mother disappeared without a trace, it's a town holding on to a dark past that's even more frightening than her father's movies. As Lola is drawn deeper into the town's grip, she starts to question what's real, what happened to her mother, and whether she'll ever get out of Harrow Lake alive.
From The StoryGraph

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  • Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis is the second book I read after craving some horror, but was again another disappointment.
  • There are secrets being hidden in Harrow Lake, and those secrets become fairly obvious to the reader. And they're not great secrets. But they're nothing like what you expect. 
  • From about half way through, you realise what kind of story this actually is, and that nothing is really going to come of it. And as a horror novel, it quickly becomes ridiculous. Why is Lola so fixated on the myth of Mr Jitters? When nobody else is.
  • Harrow Lake is meant to be a horror, but it absolutely isn't a horror at all. People might want to call it a psychological horror, but I'd disagree. It would be a great book to read if you wanted to read about mental health and where the mind can take you. But as a reader, expecting to be scared, it was majorly disappointing.
  • This book had one moment that was truly scary; when a puppet - the one of the cover - moves of it's own accord. It's a moment, and that's it. But once you realise what's actually going on, which is really obvious to the reader, so isn't scary at all. There was a lot of eye-rolling.
  • I finished the book thinking, "Really? That's it?" Honestly, it felt like a waste of my time.
  • I want to point out that my negative reaction is about this book being a horror and the aspects that were meant to be scary, not at Lola's mental health. This book should have been marketed differently, I might have had a completely different reading experience.
  •  Other people really enjoyed this book, so do read other reviews before deciding whether or not you will.

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