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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a suspense book, and as such I feel incapable of getting into the things I feel about it without spoilers. I'll briefly discuss the rating first and then shout in the spoiler tags. So!
Three stars, because I finished the book, despite shouting "I hate this why are you like this" several times near the end. There were genuinely compelling bits of writing, and I wanted to see a resolution badly enough that I stuck it out. The audiobook reader is also very fine, I would listen to other books that she has narrated.
I got here via a "dark academia with girls" rec list; one of two of the suggested titles that I could find in print (or, well, in audiobook). Is there a lot of Latin, and Classical allusions? yes. poetry? yes. boarding school, the past coming to eat the present, Girl Friendships Gone Terribly Dependent & Wrong, yes. A minor character is a lesbian and talks about her struggle with institutional homophobia? yes.
Is it a Bad Mystery?
ALSO YES.
oh my god there is a soap opera amount of switched babies, dead babies, secret families, incest, murder, and (genuinely creepy but mostly frustrating) that feeling where systems of power leave you desperate with nothing to fight as they threaten your life! But a lot of this is plagued by the old "there's an obvious solution for the reader but the protagonist won't see it and/or will do the worst possible thing" which is just reader-frustrating not tension-frustrating.
Is there some Real "I Guess Maybe You Tried This Was The Early 80s Or Something??"* approaches to mental health, where I spent 3 hours going "WHY DID YOU LET THE PSYCHOLOGIST HAVE UNFETTERED AND UNSUPERVISED ACCESS TO THE STUDENT WHO JUST THREW A ROCK THROUGH A WINDOW BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH SHE DOESN'T LIKE THE THERAPIST" and hoping she got stabbed.
this is a book where no one knows how to talk about mental health which is painful given how much the book talks about mental health
I have not even gotten started on the bad detective/police practices here, and while everyone is busy blaming themselves for things Roy Cory doesn't even spend a second going "well i baited a murderer using the unknowing protag and then she killed a student with a spear"
*wait i'm sorry i just realized this was published in 2003 and therefore has no excuses for ...anything
I did get bloody satisfaction at the end, so, a point for that. But I really cannot recommend this book, unless you like shouting, in which case, there's a lot of things to shout about.
Three stars, because I finished the book, despite shouting "I hate this why are you like this" several times near the end. There were genuinely compelling bits of writing, and I wanted to see a resolution badly enough that I stuck it out. The audiobook reader is also very fine, I would listen to other books that she has narrated.
Spoiler
I got here via a "dark academia with girls" rec list; one of two of the suggested titles that I could find in print (or, well, in audiobook). Is there a lot of Latin, and Classical allusions? yes. poetry? yes. boarding school, the past coming to eat the present, Girl Friendships Gone Terribly Dependent & Wrong, yes. A minor character is a lesbian and talks about her struggle with institutional homophobia? yes.
Is it a Bad Mystery?
ALSO YES.
oh my god there is a soap opera amount of switched babies, dead babies, secret families, incest, murder, and (genuinely creepy but mostly frustrating) that feeling where systems of power leave you desperate with nothing to fight as they threaten your life! But a lot of this is plagued by the old "there's an obvious solution for the reader but the protagonist won't see it and/or will do the worst possible thing" which is just reader-frustrating not tension-frustrating.
Is there some Real "I Guess Maybe You Tried This Was The Early 80s Or Something??"* approaches to mental health, where I spent 3 hours going "WHY DID YOU LET THE PSYCHOLOGIST HAVE UNFETTERED AND UNSUPERVISED ACCESS TO THE STUDENT WHO JUST THREW A ROCK THROUGH A WINDOW BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH SHE DOESN'T LIKE THE THERAPIST" and hoping she got stabbed.
this is a book where no one knows how to talk about mental health which is painful given how much the book talks about mental health
I have not even gotten started on the bad detective/police practices here, and while everyone is busy blaming themselves for things Roy Cory doesn't even spend a second going "well i baited a murderer using the unknowing protag and then she killed a student with a spear"
*wait i'm sorry i just realized this was published in 2003 and therefore has no excuses for ...anything
I did get bloody satisfaction at the end, so, a point for that. But I really cannot recommend this book, unless you like shouting, in which case, there's a lot of things to shout about.
My roommate wrangled me into reading this book after her book club did. At first, I was very reluctant but once I got into the book, I found it to be very enjoyable. While the beginning was slow, the book picks up in the middle and churns out a plot that reminds me of a V. C. Andrews book. It's not a book I would read if I wanted to think but it was a good distraction during finals week.
I find myself once more in the awkward position of rating a book slightly higher than I think it really deserves. This is not a three-star book, however, and since I can't give half stars, four stars it is.
The Lake of Dead Languages was actually quite a rich, detailed book, but it falls more toward the "good, mindless summer read" side of my scale than toward the "deep and meaningful" side. Basically this is a pseudo-ghost story disguising a mystery novel, which works really well, actually. Jane Hudson, recently divorced and with a small child, returns to her old boarding school as the Latin mistress. Once she's settled in, mysterious events that harken back to her own, troubled past at the school begin to occur with startling frequency. The plot moves along at a nice pace, if a little slower than is usual for this sort of book, and the cast of characters was well fleshed out. I found myself wondering once or twice why no one had made the book into a movie yet, since it seems like the sort of thing Hollywood would love to turn into suspense/horror.
I did have a few problems with the book, though, most of which center around what might be a deliberate flaw in Jane's character on the part of the author. Jane is too trusting and doesn't question the things people tell her, or her initial assumptions. This means that there are several times throughout the novel where I was shaking the book, trying to knock some sense into Jane, to get her to realize what had or was really about to happen. There were a few blatantly obvious plot points that I expected or suspected from the first few chapters of the book--one of which, the relationship between Matt and Lucy, any self-respecting V. C. Andrews fan would have caught in a matter of pages of their first introduction--and a few ham-handed attempts to let the reader know something Jane hasn't figured out yet that really just make you want to smack Jane for being obtuse.
But it was an easy, relaxing read, particularly nice after having finished the much heavier, more emotionally charged novel, The Book Thief, and I do feel like it's one I might recommend at some point as being a well-written if predictable book.
The Lake of Dead Languages was actually quite a rich, detailed book, but it falls more toward the "good, mindless summer read" side of my scale than toward the "deep and meaningful" side. Basically this is a pseudo-ghost story disguising a mystery novel, which works really well, actually. Jane Hudson, recently divorced and with a small child, returns to her old boarding school as the Latin mistress. Once she's settled in, mysterious events that harken back to her own, troubled past at the school begin to occur with startling frequency. The plot moves along at a nice pace, if a little slower than is usual for this sort of book, and the cast of characters was well fleshed out. I found myself wondering once or twice why no one had made the book into a movie yet, since it seems like the sort of thing Hollywood would love to turn into suspense/horror.
I did have a few problems with the book, though, most of which center around what might be a deliberate flaw in Jane's character on the part of the author. Jane is too trusting and doesn't question the things people tell her, or her initial assumptions. This means that there are several times throughout the novel where I was shaking the book, trying to knock some sense into Jane, to get her to realize what had or was really about to happen. There were a few blatantly obvious plot points that I expected or suspected from the first few chapters of the book--one of which, the relationship between Matt and Lucy, any self-respecting V. C. Andrews fan would have caught in a matter of pages of their first introduction--and a few ham-handed attempts to let the reader know something Jane hasn't figured out yet that really just make you want to smack Jane for being obtuse.
But it was an easy, relaxing read, particularly nice after having finished the much heavier, more emotionally charged novel, The Book Thief, and I do feel like it's one I might recommend at some point as being a well-written if predictable book.
This is one of the best, if not the best, of all the thrillers I've read!
This book managed to be somehow both enthralling and boring. I would find myself fascinated but also so very bored and ready to fall asleep while reading! The twists and turns- of which there were many- kept things exciting, but I can't say any of them were huge shocks as I had figured them out long before Jane Hudson. And after nearly 400 pages all the drama was wrapped up with little explanation as to why Candace would murder three innocent teenagers other than "her childhood was bad and she blamed you." And also why Lucy is such a psychopath! Having sex with her brother, hiding a pregnancy, possibly murdering and then concealing a baby, murdering her best friend, then drowning herself when her brother is mad she killed their incest baby (ok yes- they aren't even related BUT STILL)?! I did enjoy the novel for the most part, and it did keep me engaged enough that I wanted to finish the novel and find out the truth. But this book could have used a heavy dose of editing.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Similar in many ways to The Secret History (dead language students/scholars, school setting, murder amongst students, etc.), Goodman’s debut was suspenseful and complex in plot but also a little predictable. I had a pretty good hunch almost before half the story was over of who the "killer" was (and it was initially written as suicides in the plot to confuse the reader)...but the story more than made up for any predictability. She did a great job of going back and forth in time and revealing information piece by piece.
I had read another one of her books before this and really liked the book. In fact, I haven't read one of hers that I don't like yet. For me, Carol Goodman tells a really great suspense tale. She opulls me in and I don't usually want to put her books down. this one was wonderfully eerie and gripping.
I really liked this book, though it was disappointingly easy to see all of the plot twists coming. This didn't rip off The Secret History, it was more inspired by it and took on similar themes and plot devices. I would re-read it, and I would definitely recommend it to a friend.