The Lake Club, Lina Patton (Review by Abigail Blake)

Part thriller, part social commentary, Lina Patton’s debut brings a little bit of everything to the table. Small town secrets start to bubble to the surface at the wealthy Lake Club during one brutal post-COVID summer. Told through the differing perspectives of mildly snobby club-member Danika and young twenty-something club-worker Augie, both women’s shared interest in Danika’s family’s new manny (male nanny) Chat leads to explosive revelations both new and old. Augie, recently returned from her first big-girl job—tail between legs after a startling office affair—immediately and accidentally hits it off with Chat. Their one-night-intended stand after a party becomes a budding relationship that threatens to derail all the secrets everyone in this town has been holding on to. Danika’s mysterious obsession with Chat goes beyond the standard employer/employee– without drifting into anything sexual– yet still comes with an enraging air of possessiveness. Chat himself, and at least four other side characters, are guarding their own secrets, the most significant of which are embroiled in a tragic accident that happened 12 years prior. At the Lake Club, everyone is hiding something. While this air of mystery meanderingly steers the plot towards that of a typical cold-case thriller, the novel delves into much more than that. Using Danika and Augie as contrasting main characters sheds light on class struggles and explores the mistakes, freedoms, and triumphs of young adulthood. Danika is a married mom of two who yearns for the opportunities of her less tied down youth while ten-year younger Augie wrestles with feeling stuck, struggling to see how many options she still has for herself and her life. Danika’s wealth, entitlement, and jealousy towards Augie create a cringe-worthy tension in each of their interactions and fuels Augie’s compulsion to figure out what Mrs. Crawley is hiding. Additionally, multiple influential men exploit their power dynamic with the women financially/socially beneath them through sex, employment, and money. All in all, the novel is a fascinating read that takes on a lot of challenging themes and still manages to end succinctly and satisfyingly.