Harrow Lake

Welcome to Harrow Lake.

Someone's expecting you.

Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker - she thinks nothing can scare her.

But when her father is brutally attacked in their New York apartment, she's swiftly packed off to live with a grandmother she's never met in Harrow Lake, the eerie town where her father's most iconic horror movie was shot. The locals are weirdly obsessed with the film that put their town on the map - and then there are strange disappearances, which the police seem determined to explain away.

And there's someone - or something - stalking her every move.

The more Lola discovers about the town, the more terrifying it becomes. Because Lola's got secrets of her own. And if she can't find a way out of Harrow Lake, they might just be the death of her . . .

Many thanks to The Write Reads and Penguin for a review copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review and for allowing me to be a part of this blog tour. Quotes are taken from an unfinished version and may differ from the final product.

It’s basically summer, and summer is the perfect time for reading thrillers. Pretty sure that’s a thing for people. If not, it should be. After all, the sun stays out longer, so really, that’s fewer hours that you need to stay awake waiting for the darkness to rise up and tear you asunder or drag you to some other hideous realm or … do whatever it is darkness does. There’s less night, is what I’m saying. Which is handy, because phew, this book should not be read at night if you’re easily scared like I am.

Harrow Lake is a dark, creepy book where one town’s local boogeyman becomes a little too real for a New York girl who visits there. But sometimes boogeymen exist for a reason.

This one was really hard for me to rate, especially, because I don’t do half ratings, but this felt a lot like a half to me. Not a three, but not quite a four. And what do you do with that? Aside from drink. Drinking is always an option. Ultimately, I went with three stars, but what even are stars, really? Other than fireflies stuck in the big bluish-black thing, of course.

Since we’re all here for the spooky, let’s talk about that first. I’d say this is more psychological thriller than horror, but whatever you want to classify it, it’s downright creepy, and I loved it.

I read a lot of early reviews for this blog tour (benefits of going almost last), and everyone was talking about the creep factor. 20% in I was like pfffft, what wussies everyone is. This isn’t that bad. By 35%, I had all the lights in my house on, and by 50%, I had forsaken sleep, because I live in a rural place and there’s tapping everywhere and OMG I DIDN’T HANG ANYTHING ON THE BONE TREE, EITHER, AND WHAT IF THAT’S MISTER JITTERS AT THE WINDOW?

I mean, first, I’d be a little curious why he was here and not at Harrow Lake. But second, I’d probably invite him in, because it’d be rude not to. And then third, he’d … I dunno, eat me? This is why I’d clearly not survive being the protagonist of a thriller.

Ellis does a fabulous job of playing with the small-town setting and feeding into the local lore that every small town has.

I, too, came from a small town. Equally as white. Maybe slightly more modern (hey, we had cell phone service eventually, at least … AND a Subway). But of course we had our local legends, because what else are all these people going to do once they’re tired of seeing the same faces every day for the rest of their lives? Invent new faces! And why not make them scary? More fun that way.

For Harrow Lake, the local legend is Mister Jitters, and there’s plenty of superstition surrounding him, which weaves this pervasively eerie atmosphere, with a subtle hint of dread.

It was fine until it wasn’t, basically. When things start to go downhill, they really go downhill. I enjoyed the quaint town as a setting, and it really helped ramp up the creep factor.

More than just the setting or monsters lurking in the dark yearning to eat your bones, one of the creepiest things about this book is the relationship between Lola and her father, Nolan.

In fact, there’s a theme here of fathers and daughters and their relationships that I really don’t want to discuss. Suffice it to say that the first red flag is that Lola calls her father Nolan and thinks nothing of it. But ohoho, that’s mild. It gets so much worse from there. Lola appears to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, and this may be a spoiler if it wasn’t apparent almost immediately that something in this dynamic is just a bit off.

While it’s clear to the reader almost immediately, Lola has to discover her own independence bit by bit, which was one of my favorite parts of the book. Kids tend to want to love their parents, no matter what, and often see them as larger than life. So the transformation in her ended up being a really powerful one for me, and it’s one of the things I particularly enjoyed about this book.

There’s the requisite teen romance in this book, and whether that’s a good thing or bad thing depends on what you’re after, I suppose.

For me, it was unnecessary. It didn’t add anything to the story, and it didn’t seem to go anywhere. It’s one of those points that ended up dropped in the ending and had no clear wrap-up, which was frustrating for me. Then again, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: not every book needs a romance. No, not even YA. This relationship would’ve been stronger (and less frustrating about not being “wrapped up”) if it were just a friendship.

On the other hand, for a teenager who’s just earning her freedom and getting out from the oppressive thumb of her father? A light fling is realistic. Probable, even. Despite the fact that nothing actually happens. So this could really go either way. For the target audience, as teenagers, at least having feelings of attraction and such would be totally relatable, even if nothing happens, and maybe, in one aspect, that’s actually a fresh approach to the YA romance front, where not every romance needs to blossom into a lifelong love affair. Maybe a little teen flirting and banter suffices.

Lola has an obsession with doing the Optimal thing (capitalized like that), and it became extremely repetitive.

This could have been just a quirky character trait if it had some more grounding. There’s mention that it comes from her father, who relies on logic, but instead of just trying to suss out what the most logical thing in any situation would be, she uses Optimal. What would be Optimal? I was not a fan of this.

First, it didn’t end up being rooted in something solid enough for me. Not a quote from her father or something ingrained in her from her childhood. I think it would’ve gone over better for me, personally, if there had been a more solid grounding. Even so, the word itself paired with how often it was used just felt super clunky to me.

I loved the ending, but it still felt like there were strings blowing in the wind from the middle section of the book.

Not everything was as tied up as I’d have hoped, and there’s a lot of extrapolation and guesswork a reader has to do. I can’t talk about it too much, because it’s treading too close to spoiler territory. Wouldn’t want to slip.

What I will say is that when you find out the truth of the matter, not everything quite adds up in the end. Maybe it was just me. I loved the conclusion of Lola’s arc, but then I thought back to the rest of the novel and was like … wait … what about this? This ending doesn’t explain X, Y, and Z that happened. Whether this bothers you or not depends on the sort of reader you are. I love my thriller tied up with a neat, little bow, and it didn’t quite explain away everything.

As far as good mental health rep, this book hasn’t got it, so if that’s a potential trigger for you, give this a pass.

I’m not a huge fan of the “mental illness as a plot point” trope in thriller, and this isn’t necessarily that … but just barely. Harrow Lake manages to just skirt blaming mental illness for things, though it is clear throughout the book that Lola has some mental health problems. On the one hand, they make perfect sense to the plot, and they’re pretty realistic, given everything that happens. The biggest problem for me was just that they weren’t addressed in any way, so like above, the idea that she had these problems is kind of left blowing in the wind, with no conclusion.