Rating: 
Summary: Slow read
Review: I have to agree with the other reviewer, this book is boring. Lawson does a wonderful job with details and desribing the characters, however the overall content and plot are dull at best. The anticipation of learning what the main character is struggling with is so anticlimactic and just plain disappointing. I would never recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written but predictable
Review: Lawson is a masterful writer of descriptions and subtletly. She has a good understanding of psychology and found a good subject - four orphans living in a farm town, the two older brothers take care of the two little girls. But it is very easy to see what is going to happen pretty early on and this got in the way of my enjoyment. Kate was a pretty stock character - the insular person who finally discovers truths about herself in the end. A very good first effort. I agree with the reader who said framing the story in the "mystery" of what happened to Matt was unnecessary. Also, what is the deal with authors not describing the looks of the characters anymore. This really bugged me. We had no real idea of what anyone looked like.
Rating: 
Summary: Ahhhh It just pulled me in until I was done at the end!
Review: Ahhhh what can I say... a book this smooth, simple, real and a narrator that makes you feel like you are her..herself. What more can you ask for ?? This book made me laugh , made me cry and made me mad and made me wonder. Although I did want a little more from the end (like a real understanding between Matt and Kate) I did enjoy this book thoroughly and can only suggest for those of you seesawing on the brink of whether to get it or not... GET it! You won't regret it. You think of it days, weeks and months after you have read it. I read it in two days and I have small kids! Consider that a feat! Seriously though... 5 stars wasn't enough for me... It deserves more. Great great novel..
Sharon
Rating:
Summary: did not fulfil all the hype
Review: This book was a bit disppointing to me after all the rave reviews. The comtemporary frame in Toronto was very lame and weak and BORING. The heroine seemed to spend most of the time driving around Toronto or in coffee shops agonizing about how to deal with her boyfriend's need to find out about her childhood and her family and her difficulty in sharing this with him. After a few pages it wore very thin. The flashbacks to her childhood were a lot more interesting and involving. However tragic her childhood I found it difficult to get emotionally involved with her. I did love the image of her and her brother sitting on the edge of the pond or lake and him sharing with her his knowledge of the organisms that lived in the water. That for me was the most memorable and beautiful part of the book. i felt only impatience with her when she values her own city life and academic success so much more highly than her brother's simpler and seemingly happy life with his family in the north. What elitism! This all seemed not substantial enough to hang a novel on. As another reviewer wrote So What!
Rating:
Summary: riveting
Review: I truly couldn't put this book down. The story of four children who lose their parents in the way north country of Ontario, Canada. Mary Lawson writes in such a candid, honest way, you can visualize the characters.It is a very good story of family survival and family love and demons that haunt us. I highly recommend this book, it will stay with you and you will want to share it with others.
Rating:
Summary: Big Buildup.....to What??
Review: Crow Lake is an interesting novel on many levels. It has beautiful descriptions of the land in northern Ontario, a tragedy that occurs in the beginning of the novel, obstacles to overcome by family members and a dire mystery that is alluded to from early on. What is it then that disappoints me? I guess for me, I never became involved with the central character Kate. She is unemotional, detached and academic. She resists facing her past, by refusing to become involved in her current relationships both with her students as well as her boyfriend. Her story is told in a series of flashbacks beginning with her parents death when she was age seven. It describes her relationships with her siblings especially her brother Matt whom she looks up to and loves devotedly. The story continually refers to a deeper, darker, oppressive mystery that is yet to come and involves the neighboring Pye family. The problem is, when everything is said and done, it is all anti-climatic. So what!! Mary Lawson, has a talent for writing. Her words and imagery are beautifully depicted. Her descriptions of seven year old Kate struggling to process her parents death is right on. Why resort to using the big "mystery" technique for the story. I felt this story was rich enough to sustain itself simply by the feelings, actions and environment that Lawson created for the Morrison family. Good story, wonderful descriptions but lacking in the final chapters.
Rating:
Summary: A book to delight a Canadaphile like myself...
Review: ...and anyone else who enjoys well-written, evocative, character-driven stories. "Crow Lake" is a moving, bittersweet tale of family and the ties that bind people together. It is also an insightful examination of the belief that loss of a childhood dream is a tragedy to last a lifetime, as well as the flip-side of that coin...that fulfillment of a childhood dream inevitably brings peace and contentment. I highly, highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Family dynamics exposed by a fatal auto accident
Review: Told mostly in flashbacks, Crow Lake?s real beginning is the fatal auto accident that leaves four Canadian kids orphans, struggling to reconnect. The book follows the children into young adulthood, with frustration and fate battling against the crushing odds of rural poverty. It is said that all good writing must provide a 'sense of place' in which the action occurs, and Crow Lake and the surrounding community are almost as important as characters as are the humans in this lyrical and evocative book.
Crow Lake succeeds on all levels.
Rating:
Summary: A great story with a wonderful lesson
Review: This a book well worth reading. I picked this up for my road trip to Pheonix, and before I knew it I was toting it to the pool and keeping the light on to finish it. I was engaged and interested in this beautiful story. When you read this book you will follow the life of Kate, a professor/ researcher/ scientist who loves the small life of ponds and lakes, and when you step the steps of her life with her it is easy to see why her passion is so. As an adult, Kate is preparing for her return to home for a nephews birthday party. As she debates whether or not to invite her current lover, whom she loves but has managed to shut from her past, all of her life seems to flash before her. I loved who the book gently took you from the present, with her sweetheart, to the past, with her painful experiences and hurtful memories. You see how subtly we are truly made up of the moments from our past. And as you may think this could be a heavy, gut wrenching trip, Lawson delivers the story with ease and honesty- and it won't leave you feeling depressed. More you will walk away reflecting on the lives of Kate and her siblings, and then your own life, and just exactly how you look at those in it. This is a book well worth reading, and while sometimes women's modern novels can be all to predictable, this novel isn't, and it continues to please right up to the end.
Rating:
Summary: great novel but a little disturbing to me
Review: i love this book by a great new author for me. i am so glad it was picked as a Today show book club pick, otherwise i might not have picked it up. i Read so many books. i got into the characters and i did find parts of it disturbing, some of the storyline reminded me of difficulties between some of my siblings and my self. not every family is perfect and it is always interesting to read and get into another family's life even if it is fiction!
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