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Summary: On Mystic Lake - A Book for all Romantics
Review: I found out about On Mystic Lake after reading Kristin Hannah's Angel Falls. After I began reading the book I could not put it down. A woman is molded into someone she thinks she wants to be, but when her husband gives her the surprise that he's in love with someone else - reality kicks in. She goes back to visit her hometown, and there's where all the sparks start to fly. I recommend this book to anyone who is a hopeless romantic, you will not want to put the book down.
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Summary: Should have read this one first>>>>>
Review: My first experience with Kristin Hannah was with the book, Angel Falls; I wasn't impressed. I felt that the book was somewhat thrown together and rushed. A friend of mine suggested On Mystic Lake; he said it was her best by far. I bought the book and finished it the same day. I must say that Kristin Hannah is an outstanding writer with loads and loads of beautiful prose. The passion floats to the surface, leaving you drained after the final page. Mystic has certain qualities that Angel Falls didn't: a simple story without a silly plot. Who can't relate to the feelings these characters share. The plot is simple: Blake leaves Annie for a younger woman, and Annie must find a way to discover what she was before the marriage. She heads back to her childhood home and runs into her first love. Who can't relate to becoming lost in a relationship; so lost that you forget who you are and where you truly belong. Kristin Hannah takes a plethora of delicate subjects in this book and meets them head on, but unlike Angel Falls, she handles them with extreme care. This book is a winner!!!
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Summary: Don't quite know why....
Review: This is one of those books you end up reading to the end and you don't know exactly why until you have finished it. If you read a lot its kinda the "same old thing" -- woman loves man, man leaves woman, woman finds another man with a child to nurture. This is the first Hannah book that I've read so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that she can come up with an original story line.
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Summary: Depressing but true too many times
Review: I enjoyed reading this book mostly because the author's desciptive writing actually made me feel the surroundings and the landscapes of the story. Here's another woman that has centered her life around her husband and his career while being an involved mom to her daughter. As the daughter is maturing and leaving for college in Europe, her father has decided he is in love with another woman and moves out of the huge beautiful house. A trip to her home- Mystic Lake - brings her peace of mind, rest and new contact with an old flame who has just lost his wife to suicide a few months earlier. The serenity of Mystic Lake is just plain inviting. This is a wonderful story with a lot of emotion and you can't help but cheer these folks on.
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Summary: Learning to Love & Trust Again!
Review: This is a wonderful story of healing. Three people come togeether to learn how to love and trust again after they have been betrayed by the ones they love most. And by doing so, they become a family. It is also the greatest fantasy to be reunited with a first love, and to see it the fantasies of first love can survive the realities of every day life. Kristin Hannah is a wonderful story teller, and I plan to read more of her books!
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Summary: OK, with a few "good" moments
Review: I expected a lot more from this book and have to say I was disappointed. There was nothing "bad" about the book-it was a quick, easy and nice read...but not memorable. The plotlines were predictable and the characters did not have much depth (particularly the father, Hank). I found the writing mediocre most of the time.There were a few great moments, more at the end of the book than the beginning. I knew how it was going to end, but didn't really care. There are much better books out there!
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Summary: Beautiful Love Story
Review: On Mystic Lake is another one of Kristin Hannah's tear jerking, true-to-life love stories. Hannah brings reality home in her novels and leaves the reader questioning her own life! Hannah does not write the typical "mush and gush" dime store romance novels, but instead breathes life into her characters in settings which could very well happen in our own lives. You can't help but fall in love with her characters as well as being able relate to them. The reader slides effortlessly into the story which Hannah is painting, so much so that one often forgets that this is "just" a novel - her characters are indeed THAT real. This is just one of the traits which endears Hannah's fans to her and who just cannot wait for the next novel to come out! Annie goes back "home" after her husband informs her that, after 20 years of marriage, he wants out, as he is in love with another woman. Annie is forced to face and confront her life, her life decisions and how she came to lose herself during her marriage. On Mystic Lake is a journey of one woman's quest to find her real self. Along her journey, she meets up with an old friend from high school who is grieving after the suicide of his wife and who is unable to comfort and relate to his six-year old daughter who has been devastated by the loss of her mother. While all three of the main characters are forced to deal with tragedy in their lives, it is the essences of these tragedies, which pulls them all together and plants the seeds of love and hope to grow. The reader experiences the emotional catharsis of Annie as she bravely confronts her fears and weaknesses and finds the emotional strength to overcome and emerge as a more powerful, strong woman who finally goes after that which she truly desires - love. Once again, I read another of Hannah's books in one sitting. They are much too good to put down - it is impossible! This is an excellent book - a love story that will have you maybe rethinking your own sacrifices in your life! I am finding that Hannah's books have a hidden message for us all!
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Summary: A touching story of love and starting all over
Review: A woman is happily married for twenty years. BAM! "Honey, I want a divorce. I love someone else." Annie Colwater felt her life was over. Having no one to turn to since her daughter was spending the summer in England, she returns to her childhood town, Mystic. To help her depression, she takes a job as a nanny, watching the little girl of an old high school friend whose wife just died. Annie helps to bring the family back together and at the same time falls in love with her old friend, Nick. She finally finds real love. However, she finds out she is pregnant...with her husband's child. Now, will everything change? I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and could not put it down until I had finished it. I recommend this book for anyone who loves books about relationships. The plot flows very well and the characters are very believable and developed. I fell in love with them all.
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Summary: A poignant journey
Review: What a moving book!! Annelise "Annie" Bourne Colwater is a woman who just woke up from a 20 year nap. Annie has been living life for other people, devoting herself to her daughter and unfaithful husband. In the process, the lost herself and became a woman that even she didn't recognize. When her husband announces that he wants a divorce, she is overcome with grief and retreats back to her childhood home, Mystic, Washington. It is there that Annie encounters her old flame Nick and his 6 year old daughter who retreats into silence and who believes she is disappearing into thin air, finger by finger. Nick was dealing (or undealing) with his wife's death by alcoholism. In the process of helping them heal from the death that Annie becomes whole again. And regains her self identity. Two despearate souls in need of love, acceptance and healing ultimately find it in each other. Annie and Nick complement each other so well, I love reading about their healing journey. I never wanted two people to get together so much, as I did with Nick and Annie. The heartbreaking story of Izzy is what made the book so poignant for me. Everytime I read about this little girl, my eyes would uncontrollably water and I couldn't help myself from crying. Coping with her mother's death and slow healing that comes, is painful to read but it hits the heart directly. "On Mystic Lake" deals with difficult issues, such as motherhood, marriage, suicide, alcholism and divorce. But it is woven in the story so well, it wasn't hard to digest. This a great book and I *really* didn't want the book to end!! I wish there was an epilogue!
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Summary: Completely Unoriginal
Review: Having seen the reviews of this book, I was hoping for a great read. Instead, this book is an amalgam of every single romance I've ever read. It's completely unoriginal and predictable. I've read so many stories of women "going home again" after a setback, the wounded man/child, the town filled with stores with too cute names, the friends/sidekicks who are cariacatures instead of characters. The heroine goes home, meets up with her long lost love, heals his emotionally damaged child (what a surprise!) and "finds" herself. What a joke, the woman leaves LA only to find herself in the same role she held before, wife and mother. Oh, except in this book, she wants to open a bookstore. This book was a cliche from beginning to end. I won't buy another book by this author.
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