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The Lake Season

A Novel

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About The Book

Set in the weeks leading up to an idyllic New England wedding, this “enticing and refreshing” (Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author) novel sparkles with wry wit, sweet romance, and long-kept family secrets.

Iris Standish has always been the responsible older sibling: the one with the steady marriage, loving family, and sensible job. But all of a sudden, as her carefully-constructed life spins out of her control, a cryptic postcard from her estranged sister Leah arrives at the perfect time: Please Come. Iris seizes her chance to escape to her childhood lakeside home, where Leah is planning her summer wedding to a man their New Hampshire clan has never met.

Against a backdrop of dress fittings, floral arrangements, and rehearsal dinners, Leah hides secrets of her own. And while her sister faces a past that has finally caught up to her, Iris prepares to say good-bye to a future that is suddenly far from certain. As new love beckons and Hampstead Lake shimmers in the background, Iris must decide when to wade in cautiously and when to dive—and, ultimately, how to ferry herself to safe harbors in this enticing novel of second chances and the ties that bind.

Excerpt

The Lake Season

One

Iris should’ve had her nervous breakdown that morning. But there just wasn’t time.

Instead she found herself bent over the ironing board in the laundry room, one puffy eye fixed on the driveway, where Jack, Sadie, and Lily awaited the bus, and the other fixed on the miniature Girl Scout badge she was attempting to iron onto Lily’s uniform. Today was Thursday: Girl Scout day. And there was Lily standing uniform-less, once again, at the mailbox, while her mother frantically willed the iron to heat up.

“Damn it!” Iris singed her finger and stuck it in her mouth. She examined the Girl Scout patch, a small green circle containing a lone sheep. Had it been for farming? Or spinning wool? She couldn’t remember. Nor had she remembered to iron it onto the uniform when Lily earned it, well over three months ago. Lily had refused to wear her sheep-less uniform to school one more day.

“It’s embarrassing, Mom. All the other kids have their sheep.”

Iris didn’t blame her. The troop leader, Mrs. Crum, a sturdy woman with thick knees, had noticed, too. In fact, she’d asked Iris at the last meeting if perhaps the patch had been lost. Had gone so far to suggest, in a concerned tone, that Iris could indeed buy a replacement at the local hardware store that carried the badges, for cases like these. But Iris had no trouble deciphering the Mother-to-Mother Code: Your kid was the only one to hand in her cookie sales proceeds late this year. And that was after you lost thirteen boxes of Do-Si-Dos. Are you going to screw this up, too?

After singeing her finger twice more, Iris angrily flipped the patch over. She cringed at the melted brown plastic oozing from the underside. Of course: she’d forgotten to remove the sticker covering. Which she would have known to do if perhaps she’d read the directions in the first place.

“Crap!” She yanked the iron’s cord from the wall. “Krazy Glue,” she decided aloud, rummaging through the laundry room’s overstuffed drawers. “Mrs. Crum will never know.”

No sooner had she affixed the damaged badge than the kids and the dog stomped back into the mudroom.

“I did it!” Iris exclaimed, holding up the sash victoriously, careful to conceal the half-melted sheep with one finger.

“We missed the bus,” Sadie announced, glaring accusingly at her mother.

Jack shrugged. Samson whined.

“Again?” Iris groaned.

As if in reply, there was a deep wretching sound at her feet. Iris looked down just as Samson threw up all over her fuzzy slippers.



“If you hadn’t made me change . . .” Sadie muttered, staring pointedly out the passenger window.

It was too early in the day, and besides, Iris’s head pounded from sleep deprivation. She fumbled with her hot coffee as they pulled out of the driveway, choosing her words carefully. She’d learned this.

“That skirt was too short, Sadie. How about I take you to the mall this weekend for something new? Something that fits.”

“It fits just fine,” Sadie said.

Iris bit her lip, keeping her response to herself. Not if your underpants flash every time you sit down.

Ding, ding, ding. The car chimed, and she glanced quickly at the dashboard. Was a door open?

“Besides,” Sadie went on. “Amy’s mother bought her the same skirt. In three different colors.”

Iris sighed, three tiny skirts dancing across her mind: pink, red, blue. Each the size of a napkin. She turned to Lily in the backseat. “Here, honey. Put your Girl Scout sash on.”

Lily pulled it over her head and peered down at her chest. “Mom, why is the sheep brown?”

The chiming continued, loudly. Absently Iris pushed the nearest button on the dash. The window went down, then up. She swiped at another. The radio crackled.

Ding, ding, ding.

“Mom. Seat belt,” Jack reminded her gently.

Ah.

Behind Iris, Lily’s shoes tapped the floor in rhythm to the music. Iris reached toward the backseat, grasping her seven-­year-old’s purple Mary Jane and giving her toes a grateful squeeze.

Sadie riffled through her book bag and pulled out a lip gloss Iris didn’t recognize. “I have talent-show tryouts today. Remember?”

Iris hadn’t, of course. She had not slept in weeks. But at Sadie’s mention of it, she recalled her daughter and her friends strutting around the bonus room to the tunes of Lady Gaga. Where had they learned to sway their hips like that? she’d wondered.

“I remember,” she lied. “I’ll pick you up at four.”

“No way!” Sadie snapped the lip gloss shut. “Everyone’s walking to the diner afterward. I already told you.”

Iris turned, careful not to stare at her vampire-red lips. Pick your battles. “And your dad and I told you, we don’t want you leaving school property and walking down a main road.” She paused, considering her footing. “I could drop you and Amy off at the diner.”

“Like some nursery school carpool? Are you insane?”

Clearly, yes. “Then I’ll see you in the auditorium at four.” She’d tried. Secretly Iris hated the other parents for so blithely turning their heads as their teenagers traipsed all over town, or stayed until closing at the mall, always unsupervised. Where the hell were these mothers, anyway?

“Mom?” In the rearview mirror Jack peered earnestly at her. “We need lunch money.”

“But I packed chicken salad. Your favorite.”

Sadie snorted. “Yeah. Yesterday.”

Iris scanned the car, eyes roving over the seats, across the floor, before a fuzzy image of three lunch bags flashed through her mind. All sitting on the kitchen counter, empty, three miles behind them.

“I could have sworn . . .”

Lily had already retrieved Iris’s wallet from her purse. She and Jack counted out five dollars—they were short. “It’s okay, Mom. I can borrow some lunch money from Mike,” Jack said.

Iris wasn’t sure which was worse: her eldest child’s relentless disgust with her, or her younger children’s tireless empathy. To be honest, she didn’t feel she quite deserved either. And, resentfully, she couldn’t help but think it was another one of those things their father somehow managed to evade.

As they turned onto the main road toward school, the car bumped over a pothole. The coffee mug lurched, drenching her lap in a ribbon of tawny liquid.

Sadie scowled at her mother’s stained sweatpants.

Was this Iris’s fault, too? She blinked, cursing the tears that threatened to leap from the corners of her eyes. Damn, Paul. She was coming undone in front of the kids.

But she was overcome with gratitude when Sadie didn’t comment, and instead rummaged through the glove box for a napkin. Finally she pressed a wadded bunch in her mother’s outstretched hand.

For a second their eyes met, and Iris smiled hopefully, blinking.

Sadie pursed her red lips. “For God’s sake,” she muttered. “Doesn’t this car have a gas pedal?”



She hadn’t told the kids. Not yet. Despite the fact that it had been two weeks since Paul had dumped the news on her. He’d sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, fiddling with the TV remote, when he’d said it.

“This isn’t working, Iris.”

She’d kept reading, stifling a yawn. “I think there are batteries in the drawer,” she’d said.

“Not the remote, damn it. Us.”

She set her book down.

Paul wanted a separation. No, a divorce, he’d said at first. But he’d withdrawn the jagged word when he saw the look on her face. As her whole body crumpled against the pillows, weakened suddenly by the suffocating air in their bedroom.

“A separation, then,” he’d offered, backpedaling, as if it were somehow kinder to ease her into a dismal room for a time, before ushering her down an eternal tunnel of darkness.

She’d put her hand to her mouth, as if reaching for words. But for once she hadn’t any.

And so he’d filled the space with his own. Paul was good at that. Litigation attorneys usually were.

“Come on, Iris,” he’d said impatiently. “This can’t be news to you. It’s been dead for a while. Right?”

It had been, of course. But she’d refused to agree. She wouldn’t give him that. Not after hanging on to the fabric of their family so determinedly for so long. If Paul was quick with the scissors, then Iris was deft with the glue.

With each rift, each disappointment over the years, she’d felt him pull away. Looking back now, she caught fleeting glimpses of it; a decline that crept from the shadows of their shared life. The threat was present, but always retreating, brushing up against them every now and then like an ominous black cat. If she forced herself to reconstruct the last few years like a jigsaw puzzle, she could see it in the background. A whisker here, a flicked tail there, until she couldn’t deny the full feline form.

Ever since that night two weeks ago, Paul’s demand had consumed her. Immobilized, she’d spent each morning in her bathrobe staring out the living room window at the magnolia tree in the front yard, trying to come to terms with the vibrant pink buds that somehow managed to thrust themselves into her now disjointed world. She wandered through the house entranced, only pulling herself together at three o’clock, right before the bus delivered her children home.

If she were honest, she supposed she could see it coming. They were very comfortable now in their Newton Victorian, but they hadn’t always been. In the early years, things were tight. Paul was a junior associate in his firm, logging painfully long days, even weekends, for the senior partners. And when there was a big case, which there always seemed to be, he’d be called on day and night to research and file. Surely, Paul had felt those pressures. But what about hers? Staying home alone, year after year, resigned to a uniform of spit-up-stained tees and nursing bras. She remembered those early milk-drunk months viscerally, where she’d barely untangle herself from the bedsheets to nurse at all hours of the night, only to roll herself out again each morning to face yet another full dishwasher, another basket of laundry, and the seemingly eternal trail of toys that coiled from room to room no matter how many times she bent to retrieve them from the unmopped floor. The late-night coughs, followed by long waits at the doctor’s, where equally weary parents comforted runny-nosed tots in an overheated waiting room. Friends had warned her about the fatigue. About the mood swings, and the monotony. But they’d also warned her about the fierce love that would pull her through.

Besides, there was such irreplaceable, seeping-into-your-bones joy that came with the sacrifices they’d made. The smell of a baby’s downy head, warm with sleep, and Iris’s own grateful tears in those middle-of-the-night rocking-chair moments. The raw hormonal surge of a love so urgent as she pulled her newborn to her breast, the silent reverberations of love coursing as steadily as her milk.

“Don’t you miss your colleagues?” Paul asked once, somewhat incredulously, when her maternity leave from Sadie was up and she’d declined to go back. “Wouldn’t it be nice to go in on the ski condo with the other guys from the firm this season?” She had enjoyed her work of course, but not in the way he meant. She did not long like he did for the fancy vacations or the sleek thirty-foot Hatteras that gleamed at the end of the neighbor’s driveway. Perhaps Paul missed her old life more than she.

To appease him, once the kids were in school Iris had gone back to work. Sort of. She took on a few private writing clients of her own, and carved a small office space out of a corner in the upstairs hallway where she reviewed manuscripts and contacted publishers as a freelance agent. But while she initially relished the foray back into work, and the opportunity to prove herself to Paul, Iris often felt she was straddling a perilously sharp picket fence. On one side her family shouted her name, holding up empty dinner plates and feverishly waving incomplete homework assignments. On the other side loomed her clients, a less boisterous, but equally needy, crew. New writers expected scrupulous feedback, and established authors awaited overdue royalty statements. With one foot in each world, Iris teetered unnervingly in midair, never quite feeling like she fulfilled the demands of any of her flock. And in the rare instance that she even considered her own well-being, she found herself in jeopardy of landing hard on the pickets in an oh-so-private place.

But all of her efforts had gone unappreciated anyway, because once he made partner, Paul pulled a 180 on her and insisted she quit work altogether. By then she’d gotten into the swing of working from home. She enjoyed the creative outlet; she needed it. They’d argued about it for months. But the point was lost on Paul. He insisted they did not need her income, especially given how small it was. It was a kind of old-fashioned machismo Iris detested, and she further detested the creeping sense that she was a kept woman.

Then there was sex. Or the lack of it, truth be told. Admittedly, there were nights when Paul reached for her in the darkness and she’d roll away, mouth ajar in a rehearsed snore. But there were also nights she asked him to set down his BlackBerry, pressing suggestively against him, and he’d wave her away, blaming an early meeting.

But for all the challenges of raising a young family, Iris had muddled forward each year. Strode, even. Sure, there were days when Paul arrived home to find her weeping quietly at the kitchen table, face in her hands as the kids crawled through the spilled contents of the pantry that sprinkled the floor, tiny floury-white handprints inviting him into the living room; smashed chocolate chips that caulked the cracks of the antique wooden floors rather nicely.

“What on earth?” he’d asked, mouth agape in the doorway.

To which she’d wiped her eyes and replied evenly, “They wanted to bake.”

That was the rarity. Most days Paul had arrived home, his own hair askew, flinging his briefcase onto the table with barely a hello to Iris, sinking into the toy-filled recesses of the couch as the kids clambered across him.

But in the end, Iris figured they’d made it. Just look at what they’d accomplished! The kids were healthy. They did the ski trips to Utah, and they joined the tennis club. The house was finally renovated. For her fortieth birthday Paul had shocked her with a Range Rover, a car she was embarrassed to drive, but secretly loved. He was a partner now, he reminded her. By both of their definitions, they’d made it.

Which is why she was so shocked when Paul came to her late that night two weeks ago with his decision, after she’d tucked the last child into bed. Laid out. Bowled over. This was their family. It was not perfect, but it was the way they’d done it for so long, in such silent seeming agreement, that she’d never seen it coming.

“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” she’d howled. It was the only answer that made sense.

Paul had denied it, and in a way that made her feel small. “Come on, Iris. Don’t be so cliché.”

Now, waiting in the long drop-off line at the school entrance, Iris watched her children hurry through the school doors, her heart in her chest. The driver behind her laid on the horn, jolting her.

She needed a plan. A lawyer. Something. Back at the empty house, Iris tossed her keys on the antique table by the door and took the stairs two at a time. She contemplated Paul’s golf shorts on the bedroom rug. Out of habit, she bent to retrieve them, along with a dirty pair of balled-up socks, but then changed her mind and kicked them across the wood floor. Let him wash his own damn clothes. What she needed was a shower. Had she even had one yesterday?

At the sink Iris caught her reflection in the mirror. The creased eyes, the pallid complexion. Paul had spent two weeks sleeping on the couch, while she stared numbly at the bedroom ceiling overhead, willing him back upstairs. She teetered unnervingly between the urge to either throttle him or pull him under the covers and press herself against him. But he never came. Each morning the blankets would be folded neatly in the hall closet, the throw pillows politely replaced on the sofa. She knew it was to protect the kids, but the practiced ease with which he went about this new ritual stunned her and infuriated her, too. And now, after keeping a silent front for the last two weeks, she wasn’t sure if it was him or herself that she was more disgusted with.

Despite the steady stream of the shower, Iris walked past it fully clothed. As the windows of the bathroom filled with steam, she climbed into the claw-foot tub in the corner, sank into its cold embrace, and wept.

Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide for The Lake Season includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

 

Introduction

Iris and Leah Standish have never quite seen eye to eye. As sisters growing up on Hampstead Lake, Iris would carefully dip her toe in the water as Leah dove in headfirst. In high school, Iris focused quietly on her studies as Leah threw herself into the social scene. Twenty years later, Iris has a big house in the suburbs with her lawyer husband and three children as Leah bounds back from her cross-country adventures with a successful and charming fiancée on her arm. But behind Iris’ picture perfect life is a crumbling marriage, and Leah’s bright plans for her fairy-tale wedding are threaded with doubt, and a dark secret.

It only takes one hot, New England summer to unravel everything that Iris and Leah think they know about each other. For despite their incongruent paths, the Standish sisters both find themselves back in their childhood home, dangerously close to losing everything. The Lake Season is a stunning testament to the intricate and sometimes tenuous bonds of sisterhood and family.

 

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. What does Leah’s postcard—“Please Come”—say about the current state of her and Iris’s relationship? Why does Iris say yes to such an enigmatic missive?

2. Iris finds solace in her friendship with Trish, who tells her to “embrace the dirt,” in both the garden and her life. What do you think she means by this? Does Iris follow her advice?

3. Not only does Iris have to navigate her sisterhood with Leah, she also has to foster one between her daughters, Sadie and Lily. What complications echo between the two relationships? How are our identities formed by our siblings? And how much can a parent really intervene?

4. Leah scoffs at Iris’s notion that a life can be reduced to chapters. Who do you think is right here? Why?

5. At the dress fitting, Iris catches a troubling glimpse of Leah staring blankly in the mirror and smearing ChapStick on her lips. Discuss Leah’s undercurrent of mental illness throughout the narrative. Why do you think Millie and Leah feel the need to be so secretive? Especially when it comes to Iris?

6. Iris’s high school crush, Cooper Woods, is an unexpected source of comfort. He also teaches her about “sistering,” a woodworking trick in which a new beam is installed to support an old beam. How does this tie into the themes that resonate throughout the novel?

7. Why do you think Leah panics when she senses that Cooper and Iris are developing romantic feelings for each other? How does it reconfigure the social order of their relationship? Discuss the jealousies at play.

8. At the Hampstead Brewery, Trish suggests that Iris “stayed away long enough to make it hard to come back.” Do you agree with Trish? Is Iris partially responsible for her family’s emotional distance? What are the consequences implicit in returning home?

9. As Cooper and Iris get closer, Iris realizes she can’t move forward until she figures out what she wants. Leah also has great difficulty facing herself, as evidenced by her nervous breakdown and near drowning. Why do you think this is such a difficult task? How do we get stuck in the trenches of adulthood?

10. When Leah finally opens up about her relationship with Kurt in Yellowstone, Iris is taken aback to hear that Leah considers her to be the stronger sister. Cooper and Trish echo this sentiment. Why can’t Iris see herself this way? How do our self-perceptions differ from those around us?

11. Discuss Iris’s official transition from literary agent to cookbook author. How does this signal a definitive shift in her life approach? What is different about the two roles?

12. Stephen is heartbroken to hear that Leah has lied to him about her pregnancy and subsequent medical condition. Discuss the role that trust plays throughout the narrative. Where and when is it most essential, especially for Iris and Leah?

13. As Iris prepares to begin a new phase of her life, her father reminds her that there is “more than one road leading home.” How does this affect her decision to follow Cooper, instead of Paul?

 

Tips to Enhance Your Book Club

1. Hampstead Lake figures prominently in the narrative as a source of peace and comfort. Take a relaxing group trip to your local watering hole, whether it’s the beach, lake, or local pool.

2. Despite their differences, Leah and Iris are both big believers in the curative powers of a good martini. Host a martini night and open up about your own best sibling stories—the good and the bad! In honor of Trish and Iris’s new farm-to-table cookbook, patronize your local farmer’s market and cook up a fresh dish to go with those drinks.

3. Check out another incredible sister story from Emily Bestler Books, Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. Or rent the feature film, starring Cameron Diaz.

About The Author

Photograph by TK

Hannah McKinnon is the author of several novels, including The Lake SeasonMystic SummerThe Summer HouseSailing LessonsThe View from HereMessage in the Sand, and The Darlings. She graduated from Connecticut College and the University of South Australia. She lives in Connecticut, with her family, a flock of chickens, and two raggedy rescue dogs.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books (June 2, 2015)
  • Length: 384 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781476777641

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Raves and Reviews

Hannah McKinnon’s The Lake Season is a pure delight. Iris Standish is such an appealing woman, handling an overload of family calamities with good sense and good will, not to mention a few really good times. It’s a bonus that the setting on Lake Hampstead is as enticing and refreshing as McKinnon’s voice.

– Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Nantucket Sisters

McKinnon’s voice is sharp and evocative…Making use of a gorgeous setting and serious themes, this novel rises above a flock of fluffier beach reads.

– Kirkus

Two sisters, a glittering New England lake, and one desperate, last-chance summer set the stage for Hannah McKinnon’s emotionally affecting new novel, The Lake Season. The story features the complex Iris and her unpredictable sister Leah but its power extends well beyond the beautiful, heartbreaking bond between these two women. A memorable rumination on life, loss, and how to find a path home.

– Michelle Gable, nationally bestselling author of A Paris Apartment

Family and secrets colliding at a lakeside wedding…[a] must-read.

– Cosmopolitan

This is a beautiful tale of sisters, a heartfelt journey of truth and choices that will leave you deeply satisfied.

– Linda Francis Lee, bestselling author of The Glass Kitchen

A multilayered, nuanced portrayal of modern divorce... McKinnon is a talented observer of the family dynamic, weaving disparate personalities together as they navigate relationships, self-preservation, and redemption. Fans of Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It (2002) and Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements (2012) will love this romantic yet realistic novel.

– Booklist

Hannah McKinnon's lyrical debut tells the story of a pair of very different sisters, both at a crossroads in life. McKinnon's great strength lies in her ability to reveal the many ways the two women wound - and ultimately heal - each other as only sisters can.

– Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling author

Fans of Debbie Macomber and those looking for a great summer read will enjoy this first foray into adult fiction by McKinnon (Franny Parker; The Properties of Water)...the story features engaging character development and an on-again, off-again romance that will keep readers intrigued.

– Library Journal

Breezy...Summer isn’t summer without an enticing beach read, and Hannah McKinnon delivers just that.

– InStyle Magazine

Charming and heartfelt! Hannah McKinnon's The Lake Season proves that you can go home again; you just can't control what you find when you get there.

– Wendy Wax, nationally bestselling author

Charming, absorbing and perfectly paced, The Lake Season is as full of warmth as summer itself. Don't blame Hannah McKinnon if this cinematic tale has you glued to a beach chair until it's finished.

– Chloe Benjamin, author of The Anatomy of Dreams

Sometimes funny, sometimes sad - but always bursting with compassion and sly humor. The Lake Season is a joy to read for anyone who cherishes the complexity and richness of family dynamics. Impossible not to be swept along by the characters. The perfect book to spread out with luxuriously on the beach.

– Saira Shah,, author of The Mouse-Proof Kitchen

Here is sisterhood in all its complexity, rich with tenderness, resentments and shared jokes, disappointment, admiration and profound love. Those who have a sister will read this book and pass it on to them; those who do not, will wish more than ever that they did.

– Gabrielle Donnelly, author of The Little Women Letters

An emotionally charged story about returning to yourself.

– K.A. Tucker, USA Today bestselling author

Seasons of change take us home to the places and the people who shelter us. Well-told, and in turns sweet and bare, The Lake Season offers a compelling tale of family secrets, letting go, and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.

– Lisa Wingate, Nationally Bestselling Author

A delicious tale of sisters and secrets. Hannah McKinnon’s writing style is as breezy as a weekend at the lake, yet her insights into the murkiness of family interactions run deep. The takeaway of this compelling read is clear: you can know someone your whole life and not know them at all.

– Mary Hogan, award winning author of Two Sisters

The Lake Season is one of those rare gems of a book that’s both impossible to put down and emotionally complex. Do yourself a favor and put The Lake Season on your summer reading list: you’ll love getting to know Iris Standish and her family and Hannah McKinnon’s writing is so beautifully evocative that even the most landlocked of readers will swear s/he can smell the fresh New England summer air.

– L. Alison Heller, author of The Never Never Sisters

If you enjoy a novel with a gorgeous setting and a side of dark family secrets, you will enjoy The Lake Season, which I recommend to fans of Nancy Thayer and Elin Hildebrand.

– Confessions of a Book Addict

Loved this book.

– Marjay's Reading Blog

A novel about sisters and second chances, The Lake Season is a delight to read- perfect for the beach.

– Books for Her

A delightful read.

– An Interior Journey

The Lake Season is totally being added to my 2015 Beach Must Read List! …moving and heartwarming.

– Steph and Chris Book Review

McKinnon built a beautiful and affecting setting, making it so easy to get sucked into the easygoing atmosphere of being at the lake for the summer. Readers have no choice but to feel laid back and ready for summer when reading this one. Renewal, forgiveness, and self-discovery are all wrapped up in this touching tale. I look forward to reading many more stories by McKinnon.

– Read, Run, Ramble

The interactions of mother, and daughters, and sisters was thought provoking...a good book club book.

– The Book Date

McKinnon is a voice to be reckoned with in women’s fiction...for fans of Jill Shalvis, Elin Hilderbrand, and Wendy Wax, this is a perfect book for a relaxing, summer reading or book club.

– Kathy Reads Fiction

A Women's Fiction "Best Bet": Conflicted family bonds, Genuine sibling roles; Uplifting ending... Illustrates that no one has the perfect life, even when it looks like it on the outside.

– Heroes and Heartbreakers

[A] sparkling debut novel.

– CBS Local, Seven Best Beach Reads for Summer

Hannah McKinnon can certainly tell a moving story! …Family secrets, love and intrigue in a nice little package. I highly recommend this book!

– Chick Lit Plus review

The Lake Season is filled with love, heartbreak, family, and romance. Hannah McKinnon pulled me right in from the very first page and never let me go.

– Fresh Fiction

"Soak up a great beach read!"

– Woman's World Magazine

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