Harrow Lake

by Kat Ellis

[Jo]

Quick fire review.

- Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis is the second book I read after craving some horror, but was again another disappointment.
- There are secrets being hidden in Harrow Lake, and those secrets become fairly obvious to the reader. And they're not great secrets. But they're nothing like what you expect.
- From about half way through, you realise what kind of story this actually is, and that nothing is really going to come of it. And as a horror novel, it quickly becomes ridiculous. Why is Lola so fixated on the myth of Mr Jitters? When nobody else is.
- Harrow Lake is meant to be a horror, but it absolutely isn't a horror at all. People might want to call it a psychological horror, but I'd disagree. It would be a great book to read if you wanted to read about mental health and where the mind can take you. But as a reader, expecting to be scared, it was majorly disappointing.
- This book had one moment that was truly scary; when a puppet - the one of the cover - moves of it's own accord. It's a moment, and that's it. But once you realise what's actually going on, which is really obvious to the reader, so isn't scary at all. There was a lot of eye-rolling.
- I finished the book thinking, "Really? That's it?" Honestly, it felt like a waste of my time.
- I want to point out that my negative reaction is about this book being a horror and the aspects that were meant to be scary, not at Lola's mental health. This book should have been marketed differently, I might have had a completely different reading experience.
- Other people really enjoyed this book, so do read other reviews before deciding whether or not you will.

Trigger warnings: This book features child abuse, domestic abuse, and discussion of suicide.