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Description
Canadian Library Association YA Book of the Year
In 1981, sixteen-year-old Sally McLean is in a car full of teenagers when it plunges through the ice to the bottom of Mistik Lake. Sally is the only survivor.
Many years later, Sally's teenaged daughter, Odella, is left wondering whether the accident is to blame for her mother's life as a sad alcoholic who eventually abandons her family and flees to Iceland with another man. When Sally suddenly dies in an accident, Odella, her father and her two younger sisters are almost overwhelmed with grief and confusion, until three people provide help and healing in unexpected ways.
Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Age:
- 0
- Grade:
- p to 12
- Reading age:
- 0
Awards
- Commended, CCBC Best Books for Kids & Teens 2008
- Commended, CCBC Choices 2008
- Commended, NYPL Books for the Teenage List
- Commended, Booklist Top 10 Romance Fiction for Youth
- Short-listed, McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award
- Commended, Quill & Quire Books of the Year
- Winner, CLA Young Adult Book of the Year Award
- Commended, Publishers Weekly Best Books 2007
- Commended, OLA Best Bets - Reading for Young Adults (Fiction)
Editorial Reviews
The progression of the plot, as it moves from loss and anger through gradual understanding to an incandescent moment of reconciliation in the very last line, is silky smooth. The various pieces click together at last to make a surprising and deeply satistfying pattern...a wonderfully absorbing read.
— Quill & Quire
Smooth writing contributes much to a story that will enable readers to care about...coming of age.
— School Library Journal
...beautifully crafted...An exceptional writer, Brooks once again immerses readers in a fully realized fictional world and leaves them potentially wiser for the experience.
— Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
...a book that many upper junior high/lower senior high readers, particularly girls, will enjoy.
— Resource Links
A master storyteller, Brooks has spun a heart-warming and thought provoking tale with characters that we care about. Not only will this novel strike a familiar chord with many readers, but it will also linger in their minds long after they finish the book.
— Winnipeg Free Press
...a seductive and emotional five-star novel.
— Sarah's Stars
I believe [Mistik Lake] should win every prize in Canada this year; it richly deserves it...A rich, delicious read...Perfect for summer reading...
— CBC Radio Children's Panel
...absolutely perfect summer reading...Mistik Lake is magical, an absorbing, surprising story...An intriguing plot and characters that seem to have walked straight out of real life make this novel immensely readable; Brooks's poetic language and wise understanding of the heart make it superb.
— Toronto Star
...expands its exceedingly well-told tale of teenage romance with equally absorbing stories of adults who have played the tricky game of love.
— Horn Book, STARRED REVIEW
Brooks' affecting novel explores the weighty legacy of family secrets and cultural heritage...Readers will connect strongly with the teenager's astonished, powerful feelings of first love and her shocked realization that painful family burdens can also be life-changing gifts.
— Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Mistik Lake reminds us of what it is that makes Brooks the writer she is. Here, again in luminescent prose, Brooks digs deep into love, death and loss, and here, again, she offers both her protagonist and her readers the resolution and solace possible after great pain.
— Globe and Mail
...elegaic...Brooks doesn't judge the failings of her characters harshly. Rather she lovingly reveals the hidden forces that drive them. This title...demonstrate[s] how we are all shaped by complex motivations that often take us years to understand.
— City Parent (Toronto)
Brooks captures perfectly the excruciating pain of divorce for children, the ache of older adolescence, the loss of childhood, and the centrality of family love. A must-read on its way to many awards. Highly Recommended.
— CM Magazine
It is the rare young adult novel that so perfectly combines teen sensibilities and edginess and lust and dreams with an elegance of language and an unforgettable sense of place. Mistik Lake is truly a unique gem of a book.
— Richie's Picks
This is a beautifully written tale of grief, love, and family secrets.
— Booklist
Mistik Lake is such a wonderfully absorbing read you want to spend more time with even the minor characters, and the prose is so pure, the dialogue so sharp and funny, you're carried along in perpetual pleasure. Like Barbara Kingsolver and Ursula LeGuin, Martha Brooks makes us emerge from her novels a little more in love with the world, a little more rueful about its follies, a little more hopeful about the possibilities of redemption. It will be astonishing, and deeply wrong, if Mistik Lake doesn't win huge numbers of readers as well as its own swath of prizes and honours.
— Quill & Quire, STARRED REVIEW
Brooks knows the adolescent mind and heart. She also knows the strength and restorative power of family and community. In Mistik Lake, she gives us both - and treats sensitive issues with unblinking forthrightness.
— Montreal Gazette
Writing stories about finding hope in difficult circumstances is what Martha Brooks does best.
— Prairie Books NOW
Everyone suffers, but the momentum remains steady and, in the end, it is the author's ability to convey the characters' love for one another, as complicated as it often is, that floats to the top.
— Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
